Every year, your host performs the self-flagellatory ritual of entering ESPN's Tournament Challenge, an NCAA basketball tournament-based game which he routinely places in the bottom 1/3 of entrants. This is not usually the case after the first round, where he usually picks 26-27 games correctly, but it always is by Elite Eight time. Since Semantic Compositions is, as we have said before, a full-service blog, here is some last minute advice for those, like D.F. Moore, who may be making last-minute adjustments and need to know what won't happen in the next 2 weeks.
The Elite Eight this year will not consist of: Kentucky, Gonzaga, St. Joseph's, Oklahoma State, Duke, Mississippi State, Stanford and Connecticut. Astute observers will note that this collection represents all of the #1 and #2 seeds; SC knows this rarely ever actually happens, but his upset picks have usually been wrong, so this time around he's playing strictly the favorites.
Even if the Elite Eight turns out like this, the Final Four could not possibly contain more than one of: Kentucky, St. Joseph's, Mississippi State and Stanford. Following up on this, the national championship may be played between any two teams not including Kentucky and Stanford, and because they have SC's blessing, you can rest assured that if you picked Stanford to win it all, you're wrong. Kentucky fans, don't assume this means your team has it in the bag; with SC's luck, they'll be sitting at home after losing to Kansas, or more likely, Providence (since that outcome would do the maximum damage).
Readers who share SC's affinity for ESPN.com know that SC could have up to 5 brackets in this contest. And he does. But this is the one that represents his gut feelings, and is therefore the safest to bet against.
There is a really interesting article in slate.com about the origins of the phrase "march madness", "sweet sixteen", and "final four."
Posted by: Gopher | March 19, 2004 at 08:00 AM