The Picks Are In
We had 144 brackets entered (thanks everyone!) and this is the distribution of picks. Interestingly, the most popular first round upset pick (excluding 9-8 games) was #10 Maryland over #7 California, with 61% calling the upset. And the majority were right, as Maryland won today over Cal. Overall the picks show an incredible lack of respect for the Pac-10 and the Big-12, with teams like Cal, Washington, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Kansas getting a lot of votes to fall in early to mid round upsets. North Carolina garnered the most picks to win it all, followed by Louisville and Pitt.
Maryland has the prototypical squad that generally does well as a lower ranked seed. One streaky star player that can go off for 30+ points on any given night. And an excellent (and sometimes underrated but not in this case) coach.
Nice. After winning this contest last year, my entries are 141st and 142nd out of 144 after 1 day this year, lol.
According to Yahoo Sports, 65% of all their brackets had Maryland picked, the highest for any team seeded lower than 7. It's like the whole world knew!