Cotter, Gibbons Vie For 2013 Title

Tournament Scenarios Posted

For the first time since 2006, the Challenge Championship will not be decided by the final game in the tournament. Instead, the key matchup is Saturday’s Michigan – Syracuse tilt. If the Wolverines win, then famed albino gopher Cotter will claim the title. If Syracuse wins, then GG20 (Garrett Gibbons) will take the crown. Either way, this will mark the 11th time in 13 years that a Cadillac High School grad has won the title.

Both players have Louisville as their eventual champion, and Cotter could become the first player to win the title when another player has correctly picked the champion. Even if Michigan wins the national title, the two players who picked Michigan to win, Blizzard T. Husky and Jeffrey T, will not earn enough points to overtake Cotter, who built a big lead in the earlier rounds.

Cotter is in his 7th year of competition since 2005, and during that time he’s amassed three top-10 finishes. He currently ranks 4th on the All-Time Average Place list and 10th on the Average Points list, but the one thing that has eluded him is the Championship.

Before the tournament started, Cotter told Bucephalus that he was extremely motivated and confident in his chances this year because, after all, he was “just a few games here or there the last couple years from winning it all.” The Chippens Archive Team won’t conduct an exhaustive review to confirm or deny that claim, but we will say that this year it’s certainly true.

The only man who stands between Cotter and a new date night t-shirt is Gibbons, who has been at or near the top of the standings all tournament. Gibbons is a former teammate of Cotter’s on the Cadillac High School basketball team, and he’s now a sales associate for Palomar Technologies in Detroit.

I know from watching movies that the ABCs of sales are Always Be Closing, but the Chippens Tournament Challenge Championship is the hardest whale of all to land. Gibbons got our attention early by nailing some big upsets, like Harvard over New Mexico, and he sustained our interest through the middle rounds, first relying on Buzz Williams and Marquette and then switching to Syracuse.

Now he just needs one more victory out of Syracuse to close the deal. One thing is for sure: The Orange aren’t going to Atlanta just to get out of the upstate New York weather; they want desperately to give Gibbons this title. He just has to be man enough to take it.

Even though the championship game won’t decide first place, it will decide who takes home the other prizes. You can see exactly where you’ll finish in each of the remaining eight scenarios by going to Tournament Scenarios. You can click through the potential outcomes at the bottom of the page.