Playing For
Keepsakes! Scrapbook Girl Back On Top
Will Tigger Trounce?
One In A Quintillion Revisited
The fearsome hockey mom Scrapbook Girl reasserted
her lipstick-on-a-pit-bull dominance on Friday, correctly picking Michigan,
Duke, and Florida to reach the Elite 8. She was also the only player in the
field to pick Wichita State. Those wins gave her six teams in the Elite 8; no
one else had more than five.
Scrapbook Girl also
knocked out Sneaky
Peat, ThursdayÕs leader, who can now finish no better than second. Both
players have Ohio State going all the way. In fact, if Ohio State wins it all,
only NerdJordan (Sara
Jordan) can stop Scrapbook Girl from taking first. Jordan has an Ohio
State/Michigan final.
Jordan has quietly been having
a very good tournament. The newly-minted lawyer from Madison had a bit of a
setback today when Duke beat Michigan State, but she was one of 14 who picked
Syracuse to upset Indiana. GG20, Henry, Diet Ginger, and Wastinky also had
Syracuse, and all four are still in the running for the championship. GG20 and
Henry, along with IÕm Taller Than Val (Christina Koster),
have Syracuse in the Final Four.
A Marquette win would
provide a big bounce to tigger32382 (Jennifer Darrell),
currently in 68th place. The Yale graduate student is in her 6th year of
competition, with her best finish being a 48th place effort in 2009. But as
long as Marquette and Louisville keep winning, Tigger will keep bouncing,
flouncing, trouncing, and pouncing up the standings—perhaps all the way
to the top. Tigger is one of just two players with Marquette in the final game.
The other player is definitely
not quintillion.
You may remember quintillion from the Day One Recap, where
I explained that ÒquintillionÓ is a reference to the chances of someone picking
a perfect bracket. Now I am wondering what the chances are of picking a bracket
like quintillionÕs.
Quintillion actually had a
chance to really climb the standings this weekend. But when Indiana, Miami,
Kansas, and Michigan State all lost—well, those were all the teams
quintillion had left.
But still, we congratulate
quintillion because sometimes when something is so bad, itÕs actually really
impressive. Think of that movie Battlefield Earth.
In fact, QuintillionÕs bracket is such a marvel that it set a Chippens
Tournament Challenge record for the lowest-scoring bracket ever. (There have
actually been two lower-scoring brackets [2005 and 2008], but
those two players combined to pick 63 of 64 upsets in the first round, so I
donÕt really count those.)
Quintillion had two #1
seeds, two #2 seeds, two #3 seeds, Wisconsin, and Missouri in her Elite 8. The
chances of putting that many good teams in your Elite 8 and only scoring 28
points has to be close to one in a quintillion.