NCAA March Madness (or how I'm near the top of almost every pool I'm in)

It's always around this time of year when I have at least one friend who invites me to join a March Madness pool based on the 64 (well, 65 if you want to be accurate) team NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament. Usually I join the free pool and lose horribly. So when I was invited to a facebook pool this year, I decided this year that I would try something different. Something that would hopefully bring me from a basement dweller to the top of the pools.

What has happened this year? How am I doing? Well, through the first three rounds (56 of the 64 games), I have picked the correct winner 80.4% of the time, and earned 77 of a possible 96 points (according to Facebook). This score has me #1 among my friends; #1 in one pool I am in and #3 in the other; #15 in the University of Victoria Network; and #51 in the Hamilton, ON Network (all on Facebook). Now granted I am #52,293 in all of Facebook, but within my close circle of friends and people who live near me, I'm doing quite well.

So what is this great strategy I have been using this year? How many hours did I spend going through stats and records and obsessing over each matchup?

The answer is so simple it makes me laugh. I know absolutely nothing about NCAA basketball (except I do somewhat remember when Gonzaga used to be talked about a lot for pulling off a few upsets in years past), so I just listened to what the experts said. And by experts, I mean the smart people who rank the teams. That's right, in every game, I picked the higher ranked team to win. Every time.

I sometimes wish I had put money on this, but due to my past lack of successes I didn't think that would be a wise move. And perhaps I will not pick another game right from here on in. I would still finish pretty high in the pools and my percentage can only get as low as 71% and I'd say that's not too bad considering my lack of knowledge. I will make a note here though. Today when Oregon beat UNLV, I didn't get a point because I had picked both teams to exit earlier. Using my system I would have correctly picked the winner had I known the teams in the game ahead of time.

So that's how I'm doing it. I just took the advice of the experts and left my fate in the hands of the rankings. Perhaps this year I got lucky in that there have been no major upsets (though some close calls by top ranked teams). I wonder if there are any stats about this sort of thing. I guess I could go and look back to see how many I would have had right last year with this strategy.

Well, here's hoping Ohio (that's Greg Oden in the picture) can win the big prize.... it certainly will make me look smart!