It’s Tourney Time and here at Loon State Sports we’re going to have some fun with it. The boys have made their brackets, solidified their Final Four predictions and picked their upsets. After every round, I’ll be breaking down how each Loon is doing until we crown the smartest in the pond. Stay tuned to find out who gets the perfect bracket…and whether anybody is actually smarter than the lowly intern. I’ll start by breaking down each of our picks:
LoonBeast
Champion: Arizona (1)
Final Four: Gonzaga (1), Kentucky (2), Arizona (1), Auburn (2)
LoonBeast’s bracket is chalkier than the Tums he takes after chomping down too much Pub Mix as he doesn’t have a seed higher than six in his Sweet Sixteen. It seems that every year a 12 or 13 seed makes a run into the second weekend, but those teams can be hard to predict, so LoonBeast’s strategy could still be the move. He stayed favorite-heavy with his Final Four with only 1 and 2 seeds, ultimately picking Tommy Lloyd’s squad to cut down the nets in New Orleans
LoonMagz
Champion: Arizona (1)
Final Four: Gonzaga (1), Kentucky (2), Arizona (1), Kansas (1)
LoonMagz has crafted a pretty balanced bracket, with five double-digit seeds winning first round games, but only one 2+ seed making it to New Orleans. Davidson and Virginia Tech are the only real Cinderellas making it to the Round of Sixteen in Magz’s version of the bracket, as he’s got pretty predictable picks from then on. He’s claimed to be heavily anticipating choke jobs from Gonzaga and Kentucky in the Final Four, so he’s joining LoonBeast in projecting Arizona as National Champions.
Loon Mush
Champion: Kansas (1)
Final Four: Texas Tech (3), Kentucky (2), Arizona (1), Kansas (1)
It should come as no surprise that the master of betting greasy college basketball matchups likes picking the underdogs. He’s got first round upsets all over the place and he’s got 12-seed Indiana and 14-seed Colgate making it to Sweet Sixteen. He’s also overlooking both Gonzaga and Duke to put Texas Tech in the Final Four. And the Loon love for Arizona continues, though Mush has the Wildcats losing to his eventual champion Kansas.
SlimLoon
Champion: Kentucky (2)
Final Four: Gonzaga (1), Kentucky (2), Arizona (1), Iowa (5)
So we all knew that SlimLoon was going to pick Kentucky to cut down the nets, so we’ll focus on the rest of the bracket. SlimLoon’s also got a bit of chalk going on in his picks but he’s got 5-seed Iowa making a Final Four run even though they can’t play any defense and they’re supposedly on the Loon’s Dead List. Weird. His biggest first round upset is the popular 13-seed South Dakota State beating the Friars.
LoonSchmidt
Champion: Kansas (1)
Final Four: Gonzaga (1), Kentucky (2), Tennessee (3), Kansas (1)
Noted basketball expert LoonSchmidt decided that it’s easiest the just pick the team with the better seed most of the time and go from there. He does have two notable “upsets” though with Michigan State beating Duke in the Round of 32 and Illinois beating Loon favorite Arizona in the regional semis, paving the way for the Volunteers to make a Final Four trip. And because I know I’m not picking them, this means that no Loons are picking Dook to make a Final Four trip in Coach K’s last year.
Intern Allen
Champion: Gonzaga (1)
Final Four: Gonzaga (1), Kentucky (2), Villanova (2), Kansas (1)
So I’ve picked Gonzaga to win it all like a million times over the past ten years and it’s never worked for me, but they’re the Vegas favorites again, so maybe this is the year. I’m more upset-heavy than I usually want to be with three double digit seeds in the Sweet Sixteen; I have Davidson beating a distracted Duke team, Richmond advancing thanks to losses from fraudulent Providence and Iowa teams, and Virginia Tech just being better than their seed line. We’ll see how it goes.
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