- - Intro - - News - - Pool - - Home

2011 NCAA BASKETBALL FINAL NEWS:

And so ends yet another College Basketball Season!
The C O N N E C T I C U T H U S K I E S are the 2010-11 NCAA BASKETBALL CHAMPIONS! Just as amazing, a true sports feat, the fact that the BUTLER BULLDOGS played in 2 consecutive championship games! In fact, they are the 1st program to be in consecutive Final Fours and NOT be a 1 or 2 seed. UCONN was unranked in the Preseason Poll. Butler had the lowest FG% in a Championship game. Butler was 2-31 on 2PT-FGS for the game.

An amazing tournament that had NO #1 or #2 Seeds in the Final Four. Of our record 355 entries, Ohio State was picked most to win at 31% - Kansas was next at 27% - Duke was 3rd most at 16% and Pittsburgh had 9%. So the 4 #1 Seeds accounted for 83% of our pool selections. A total of 16 different teams were picked to win, including 9 on UCONN and 2 on KENTUCKY. Those 11 entries, not surprisingly, ALL finished in the $$. In the end, there were not a lot of point to pick up >> No one had VCU in the Elite 8 or Final 4. 3 entries had Butler in the Elite 8: FADING GLORY, JACK ROSE & BOBBY BLAND – none in the Final 4. 2 of these 3 finished in the $$. In comparison, last year, 111 entries 37% had Butler in the Elite 8.

Only 2 entries had 2 of the Final 4 teams, they both had Kansas winning and both finished in the $$. 2 other entries had UCONN winning, by getting 20 points in the Final 4, they jumped from 264th (of 355) to T-32nd to finish in the $$. It never hurts to pick the NCAA Champion!

As for the rest of our winners – there were a total of 38 (10.7% of our pool entries), In this unusual year, 29 entries finished in the $$ that did NOT pick the winner. But of the 38 winners, 14 finished in the $$ and did not have one Final 4 team >> that’s even MORE unusual.

Early Rounds don’t seem to matter much – After the Round of 64 (the first 2 days), the 4 leading entries had 27 points: COACH5176 – GIDAN – THE NATURALS – BURNINTORS, only GIDAN finished in the $$. Before the Sweet 16, the leaders had 60 & 59 points had PINBONUS3 – J.FRABIN – BERLO in the lead. Only BERLO failed to make the prize board. By the time we got to the standings for the Elite 8, not much was gonna change because only 11 entries had teams that were left to get points, UCONN & KENTUCKY.

Butler is now 11-1 Against the Spread in their last 2 NCAA Tournaments. VCU was another gem going 5-1 ATS this year as a ‘play-in’ team >>> These were truly were the best bets!

The Pool ended up with a RECORD 355 entries (53 more than last year). THANKS!!
The Playoff Pool came to $11,340.
Like in the past years, rather than give a huge payday to the winner, we opt to reward as many people as possible – just over 10% of the pool - resulting in 38 Prize Winners in 2011. This year’s winner is DDREW360 - his name is Drew Davies. He was 1 of 9 that did have UCONN winning (I can’t swear if he is an alumni). Drew did have a lot on the on the line in the final game - had Butler won, Drew would NOT have gotten 11 points in the game and would have finished Tied for 5th Place – a difference of $1,100. On the other side of the coin, had Butler won – ‘BURL643’ (Brian Ives) would have been our overall winner with 95 points. Instead, Brian ends up in a 2-way for 2nd Place. Once again – DREW DAVIES is our 2011 KING OF THE HILL this season and is awarded a $1,600 First Place prize. The TOP-38 Finishers will be receiving prize money – see below:

Only 1 multiple winner this year: JACK ROSE (2 for $600.) There is also a BROTHER-SISTER separate winners combo: Sue Berger in 7th & Mark Berger in T-32nd.

There were only 3 ‘Repeat Winners’ from last year: Michael Tidwell, Jack Rose & David Ellman.

WHAT IFs…. In a ‘normal’ year, there are 8 possible scenarios heading into the Final 4… With VCU & Butler making an appearance there AND ZER0 entries have these teams there, there were only 4 possible scenarios: 9 had UCONN winning & 2 had KENTUCKY winning:

I need ALL Prize Winners to email me a mailing address to send you your Prize Money.

I will check the addresses you provided and mail out checks shortly.
HAVE A GREAT “OFF-SEASON”. TILL NEXT MARCH . . . .
Billy (bcmrd@aol.com)