Another March Madness is in the books.  NC takes home its fifth championship.  And here at BCB we have the final results and winners of the amazing prizes that await them.

In first place is Elias' Tirade entered by D. Battles who finished with 1620 points, good for the 99.8 percentile across ESPN.

In second place is burncruisin 2 entered by T. O'Neill who finished with 1510 points, good for the 99.0 percentile across ESPN.

In third place is tony412 entered by T. Uribe who finished with 1490 points, good for the 98.8 percentile across ESPN.

Obama's pool selections found him finish 24th in our pool with 1230 points and a very respectable 80.5 percentile across ESPN.

Picking strictly based on seeding finished 47th in our pool with 900 points and a middle-of-the-road 57.9 percentile across ESPN.

And the Pickle Cup for the pool goes to pumpkinsfan460 entered by C. Pausch who finished in 112th (and last) place with 490 points and the 2.5 percentile across ESPN.

Congrats to our winners and thanks to everyone who played this year and shared the community event that is March Madness.

Al and Ballhawk - please let our winners know how they may collect their spoils.

 

We're down to the Final Four of March Madness.  Once again, not all of the #1 seeds survived into the last weekend.

If you had picked a bracket based on the tournament seeding, you'd be in 12th place right now, but you'd also be out of possible additional points.  And if you're Barack Obama, you'd be in 56th place and sitting in the 46th percentile across all of ESPN.

Based on my analysis - and I didn't look thru every single entry - I find that five entries still have a chance to take home the BCB trinket.

Our current leader, burncruisin 2, needs NC to defeat UConn on Monday night.  Anything else, and someone else will win.

Elia'sTirade, currently tied for second, has three ways to win: NC over MSU, Villanova over MSU, or MSU over NC.

Cublee can claim the prize with UConn over NC.

If it's a UConn-Nova final, Heine411 wins no matter who cuts down the nets.

And for the longshot this weekend, if MSU beats Villanova, noakley wins it all.

Good luck to our five remaining contestants, and if someone sees a combination I missed, please post it.

No community is complete without a March Madness pool, and as I have done in previous years, I have created a pool on espn.com for all BCBers.

The group name is "BleedCubbieBlue" and the password is "BCB2009".

Click here to jump to the group.

I believe you can submit up to three entries in the group.

I'll post updates after each round of the tournament to this thread - Al bumps it back up so it's easy to find - and let everyone know whose crystal ball seems to be working.

Good luck, and have fun!

And maybe Al can find some trinket with which to recognize the winner.

 

Florida repeats as NCAA Champions.  OSU drops another national championship to Florida within the span of three months.  And we have our winners in this year's BCB March Madness Pool.

1. Goat Grazing in Quantico - R. Rutter - 1300 points
   
2. Goat Whisperer - KatieMo - R. Rutter - 1290 points
   
3. Molechaser 3 - C. Kaiser - 1230 points

The National Bracket, which would have won the pool had OSU hit a few of those three-pointer bricks they threw up, finished fifth with 1130 points.

Congrats to our winners and thanks to all who participated.  Now it's on to baseball at Wrigley in October.

The Final Four has been decided, with two #1 seeds and two #2s.  UCLA will gets its rematch against Florida of last year's championship game while OSU and Georgetown will slug it out in the other semi-final.  And if things break the right way, we could see another OSU-Florida game for the national title.

Here are our leaders going into the last weekend.

1. Goat Whisperer - KatieMo - R. Rutter (Florida)
   
2. Al - A. Yellon (Ohio State)
   
3. Big 10 zambranofan - D. Miller (Ohio State)
   
3. Molechaser 3 - C. Kaiser (Florida)

And the National Bracket has fallen to 10th place.

The first weekend of the NCAA tournament is over, leaving 16 teams to move on.  What happened to Cinderella on the way to this year's ball?

There are 29 entries in the pool and one National Bracket entry created from the aggregate picks on ESPN.com.

Leading the field, we have a 3-way tie for first place.

Jesse Guam - B. Zarit (Texas A&M)
Goat Covered In Chalk - R. Rutter (Florida)
Molechaser 2 - C. Kaiser (Kansas)

And, FWIW, the National Bracket is also in first.

On to the regional finals!

Every community needs an NCAA March Madness bracket pool.  Accordingly, I've taken the liberty to create one for us over at espn.com.  Everyone is welcome, and in fact, encouraged to play.  Maddog can run the stats for his and Sparkles can choose the cute teams for hers.  It's that easy.

Head over to the Tournament Challenge game on espn.com.  Create your entry.  Then tell it you want to join a group.

The group name is Bleed Cubbie Blue.  It is a private group.
The password is SweetLou - and it may be case sensitive, so heads-up.

We can also use this diary to talk about the tournament and I'll post results after each weekend.  If you want to see a detailed look at my bracket, visit my blog in my link.

Have fun, everyone!

I'll be joining Dusty Baker and his amazing Cubs on the road in Denver this weekend.  If there are any BCBers out there who are also going to at least one of the games and would like to connect, send me an email.

I also have an extra ticket to each of the three games in case there's any Rocky Mountain Cubs fan interested in going.

Technology and sobriety permitting, I'll file a report and pictures for each of the games.

Is Bud Selig the greatest commissioner of baseball ever?  George Will apparently thinks so.  Here is his quote from a Jerry Crasnick ESPN article asking if MLB is held to a higher standard than its professional brethern.

"One of the most remarkable aspects of sports journalism in the past 20 years is the bad press Bud Selig gets," Will said. "I've written this before and I'll say it again: He is immeasurably the greatest commissioner in baseball's history. He's the ninth, and the other eight don't come close."

The man who is nothing but a tool of ownership?  The man who presided over the cancellation of the World Series?  The man who declared the All-Star Game a tie?  The man who both ran MLB and essentially owned one of its teams at the same time?  The man who has given baseball both the Wild Card playoff berth and interleague play?  This is the greatest commissioner in baseball's history?

In a story posted on ChicagoSports.com (http://chicagosports.chicagotribune.com/sports/baseball/cubs/cs-060619cubsbaker,1,4078401.story?coll =cs-cubs-headlines), Paul Sullivan writes

Baker isn't gone yet. But with the Cubs floundering at 15 games under .500 in the final year of his four-year deal, it will be difficult for general manager Jim Hendry to justify giving Baker a contract extension-even though most assumed it was a fait accompli at the outset of the season.

So, does this mean the Trib is starting to let the word out that Baker won't be renewed?  Or is Sully in for another ass-chewing for being so direct in saying that Hendry can't justify an extension?

Sullivan also writes

Baker has a 283-272 record as Cubs manager after Monday night's win, and his .510 winning percentage makes him only the fourth Cubs manager during the last 40 years to have a winning record, joining Leo Durocher (.504), Jim Frey (.519) and Don Zimmer (.507).

But over the last two seasons, the Cubs are 106-125, and they're a combined 35½ games behind St. Louis since the start of 2005.

Baker said his players have not underachieved this year, but he also said he doesn't believe there's an overall shortage of talent in the clubhouse.

So while Baker's still 11 games over .500 as a Cubs manager, he's 19 under since 2005.  And by the time this season plays out, it will be much worse.  So much for Dusty Baker being a winner.

As for the talent on his team?  Well, I guess the few remaining Baker Backers will be miffed to learn that their fearless leader doesn't seem to share the opinion that Jim Hendry has left Baker with a steaming pile of garbage.  Still, one has to wonder just how capable an evaluator of talent Baker is when he says his players haven't underachieved.  But that's what you get when your pet is Neifi Perez.

A few more columns like this, and Baker just might not make it past the AS break.  It's only just a glimmer, but there's hope in Wrigleyville yet.

The morning after the offday that followed getting swept by the lowly Fish, dropping the Cubs to 10 games under .500, and finishing yet another gruesome roadtrip finds this big announcement on the Cubs website.

Wood to host bowling tourney

So much for shaking things up.  No coaching changes.  No managerial change.  No front office moves.  Why, not even Tony Womack called up to save the day.

This is simply pathetic.

A Muskrat story from the Cubs website offers some interesting Baker observations.  Maybe he's been reading the Cubs blogosphere.

Baker talks about the Cubs struggles, what's been causing them, and what the team can do to end them in this article.  For instance,

"You get certain situations that if the pitcher doesn't want to pitch to you, take your walk instead of wanting to do it all yourself," Baker said. "Everybody wants to do it. At the same time, you remain aggressive but you have to be patient, which is probably one of the harder things for a lot of young hitters to have is patience without losing their aggressivness."

It's a start.  There's still that predominance of aggressiveness, an attitude that has encouraged the if-you-can-see-the-pitch-hack-at-it approach to batting.  But when was the last time Baker recognized that opposing pitchers just might not be throwing strikes?  Why should they, when Cubs batters don't make them?

And then he goes on to say,

"The main thing we have to do is pitch better, take our walks when they give them to us and stay out of double plays," he said. "We've got to cut these walks down. Look at the stats here and we've got a ton of walks. That equals a lot of runs."

Who is this guy, and what have they done with Dusty Baker?

Yes, we have a winner!

Continue reading this post »

Join fellow BCBers in an NCAA March Madness pool.

Continue reading this post »