Virginia is the 2019 NCAA Men’s Basketball Champion!
Virginia won their first national title by outlasting the Texas Tech defense to the tune of a 85-77 final score. It took an 11-0 scoring run in overtime to break the game open after 40 minutes of lead changes culminating in a 68-68 tie at the end of regulation. The sportsbooks’ over/under of about 118 proved far too pessimistic as the game outscored even our combined score average estimate from the pool!
As for our pool, congratulations to those who picked Virginia as champion and a special congratulations to our winners:
1st Place: Paul Schlenger – ESA, 174 points
2nd Place: Jerry Morrissette, 170 points
3rd Place: Bug Deagle, 138 points
In the Robinson Noble employees and family division, our winners are:
1st Place: *The King has been Overthrown, 148 points
2nd Place: *Emily Wills, 131 points
3rd Place: *Andrew, 128 points
You can review the final standings by clicking here.
We would like to once again thank this year’s sponsors whose support helps make this tournament possible: ACF West, Holt Services Inc., and The Watershed Company.
I would also like to thank everyone who participated who did not win. It’s okay. With 63 games to pick in a bracket, there are 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 different possible brackets each year. That’s over nine billion billion ways to fill out a bracket. That’s over 60 times MORE options than there has been seconds since the formation of the Earth approximately 4.5 billion years ago! (Since we are geoscientists and engineers, we think in geologic terms!) While seeding (usually) helps with the early rounds and your level of fandom can lend some other hunches as you sift through the options, nobody has ever picked a perfect bracket, and it’s unlikely anyone ever will. So regardless of how well your bracket performed, thanks for playing and following along. We look forward to our opportunities to work with you this year until next March comes along!