If you have been following the 2011 NCAA Tournament, you don’t need any numbers to tell you that it has been a wild ride. The lack of a powerhouse team has led to Butler returning to the Final Four, VCU’s fans going crazy in the streets, and Derrick Williams emerging as arguably the nation’s best NBA prospect two days before getting bounced by Kemba Walker and UConn.
The Final Four are set. Kentucky will play UConn and VCU will play Butler. That’s right — VCU against Butler for a shot at the National Championship. VCU probably shouldn’t have gotten into the field of 68, and all of a sudden they have won five tournament games and are two wins away from cutting down the nets. Brad Stevens has won as many tournament games in two years as Bob Knight won in his final 15 seasons as a head coach. The world seems completely out of tilt, and as a result there are millions of useless pieces of paper floating around that were once considered tournament brackets.
According to ESPN Research, only two out of 5.9 million people who filled out a bracket on ESPN picked the Final Four correctly. For those of you who like numbers, that’s .00034 percent — not even close to a full percentage point of the contestants. That is truly insane.
This is just a guess, but I bet Jay Bilas isn’t one of the two. He’s obviously a great analyst and knows his stuff when it comes to college ball, but something tells me he knocked VCU out a little sooner in his bracket. Maybe the Sweet 16? Just speculating.
