My bracket is trashed. So is yours. So is your wife’s. And your buddy’s. And your dog’s.
But there is 17-year-old kid named Alex Hermann from the Chicago area who has a perfect bracket going into Thursday’s Sweet 16.
Alex, who is autistic, correctly predicted Northern Iowa to bump off top-ranked Kansas. Something also told him to pick Ohio over Georgetown, and Cornell to beat Wisconsin.
As far as anyone can tell, he is the only person on the planet with a perfect bracket in what’s been the wildest NCAA Tournament in memory.
“I’m good at math,” Alex told . “I’m kind of good at math and at stats I see on TV during the game.”
And to think that I was I was bragging about my 12-4 record after the first round, which, by the way, annoyed my Denver Post colleagues to no end. Now, of course, my bracket is toast. My Final Four features Kansas, Pittsburgh, Villanova and Kentucky. Only Kentucky is still alive. Ouch!
Just how amazing is Alex’s feat? According to , the chances of a perfect bracket at this stage of the tournament are one in 13,460,000.
Alex entered his bracket on one of three NCAA games offered by CBSsports.com. Unfortunately, it’s the only one without a cash prize awarded to the winner.
The particular pool Alex entered allows changes after player starts, but his family swears he has not changed his bracket since the family filled out their brackets before the tournament began.
Alex’s Final Four has Kansas State beating Tennessee and Purdue beating Kentucky. His champion? Purdue, which just happens to be his older brother Andrew’s school.
So it seems that sentiment might derail Alex in the end. But who am I to say? I had Kansas beating Villanova for the title.
Trivia time
Today’s question comes from Denver Post college sports writer Tom Kensler. What was the first college team to have all its starters play in the NBA? (Answer below)
Add tourney
If you’re spending a lot of time crunching numbers and thinking deep thoughts about your NCAA bracket, just stop it.
The Associated Press reports the psychologists Sean McCrea at the University of Wyoming and Edward Hirt at Indiana University-Bloomington have concluded that deep analysis often does more harm than good.
In fact, big-time college basketball fans tend to go overboard with their upset predictions. And some casual basketball fans seem to do very well indeed.
“There always seemed to be someone who didn’t watch a single game all season that would do really well,” McCrea told The Associated Press. “It kind of got us scratching our heads.”
So the psychologists analyzed more than 3 million entries in ESPN’s Tournament Challenge competition. The average success rate for each team picked was 75.2 percent in 2004 and 72.9 percent in 2005. Had everyone simply picked winners based on how teams are seeded, their success rate would have been higher: 87.5 percent in 2004 and 75 percent in 2005.
Go figure.
Polling
Tuesday’s “Lunch Special” poll asked readers if they believe coach Josh McDaniels when he repeatedly says that Kyle Orton will be the Broncos’ starting quarterback. With 860 votes cast, nearly 43 percent picked the “yes-and-no response” that said Orton is the starter for now, but that’s likely to change.
A little more than 40 percent said they believe McDaniels when he says Orton is his guy. About 17 percent said the Broncos acquired Brady Quinn to make him the starting QB.
Quotable
“The way that we play, we’re not going to beat many teams when we have 13, 14, 15 assists. It’s just not going to happen. It’s not going to cut it.” – Nuggets point guard Chauncey Billups after the Nuggets’ 109-104 loss to the Knicks Tuesday night.
Blog spot
Find out why Troy Tulowitzki had words with Padres shortstop Everth Cabrera in in All Things Rockies.
In case you missed it
Arnold Palmer has some advice for Tiger Woods. Palmer told the AP that Woods should let the media fire away with questions when Woods makes his comeback next month at the Masters.
Palmer says the best thing Woods can do is open up and “let you guys shoot at him,” Palmer told the AP. Palmer also said that he was disappointed Woods is not playing the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, where Woods is the defending champion. He says Woods called him last week to say he did not feel his game was sharp enough.
Trivia answer
1960 Ohio State, which won the NCAA Championship. The team was headed by two Hall of Famers, Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek, and another very good NBA player, Larry Siegfried. The other two were Mel Nowell and Joe Roberts. Roberts later became GM of the Golden State Warriors. Incidentally, Bob Knight, was a reserve on that team.
Patrick Saunders: 303-954-1720 or psaunders@denverpost.com Hungry for more? .
