March Madness

We love basketball in this house! Okay, I love basketball and Shantel loves me. But she also does enjoy watching games with me and especially picking her brackets each March. We really love march madness  Watching the NCAA tournament is the sports highlight of the year for me. Each year we have faced off in our own little Peaden Bracket challenge. In 2009, 2010 and 2011 I dominated the bracket challenge. However, in 2012, Shantel came out of nowhere to beat me and claim the title of bracket champion. 

As you can see, it was a big party when Shantel won last year, 1,350 points to my 1,200.

Once again we were really excited for the tournament and after Selection Sunday, Shantel made a giant bracket it and hung it on the wall so we could keep track of the results.

We both picked our brackets without the other one seeing so no one had an advantage. 

Shantel picked Indiana to win it all....

...and so did I! Great minds think alike. 

We even got Lydia to make her own bracket picks. I sat at the computer and told Shantel the school's colors, and then Shantel had Lydia pick between two colored blocks to make her choices. 

Here she is showing how good she feels about picking Michigan (blue) to make it to the final four. So while she picked Wisconsin to win it all (who lost on the 1st day of the tournament) she was right on with her upset pick of 4th seeded Michigan making it to the final four. 

With all the upsets this year- neither Shantel or I did awesome, in fact neither of our teams we picked to play for the championship are alive, so the results are in, Shantel 550, David 520. Shantel is your back to back champion! It looks like I will need to step up my game for next year. I'll just have to watch more college basketball next year. Which, as a side note- my bracket methodology is to watch a lot of basketball and then go off my gut. Shantel does not watch any basketball, but then she closely examines the information that pops up about each team and makes her pick. Last year I had special insider access that would tell her the percent chance of each team winning- but didn't renew this year. Shantel was so distraught when she saw she did not have access to her stats this year. I guess she did not need them, now I'll have to wait 12 more months to get back to being, bracket champion.