WHY I DIDN'T WIN MY NCAA TOURNAMENT POOL

First, let's concentrate on what I did correctly: I picked the national champion. I have been filling out brackets for nearly 20 years, and I've never done that before. I've had some memorable letdowns (Big Dog Robinson, Santa Clara over Arizona), but mostly I've picked Kansas and they've let me down. Last year, I thought I'd learned my lesson and picked against KU. When they won, it felt like God was telling me to give up. But this year I did it! (Full disclosure: I entered three brackets. One was my OSU bracket - OSU won the national championship. The second was my wishful thinking bracket. The third was my money bracket - the one that actually had a chance to win the pool. I picked UNC in my money bracket.)

In retrospect, it seems difficult to see how I couldn't have picked North Carolina to win. Their depth is incredible - NC's bench could have been a three-seed. But for some reason, only six people in my 45-person pool picked them to win. So that was good. But it wasn't enough, for the following reasons:

1. I overestimated Memphis. When one of your two finalists loses in the Sweet 16, it's bad news. I picked Memphis based almost entirely on last year, when they actually did reach the championship game. In my mind, I saw another edition of John Calipari's team getting no respect. I saw an opportunity to outfox my co-workers. What I didn't consider was that, between then and now, they lost the #1 overall draft pick last summer. So yeah, Memphis was a pretty good team this year, but good in the mid-major sense, in that Gonzaga and Xavier were good. I still wouldn't have picked Missouri to beat Memphis, but I probably should have taken UConn in the Elite Eight. (More on both later.)

2. I tried to ride West Virginia and failed miserably. WVU was my secret weapon; I had them in the Elite Eight and I didn't feel like that was a stretch. They had to beat Dayton in the first round, which didn't seem hard; Kansas in the second (see below); and then Michigan State in the third. MSU, keep in mind, was coming off a loss to Ohio State in the Big Ten Tournament, which lowered their stock in my eyes. And of course, Dayton won in the first round game. That's seven points down the drain. I actually had UD winning in my wishful thinking bracket.

3. I underestimated UConn. I watched the Huskies play Pitt at the end of the regular season with my sister, and I wasn't exactly thrilled. They looked undisciplined, and Hasheem Thabeet looked too raw. I let that one game mix with my general distaste for the Big East and picked them to lose in the Elite Eight. That's eight wasted points. UConn's depth is second only to UNC's. Thabeet is raw, but he's also 7'4". And I broke my own rule and ignored Jeff Adrien. If I could do it over, I would pick UConn in the championship game.

4. I underestimated the Big XII. I only really respected Oklahoma. I thought Kansas lost too much from last year to make a run, and Missouri was too obscure. Texas was the only other team I had winning in the first round. As it turns out, the Big XII went undefeated in the first round and only lost two games (to a one-seed and a two-seed) in the second. Missouri turned out to be better (and Memphis worse) than I thought, and Kansas still has several solid players.

5. I overestimated Duke. I have a soft spot for the style of ball Duke plays, and I let emotions win over reason. I picked Duke to beat Pitt in the Elite Eight and set up an epic matchup with UNC in the Final Four. Of course, Duke never got that far, losing to Villanova in the Sweet Sixteen. That game sealed my fate, since there was another guy in the pool with exactly the same Elite Eight as me except for Nova instead of Duke. Since he was a couple of points ahead of me going into the game, with Duke's loss the best I could finish was second. I had Villanova in the Final Four in one of my other brackets, though, so it wasn't a complete shock.

6. I probably should have ridden Arizona a little further than I did. I correctly picked them to beat Utah (ignoring the Utes' great-looking uniforms), but I let the low seed and last-team-in stigma scare me off of a second round upset. This is a team with two lottery picks. They're better than their record. Of course, there's no way I could have predicted that they would play Cleveland State in the second round, but even against Wake Forest I think the Wildcats matched up well. Unlike my friend Jed, who had the Deacs in the Final Four, I thought Wake was overrated and ripe for an upset. I just didn't expect it to happen so soon.

I didn't pick terribly. I can't criticize myself for getting 8-vs.-9 games wrong (I picked each of them incorrectly) because statistically, that's 50-50. Other than that, I only missed a couple of other games. If I'd picked just a couple games differently (Kansas over West Virginia in the second round, UConn over Memphis in the Elite Eight, Villanova over Duke in the Sweet Sixteen), I would have had 14 more points, enough to put me in third place in my pool. Picking one more (MSU into the Elite Eight) would have tied me for second place. I guess none of it really matters, because the winner of the pool was so far ahead of everyone else. But I would have been happier in second place.