Well, this is an unusual situation. After all the 1 seeds went down by the Sweet 16, Connecticut and Florida Atlantic knocked off the final 3 seeds, and the Hurricanes stormed back to take out the last 2 seed, there are not a lot of points left to be found. I might not figure it out tonight – we have a whole week to go through and determine what survived the rubble from the destruction of this year’s madness, but if you are on this list, you are probably in really good shape to win one of the final prizes!!!

Lets start with the main pool – our leader is Bill Craft with 720 points. His excellent early round picks combined with picking Connecticut to win the entire tournament has put him 10 points ahead of Brent Hassell, who correctly picked both Connecticut and Miami FL to the Final 4, and himself (since his second set of picks were also impressive). Cooper Ams and Noah Bradley are tied for 4th at 680 points, Cooper’s 2nd picks are alone in 6th at 670 points, Patti Carini is in 7th at 640 points, Rich Napolitano and Ethan Busby are tied for 8th at 620 points, and Rose Brunner rounds out the top 10 at 610 points.

Bill is also leading the Upset pool at 258 points. Brent and Cooper are tied for 2nd at 249 points, and Cooper’s second picks are tied for 4th with Noah at 242 points.

In the Second Chance Pool, Kathleen Godwin is winning with 440 points. She has a 40 point lead over Troy Cole and Patrick Perkins, who are tied for 2nd. Since it is funny, I have to mention that the Lunatic has learned his lesson not to give up and get silly. As he was so depressed by Purdue losing, he decided to pick his second chance picks based on closest team to the regional final site – and went 1 for 12 for 40 points and a tie for last place. Message received – don’t pick on geography.

We also had a fascinating battle for the last place prize. There is an upset pool rule that in order to be eligible for the prize for last in the standard pool, you have to have picked a top 4 seed and an additional top 6 seed, something that has happened every year since 1979 (including this year barely). It obviously also excludes the entries for fun like Hailey Peterson’s Virginia / VCU picks and Matt Agin’s coin flips. Jeff Carpenter, Kristian Schmidt and Michelle Ams also are low on the standings, but if I have looked correctly, they do not have two of their picks in the top 6 seeds. So, we head to those tied at 250 points – Sonny and Laura Hummel are not only on the wrong side of the standings, but they clearly have picks that qualify under the rules.

So, while unofficial, congratulations Sonny and Laura – this is the point in the blog where I state that you should not have challenged the Lunatic. But honestly, we know that isn’t true – everyone should challenge the Lunatic. But you shouldn’t have challenged Bill Craft – who knows how to pick the teams in the tournament.

Good luck to the few of you who can still get points from Connecticut, Miami, (and in case I did my research poorly) San Diego State or Florida Atlantic. And congratulations to those of you who have already wrapped up your places at the top of the standings!