Final One

Well, the unscientific verdict ("unscientific" because saying anything based on one tournament or especially one game is foolishness) is in: if you're looking to win some money or whatever, you can do a lot worse than to start from the pure LRMC rankings and go from there to make your bracket picks, at least given this year's result.

Unfortunately, by the end of the tourney I was rooting against my brackets, partly because I have a friend from Memphis, and partly because I thought maybe we'd stumbled across a Moneyball-style inefficiency (full disclosure: I also have to admit that watching a fast, "exciting" team that you actually kinda like is pretty sweet, my love for Bo Ryan's teams notwithstanding). Just like speed is overpriced in baseball, at least some of this year's tourney suggests that maybe free throw shooting is "overpriced"--great if you can get it, but you can win without it if you're good enough in other areas. That's a rhetorically unsatisfying conclusion to reach, though, given tonight's result.

By the way, despite the great race in the West and all the Celtics intrigue, I'd like to put in a request to just cut the NBA season off right here so we can put basketball behind us and get on with the real business of watching baseball. Who's with me?