Let me start this off by acknowledging that I am posting this recap more than a month after the conclusion of the 2023 NCAA basketball tournament.  I intended to post this soon after the NCAA championship game, which was played on April 3.  Obviously, this did not happen.  But as the saying goes, better late than never.

In my previous post, I previewed this year’s NCAA basketball tournament and outlined how the games might be different if the Elam Ending were used instead of the traditional method of playing games (usually with lots of fouls at the end) until the clock hits zero.  This post here will serve as a brief analysis of what would have happened if the Elam Ending had been used in the tournament, as well as a recap of how my NCAA brackets turned out this year.

San Diego State vs. Florida Atlantic

As a quick review from my previous post, the Elam Ending, already used in some lower-level professional leagues, works like this:

1. At the first stoppage of play with under 4 minutes remaining in the 2^nd half, take note of what the score is.  For example, suppose Team A is beating Team B by a score of 64-58 at the first whistle with under 4 minutes left in the game.
2. Turn the game clock off.  That’s right – the rest of the game will be played without the game clock.
3. Add 7 points to the current score of the team that is ahead.  In the example above, if Team A is ahead 64-58, add 7 points to their score, which is 71.
4. That is now the target score for both teams.  So, in this example, the game resumes with the score 64-58, but the first team to get to 71 points (or more) wins the game.

My own personal thought is that, while it is an interesting idea, the format completely removes the possibility of a game-winning buzzer-beater.  If we had played this year’s tournament under those rules, we would not have experienced San Diego State’s buzzer-beater over Florida Atlantic in the national semifinal game, as shown here:

Buzzer-beating shots such as the one shown above are exciting plays that make the NCAA tournament so memorable.  If the game had been played under the Elam Ending, however, this would have been just a regular shot, and the game would have kept going.  Why?  Because the first stoppage of play with under 4 minutes remaining came with Florida Atlantic leading 67-65, so the target score under an Elam Ending would have been 74.  San Diego State’s game-winner here made the final score 72-71, but without a game clock, they would have had to keep playing until someone reached 74.  The main goal of the Elam Ending as I understand it is to shorten the end of the game.  Ironically, however, such a format here would have not only deprived us of this moment, but also made the ending longer.  Granted, someone would have made a game-winning shot eventually, but it would not have had the added drama of beating the game clock.  Games such as this are why I would not be in favor of using an Elam Ending.

Unfortunately, this specific game was the only one in the entire tournament which featured a true buzzer-beating game-winning shot.  In addition, there were no such games in the entire 2022 tournament.  I would like to see more of these types of endings, but only one buzzer-beating game-winner in two tournaments is not a great result.  Let’s hope for more of these types of endings in future years.

Bracket Results

And now to reveal the results of my brackets.  I entered two bracket contests at work.  Our department had one contest with 17 people, and our entire company had a separate contest with almost 250 people.  According to my Sheet of Integrity, I picked Gonzaga to win the championship.  As a #3 seed, they were among the teams with a legitimate chance to win, and they also wear blue.  (Coming into this tournament, 16 of the 17 NCAA men’s basketball champions from 2004-2022* wore blue as one of their school colors, so obviously wearing blue must automatically give a team some sort of advantage.)  Many people picked #1 seeds like Alabama, Houston, or Purdue, but none of those teams wear blue, so I knew they wouldn’t win.

*This statistic does not include 2013, in which Louisville’s championship was later vacated, or 2020, in which the tournament was cancelled.

Sadly for me, Gonzaga lost in the Elite Eight to eventual champion Connecticut, a #4 seed that only a few people picked to win.  Of course, Connecticut also wears blue, so we really shouldn’t have been surprised to see them win it all.  The Huskies finished off their tournament run with a 76-59 win over San Diego State in the championship game (which, in case you’re curious, would have ended with two minutes left under Elam Ending rules with a target score of 70).

In our departmental bracket contest with 17 people, our winner was the one person who picked the UConn Huskies to win it all – my co-worker who never watches sports and filled out her entire bracket randomly.  When I congratulated her on the win, she had absolutely no idea that she had won, that the championship game had already been played, or even who she had picked to win.  Because sometimes, things like that just happen.

As for me, I finished 3^rd in my departmental contest of 17, and 44^th in the company contest of 250.  My Sheet of Integrity finished with a total score of 520.  (Scoring values are where a 1^st round game = 10 points, a 2^nd round game = 20 points, with each subsequent round doubling in point value, with a total perfect score of 1,920.)  This was despite the fact that I did not pick any of the Final Four teams correctly. While I didn’t win, or even have that high of a score for that matter, I did finish in the 81^st percentile out of everyone who entered an ESPN bracket.  It’s least at nice to know that most people’s brackets were even worse than mine.

Oh, and as for the annual Mascot Bracket?  It didn’t do great either, but it did do better than some people’s actual brackets.  This is thanks entirely to the Miami Hurricanes, who were the championship pick in a bracket based entirely on which team’s nickname would beat the other team’s nickname in real life.  While the Hurricanes didn’t win it all, they did go to the Final Four to give the Mascot Bracket at least some level of respectability this year with a grand total of 340 points.  Again, that’s not great, but it would have finished better than 12% of brackets on ESPN if I had entered that one.  I would say that’s pretty good result for picking games based entirely on the school’s nickname.

I hope you enjoyed my extremely late recap of this year’s basketball tournament – now that we’re into baseball season and after everyone has since forgotten about basketball until next year.  Just remember, when it comes time to fill out your brackets next year, pick a team that wears blue.  Or make your picks on the school’s nickname.  Or just fill out your bracket completely randomly and hope for the best – you may very well still win your bracket contest.