Wanda's Guide to March Madness

My hubby makes me pick a bracket.  Every year.  I have a special way of picking.  Some wives pick by team colours.  Other wives pick by which mascot is tougher.  Not me.

I pick by coolness of team name.

Anything with a High-Point Value Scrabble Letter (HPVSL) is going to take precedence in my bracket.  The more HPVSL, the better.  Beyond that, if there aren't very many interesting HPVSLs, I will pick the cool name.  If there is no cool name, I go for my favourite (movie, place to visit, word.)

Now bear in mind that I will always pick 1-3 seeds in the first round.  A 4-seed could get booted if the 13-seed has an especially awesome name.  Anything beyond that is entirely up to "awesomeness of name."

Given those parameters, this is who I have chosen this year.  

I can't tell you how excited I was to discover that Gonzaga was a #1 seed and that Marquette was a #3 seed!  And Georgetown against Gonzaga...  That's four Gs and a Z in the final game.  It can't get much better than that.

(Let it be noted that while Bucknell has a cooler name than Butler, Butler has been my friend for years, coming through for me on strength of name when it was a lowly double-digit seed.)

(Let it also be noted that I will always pick against Duke when I can.  All rules of picking get thrown out when Duke is in the mix.)

Disappointments this year:
1.  I love picking Wake Forest.  Every time someone says "Wake Forest" I either think "Run Forrest, run" or "Someone get that Forest an alarm clock so we don't have to tell people to wake it."
2:  The first time my hubby mentioned the University of Connecticut, I heard "Yukon."  I love picking U-Conn, simply because of the Canadian Territory connection.
3.  We have enough connections to Cornell that we enjoyed rooting for them last year.  I'm disappointed to not be able to pick them.
4.  Xavier and Villanova are perennial picks for me.  Disappointment.

And that's that.

How do you choose your bracket?


*This is a No-Fail way to really have fun and totally randomize your bracket.  This is not a No-Fail way to win.  But I did come in second two years ago.