Kagan, Blessing tied atop pool

NDLS 3L Carolyn Blessing and 2004 pool champion Matt Kagan are tied atop the 2008 Living Room Times men's basketball pool with perfect 16-0 prediction records through one day of NCAA Tournament action.

Blessing, a.k.a. "internatlgirl," and Kagan, a Newington High School Class of 1999 grad and Southern New Hampshire University alum who won both the men's and women's pools in '04, each have the maximum possible total of 80 points. They are followed by a tie for third place among twenty-two contestants with 75 points apiece.

Complete standings of the pool, which is presented by the victorious UCLA Bruins, can be found here and after the jump.

1. Carolyn Blessing - 80
1. Matt Kagan - 80
3. Khalil Aboukhaled - 75
3. Jay Eysol - 75
3. Jeff Belisle - 75
3. Kevin Pilz - 75
3. Jeremy Gist - 75
3. Joe Swiderski - 75
3. Mark Saviola - 75
3. Michael Walsh - 75
3. Chuck Wessell - 75
3. Benjamin Rumery - 75
3. Amir Sadaghiani - 75
3. Greg Plank - 75
3. Carol LaPlante - 75
3. Ryan Morgan - 75
3. Ken Wagner - 75
3. Alex Whitfield - 75
3. Lauren Moy-Kim - 75
3. Matt Scarborough - 75
3. Trent Kelso - 75
3. Matthew Thomsen - 75
3. Gordon Strickland - 75
3. Jennifer Elam - 75
25. Matt Wiser - 70
25. Sandy Berman - 70
25. Tom Caputi - 70
25. Gerry deSimas - 70
25. Willie Wheaten - 70
25. Blake Hanson - 70
25. Keith Evans - 70
25. Jeff Vaca - 70
25. Chris Aemisegger - 70
25. Akash Patel - 70
25. Patrick Roach - 70
25. Soren Hammerschmidt - 70
25. Melanie Peralta - 70
25. Tyler Condon - 70
25. Jeremy Kwock - 70
25. Ted Zak - 70
25. Greg Kagan - 70
25. Cam McLachlan - 70
25. Chris Mulvey - 70
25. Lisa Velte - 70
25. Michael Hale - 70
25. Dan Dinunzio - 70
25. Robert Dokes - 70
25. Ken Inadomi - 70
25. Jenna Auriemma - 70
25. Marlene Saviola - 70
25. Sean Sullivan - 70
25. Ryan Dalidowitz - 70
25. Nick Genco - 70
25. Paul Lucht - 70
25. Kevin Hauschulz - 70
25. George Heidkamp - 70
25. Jay Schwartz - 70
25. Joel Thrift - 70
25. Robin Crocker - 70
25. Joseph Hiegel - 70
25. Nick Surmacz - 70
25. Dean Thornton - 70
25. Randy Styles - 70
25. Kelly Strutz - 70
25. Drew Smith - 70
25. Keith DeMonstoy - 70
25. Lauren Taylor - 70
25. Kevin Curran - 70
25. Brandon Minich - 70
25. Nathan Evangelista - 70
25. Hannah McLaughlin - 70
25. Charles Susano - 70
25. Duane Homan - 70
25. Liz Janelle - 70
25. Katrina Lewonczyk - 70
25. Joshua Carpenter - 70
25. Jeff Dickens - 70
25. Scott Paine - 70
25. Dave Whelan - 70
25. Justin Vale - 70
81. Larry Caplin - 65
81. Phillip Price - 65
81. Kristin West - 65
81. Trisha Neudorff - 65
81. John Chung - 65
81. Jessica Fortuna - 65
81. Jaime Duque - 65
81. Scott Loomer - 65
81. Neil Waechter - 65
81. Jeff Freeze - 65
81. Bea Duque Long - 65
81. Ian Drayton - 65
81. Ginny Zak - 65
81. Danielle Thomsen - 65
81. Colleen Duggan - 65
81. Brian Rogers - 65
81. Don LaPlante - 65
81. Emily Wood - 65
81. Antonia Namnath - 65
81. Dennis Chow - 65
81. Mike Marchand - 65
81. Marty West - 65
81. Dmytro Aponte - 65
81. David Mathues - 65
81. Rosalie Town - 65
81. Denise Reidy - 65
81. Adam De Guire - 65
81. Andrew Hunter - 65
81. Tristin Thomsen - 65
81. Jon Schoenwetter - 65
81. Patrick Cullen - 65
81. Logan Pugh - 65
81. Ken Stern - 65
81. Jackie Wilson - 65
81. Rick Boeckler - 65
81. Andrew Hiller - 65
81. Tom Greca - 65
81. Dave Roberts - 65
81. Oanh Tran - 65
81. Bridget Saviola - 65
81. Joe McDade - 65
81. Pat Caplin - 65
81. James McGinnis - 65
81. Tom Keck - 65
81. Barry McGinnis - 65
81. Brian Nicholson - 65
81. Conor Sullivan - 65
81. Jon Caplin - 65
81. Rick Garnett - 65
81. Scott Robertson - 65
81. Michael Tran - 65
81. Shari Long - 65
81. Tony Gjolaj - 65
81. Jon Benski - 65
81. Johanna Cummings - 65
81. Cody Groeber - 65
81. M.T. Swanson - 65
81. Leanna Loomer - 65
81. Derek McDonald - 65
81. Brian Dupuis - 65
81. Jake Burke - 65
81. Abby Smagula - 65
81. Amy Greca - 65
81. Colin Son - 65
81. Ryan McBride - 65
81. Chris Bravo - 65
81. Jeff Morrison - 65
81. Rachel Luberda - 65
149. Dan Port - 60
149. Eric Gobel - 60
149. Chai Park - 60
149. Danny Pilz - 60
149. Toby, Sasha and Butter Zak Loy - 60
149. Rachel Wetherill - 60
149. Ben Eng - 60
149. Loyette Loy - 60
149. Sharon Lee - 60
149. Jeff Cultrera - 60
149. Chris Evans - 60
149. Scott Schmidt - 60
149. Jen Ham - 60
149. Christopher Drewry - 60
149. Quvondo Johnson - 60
149. Brian Kiolbasa - 60
149. F. X. McGahee - 60
149. Brian Neudorff - 60
149. Darby Shaw - 60
149. Dave Martins - 60
149. Bob Lutts - 60
149. Eric Soskin - 60
149. Jim Wall - 60
149. Mark Gardner - 60
149. Steve Hartranft - 60
149. Bill Pancoast - 60
149. Mike Deeds - 60
149. Weston Cross - 60
149. Ernesto Lopez - 60
149. Bill Reece - 60
149. Matt Higgins - 60
149. Jim Hu - 60
149. Peter Timbrell - 60
149. Jeffrey Ferguson - 60
149. Gary Kirby - 60
149. Courtney Tawresey - 60
149. A.J. St. John - 60
149. Jason Rogers - 60
149. Russell Caplin - 60
149. Joshua Krause - 60
149. Steve Leys - 60
149. Crys Dalangin - 60
149. Joanna Rubin - 60
149. Steve Koppitsch - 60
149. Joe Resper - 60
149. Brenden Roche - 60
149. Cath Doo - 60
149. Kay Torg - 60
149. Lauren Davis - 60
149. Andrew Long - 60
149. Esteban Coca - 60
149. Jay Johnson - 60
149. James Devine - 60
149. Keith Stefanczyk - 60
203. Gary Atkinson - 55
203. Kristen Wall - 55
203. Joe Loy - 55
203. Frank Rooney - 55
203. Bonnie Stone - 55
203. Greg Shtraks - 55
203. Kristy McCray - 55
203. Steve Duvernay - 55
203. Barbara Cross - 55
203. Joey Perucki - 55
203. Yvette Webster - 55
203. Meredith Steffen - 55
203. Rob Atherton - 55
203. Robbie Loy - 55
203. Todd Stigliano - 55
203. Brian Newbold - 55
203. Stacey Dubois - 55
203. Roger Snyder - 55
221. Beth Milewski - 50
221. Jeff Sklar - 50
221. David Kreutz - 50
221. Jessica Cowans - 50
221. Mark Jordon - 50
221. Pat Gonzales - 50
221. Neil Rampal - 50
221. Becky Loy - 50
221. Kristy LaPlante - 50
221. Diane Krause - 50
231. Ian Auzenne - 45
231. Mike Wiser - 45
231. Susie Ogden - 45
231. Andrew Leyden - 45
231. Katherine Kirkpatrick - 45
231. Jessica Osborne - 45
231. Stephen Copenhaver - 45
231. Eddie Regan - 45
231. Josh Rubin - 45
231. Michael Rosenkrantz - 45
231. Mike Dagen - 45
242. Zoe West - 40
242. Brendan Loy - 40
242. Shireen Garcia - 40
245. Casey Zak - 5

Comments

[Jim Hu]

Like many, I picked Zona to upset W. Va. The Mountaineers were unbelievable - if the ESPN stats are right, they shot a higher percentage from behind the 3 pt (11/19; 57.9%) line than everyone except Wazzu shot from the floor... including themselves.

The WVa starting guards were 9/14 on treys. Wow!

[Jim Hu]

Five players scored 25 or more today. All except A&M's Josh Carter (26 vs BYU) lost. This is probably a meaningless observation, as 4/5 leading scorers being on the losing side should happen 15% of the time by chance.

[Gardner]

Isn't your poll missing a sponsor?

[Brendan]

Um, no? See third paragraph.

[Gardner]

I guess that I'm confused because I'm not a lawyer. I thought the bet was to change the name to "The 13th annual Living Room Times men's basketball pool, presented by the UCLA Bruins", but it looks the only thing is that wording has to be there - somewhere. and not necessary need to the terms "basketball poll".

I was reading the 'spirit' of the bet and not the contractual wording.

[Brendan]

Gardner, I *am* following the spirit of the bet. If I was giving it an uber-technical, lawyerly reading, there would be no reference to UCLA in the left-hand column (not required by the bet), nor in big letters at the top of the standings page (not required by the bet), nor on the pools' Facebook page (not required by the bet), nor in the official logo for both pools (UCLA only has to be mentioned on a logo specifically for the men's pool, not for all the pools; I could have had Tom make such a logo and then I could have buried it on some inner page), nor in several of the various brief pre-contest write-ups that aren't "full-fledged pool updates" (I left it out of one or two really short ones, but included it where it was reasonable to do so, given the overall length of the post). I've repeatedly gone further than the terms of the bet require me to, specifically because I want to honor the spirit of the bet.

But the reality is that, if you look at my pool write-ups from past years, I do not always include the full name of the pool in the first paragraph of a pool update. It can get ridiculously clunky to do that. So I often scatter aspects of the official name throughout the first few paragraphs, and that's exactly what I'm doing here. I'm not doing it to bury the UCLA reference, I'm doing it to prevent the pool update from sounding horrible. For instance, check out this clunky run-on sentence:

"NDLS 3L Carolyn Blessing and 2004 pool champion Matt Kagan are tied in 2008 atop the 13th annual Living Room Times men's basketball pool, presented by the UCLA Bruins, with perfect 16-0 prediction records, through one day of NCAA Tournament action."

Look, there's a reason I wrote the terms of the bet the way I did. I wasn't going to promise to mention the "sponsorship" in every single reference to the pool (hence the "full-fledged pool updates" requirement) because I could easily foresee how that would get extremely unwieldy in some brief posts (e.g., "just a reminder to sign up for my pool!"). And similarly, I wasn't going to promise to always mention it in the first paragraph of every update, because I knew that would often create horrible run-on sentences and put a major crimp in my rhetorical style. No way was I going to tie my hands linguistically like that. So this isn't just some after-the-fact lawyerly dodging. I wrote the terms of the bet that way I did specifically because of these very issues.

However, I think it's pretty clear that, to the extent that it doesn't conflict with neutral, non-UCLA-related demands like keeping my pool updates from getting unwieldy and ridiculous, I'm doing my best to honor the spirit as well as the letter of the bet, going above and beyond the technical requirements in numerous instances.

I'm also not sure you have standing to raise this complaint. :) And if Mike were to raise it, I'd point out that his "per a bet I lost" language on Facebook was at least as violative of any "spirit of the bet" as anything I've done here... :P

[Brendan]

P.S. I actually thought it was kind of nice of me to structure the update in such a way as to give a shout-out to UCLA's 70-29 win yesterday. Apropos of which, using phraseology like "the victorious UCLA Bruins" is, again, not required by the bet. See, I'm going above and beyond here! :)

If I had put the reference after the jump, or in like the eighth paragraph or something, I'd agree that that would be iffy. But putting it in the third paragraph is not exactly burying it.

[Gardner]

Point taken and taken and taken.

I just thought that is was always going to be "The 13th annual Living Room Times men's basketball pool, presented by the UCLA Bruins" in the full-fledged updates (i.e. ones with standings).

Now I know, and knowing is half the battle. I just wish someday someone would let me know what the other half of the battle is.

[Brendan]

Sorry if I went on a bit with the point. :) I can understand your misunderstanding. I guess here's the distinction I would make: pretty much anytime I give the full official name of the pool "the 13th annual Living Room Times men's basketball pool," it will say "presented by the UCLA Bruins" immediately afterward, since that's also part of the official name. However, I often refer to the pool in some shorthand that isn't the official name, as I'm doing here. In that case, the UCLA sponsorship will appear somewhere reasonably prominent and reasonably close to the top of the update, but not necessarily in the same breath as the rest of the name. The key distinction is that I'm not using the official name.

You can rest assured, however, that in, for instance, the post where a winner is declared, I'll prominently use the full official name. :)

[Gardner]

I wish the NIT was presented by something, because that is where my name will appear.

Either "Gardner continues being the man" or "Gardner follows up his 16-0 start by going 0-8 in the NIT"

do you think you can use the acronym in the spirt of the rule? basketball poll, PUCLAB (presented by the...)? I like how it looks.