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Short version: This is mainly copied from last year. Sign up on ESPN this year. Doesn't matter who you are, just flipping do it. http://narshe.me/1gc7EjD Post your team name here.

Longer version, cribbed almost exclusively from last year's:

In 2014, some Gators are looking to lock up status as a basketball powerhouse now that they're no longer a football one; a group of Orangeboys look hilariously good then decidedly average; a team from the Plains States (whose nickname wasn't a crude joke when they picked it, they swear) is coming in completely undefeated; and my blessed alma mater remains a bubble team despite being just about the worst thing ever on hardwood.

This time around, we're going to try moving to ESPN. If you saw my earlier thread, you know why - Yahoo is getting a little dodgy with how they use our personal information and it's a bit sketchville, if you ask me. I'm sending out emails to the people who played last year; if you got them or not, or if you're new to our brackets, you can still sign up for this year's tournament using an ESPN or Facebook account. The link to initiate signup this year is: http://narshe.me/1gc7EjD

If you're prompted for any further information, use this:

Group Name: CoNCAA
Group Number: 310266
Password: flanitor

Please post your bracket name in this thread, as always, or else it's hard to match up CoN names with other names. This year, Selection Sunday (the day we find out what teams are involved in the tournament) is on 16 March, and the games that count start on 20 March. That means you'll have the usual three and a half to four days to get your picks in, and we'll make sure to remind you.

Last year, we had twenty-five folks, amazingly up one from the year before. A few of them have gone away and probably won't be back; perhaps you could be a new member who wants in, or perhaps someone who's never done it before and wants to show up? Our record is twenty-eight. Let's aim high contrary to all logic.

I'll say, as always, that you do not have to care one bit about basketball to do this. You could watch every game this year and still fare miserably, and you can also just make wild guesses and you'll still get one or two crazy upsets that nobody else gets right. The fun is in getting everyone else's "I can not frigging believe you got that matchup right!" reactions. CoN chatters or forumgoers will always give advice for picks, and if you're one of those who likes to pick based on the team's nickname, we can tell you what those are. Signing up and making all of your picks takes no more than 15 minutes if you aren't the researchy type and just want to get in to give it a try.

Here's the list of who's in:

• Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy - R51
• AntlerPig'n - IainPeregrine
• I Dunno What I'm Doing - Del S
• Embiid Stampede - Gears
• Delicious Crunchpuppies - Neal
• Hardly Globetrotters - Stiltzkin
• Mango Laszi - Laszlow
• Maybe This Year? - Xenon
• M. Smart Fan Appreciation - Kappa the Imp
• WHAT AM I FIGHTING FOOOOR - Glenn Magus Harvey
• My Best Guess says... - Gabe
• Borussia Teeth - Cefca
• Because reasons and stuff - MeHael
• Cue the Music! - finalalias
• LOL MD 6 - LOL NBA Draft - Super Moogle
• I'veSeenThisMovieBefore - Sabin
• ImmaForgetAboutThis/Lose - MogMaster
• March Sadness - Tidu-who
• Jabari Wiggins - baralai888
• here for my yearly visit - SSJ_Cloud
• ErnestBorgnine'sbestpal - BlitzSage
• roses r wow - Death Penalty

Don't recognize some of those names? They're chatters or are just generally too lazy to come around any more. You, too, could aspire to that lofty goal.

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 21st March 2014 18:46

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I Dunno What I'm Doing as always, so I figured that was a good bracket name

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Count me in, and don't count me out

Huzzah!

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Yep, I'm game. And once again making picks purely based on logos and names I like.

Hardly Globetrotters.

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We apologise for the inconvenience

Congrats, you gave me a reason to join ESPN. And I'll use it again...next March.

Maybe This Year?

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Squenix games completed:

FFIII
FFIV
FFVI
FFVII
FFIX
FFX
FF Tactics: Advance 2
Chrono Trigger
Dragon Quest 8
Dragon Quest 11
Super Mario RPG

New year and format, same general mediocrity and disappointment.

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I find your lack of faith disturbing...

> Mango Laszi

i lol'd

Anyway, I'm in as WHAT AM I FIGHTING FOOOOR.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

We're up to 11 right now, not terrible for four days before Selection Sunday. If you see this post, it's time to sign up.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I am Borussia Teeth.

Cue the Music!

It's montage time, baby!

The champ is here!

Bobbo enters a CoNCAA tournament? I've seen this movie before!



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"When I turn the page
The corner bends into the perfect dog ear
As if the words knew I'd need them again
But at the time, I didn't see it."

~"This Ain't a Surfin' Movie" - Minus the Bear

I'm as surprised as you are that I was convinced to sign up for a site I don't want to with almost no coercion. Roll them charisma checks, Papa Alvies .

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If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

Hello Fitness Friends,

March Sadness reporting for disappointment.

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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

I am picking my alma mater to win it all for the first time ever. Not going to win the pool. And I don't give a flying ****. Wahoowa.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

We're up to eighteen, which is pretty respectable. I note that we don't have many newer members involved yet, which is kind of sad. What, newbies, you don't have any interests besides JRPGs?

Selection Sunday has now happened, which means you can make your picks any time between now and when the first "real" games tip off at noon American Eastern time on Thursday. So, as always, two reminders and notes to keep in mind:

• You have to pick all games for the entire tournament before any games start on Thursday. There are 63 picks to make.
• Aim to have your picks in early. You can change them all the way up until the start of the first game on Thursday, but it's better to have all 63 picks in early and change them over the course of the week instead of finding yourself running out of time due to server issues, or internet issues, or poor memory.

I think I have my final four picked out already and possibly even my champion, but I have no idea how I'm going to get there. I think that's what tomorrow is for

I think this is a good time to talk about some of the many odd nicknames for teams that have come from the many years we've watched these games as a community. I'll lead with a couple:

• Belmont University, Nashville: "Simon"
• Western/Eastern Kentucky, "Jelly"

I'll let you guys figure out how those happened.


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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

First one's obvious.

Can't figure out the second one.

and is there a way to save our picks if we don't have all 63 picks done?

Quote

What, newbies, you don't have any interests besides JRPGs?

Still not actually interested in the tournament, but you succeeded very well on the Diplomacy check to get me to join this whole thing, as MogMaster pointed out.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 17th March 2014 01:23

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 16th March 2014 21:21)

and is there a way to save our picks if we don't have all 63 picks done?

Nope, looks like you actually can't save it without making all the picks. Interesting, but all the more reason to get some picks in ASAP and then fine-tune them later.

Quote

Still not actually interested in the tournament, but you succeeded very well on the Diplomacy check to get me to join this whole thing, as MogMaster pointed out.

Ha ha, yeah, I worded that poorly. Should have been more of a "are you unable to focus on anything but JRPGs for ten minutes?"

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I'm in as usual.

Jabari Wiggins FTW.

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"The answer is, of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved."
- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

More nicknames: UCLA will now, by decree, be referenced as "Uvula."

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Davidson University has historically been "Vanessa."
Clemson has been "Cremslun."
And St. Mary's became "Ghost Mary."

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Alas, this year we are without one of my favorites: Richmond aka the "Spider Backpacks"

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I find your lack of faith disturbing...

Quote (Kappa the Imp @ 17th March 2014 21:37)

Alas, this year we are without one of my favorites: Richmond aka the "Spider Backpacks"

Ahhhhhhh, I forgot about the Spider Backpacks. My hair wigglies are cross with me.

Neal has also informed me that Eastern Kentucky was never "Jelly," just Western Kentucky. I'm not sure I remember it that way, but at the very least Western was first.

Butler was once known simply as "Teen Coach" due to their coach who looked as if he'd just graduated middle school and someone put a suit on him. He's gone, now, and so is Butler.

--------------------

"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Master strategy of tossing a coin or just clicking it cos I heard the name before cannot fail! My team for certain victory is... Cal Poly!

...Crap.

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Finished filling out my bracket last night and put a lot of though into it, which will probably mean me finishing last!

RIP Teen Coach and Spider Backpack. Someday you'll return to us.

In the meantime, Vegas is furious at this bracket because it is dumb and terrible: http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball...bunch-of-frauds

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

From what I can tell, they've already arranged the teams by the numbers I was going to use, making my ranking feel cheap and unimaginative v_v

Back to the drawing board.

In as "here for my yearly visit."

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"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle

This thread is truly fun every year, thanks to Neal's (and any other contributor's) analysis round by round.

I'll always be back

--------------------

The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

I am ErnestBorgnine'sbestpal, and I'm going to pick by a complex mathematical algorithm based mostly on the most interesting uniform color combinations!

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Praise Be To Helix!