BHGP NIT Tourney Challenge and NCAA Tourney Challenge RESULTS

Better (a little) late than never, right? The 2012-13 college basketball season is in the books, which means that that the NIT and NCAA Tournament Challenge pick 'em competitions are also in the books.

First up, the NCAA Tournament Challenge. Congrats to our winner PackerHawk, who finished with 1420 total points, over 200 more than the next closest challenger. He also finished in the 99.8th percentile of all entries in the competition, good for a rank of 13,832 -- not too shabby, given the millions of entries in ESPN's pick 'em game.

Actually, PackerHawk's success points out the importance in nailing the results later on in the tourney, at least under ESPN's scoring system. He got 22/32 right in the first round -- decent, but not spectacular. He had 10/16 in the Sweet 16 -- again, decent, but not spectacular. He had just 2/4 of the Final Four -- but he nailed both the title game participants, as well as the champion. Winner winner, chicken dinner. The ESPN game awards big points to correctly picking winners in the Final Four games (160 points per winner) and the overall champion (320 points), so nearly half of his overall score came from his success there. But hey, credit where it's due -- only three other entries among the 235 overall entries in the BHGP group correctly picked the title game participants (and they all picked Michigan to win it all). Well done, sir.

Meanwhile, in the NIT Tournament Challenge, our winner is one B. Grady, who scored 25 points to take home top honors. The NIT game used a one point per correct pick scoring formula, so Mr. Grady correctly picked the winner in 25 of the 31 NIT games. He had all four NIT Final Four teams correctly identified, as well as the finalists and the overall winner. (In case you were wondering, seven other entries correctly picked Baylor to win it all in NYC.) If Iowa had bested the Bears, then soc99 would have been our NIT Tournament Challenge winner. Full results can be found at this link; I've redacted the e-mail addresses a bit, so if you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me.

And if Packer Hawk and B. Grady can please e-mail me at bhgp.rosswb-at-gmail.com, then we'll get you hooked up with the BHGP shirt of your choice as your prize for winning the pick 'em competitions.

Thanks to all who participated.

(EDIT: And a big thanks to Mr. Mexican't for his assistance in helping me score the NIT Tournament Challenge.)