Hopski Day 1

Day 1 is in the books and the blog is honoring Georgia State's great comeback with some black and blue colors!

Lyon's Locks (Bill Lyon of Arlington Heights, IL) has taken hold of the top spot by picking 7 of the 16 games, but meanwhile racking up 30 underdog points by virtue of having picked the Ga State, UAB & UCLA victories!  Bill benefitted greatly from a day of upsets and his "work back from the Elite 8 with upsets" strategy has garnered some good early points.  Here's Bill (left side of photo) in his hoops heyday when we finished 2nd in the Warsaw Adidas 3 on 3 (anyone remember who the guy on the right is??!!):

Just to show that there are multiple ways to skin a cat in the Hopski, Docent Darlin's Back (Terry Kenney from San Francisco) went the traditional route, picking 14 of the 16 games correctly and stands in 2nd place.  Terry is hurting though from the Baylor loss, having picked them into the Final Four.

I attempted to give a nudge to a few entrants that were less than colorful with their entry names.  Alas, this did not work with most of them and if you cannot find your previous boring entry name, trust me, it has been changed!  The Spirit of the Pool Rule was invoked by the Commish.

Also note that we have finished with 162 entrants (and the Presidential Picks make the pool 163).  Please check that your entry is included as one entry (and I remembered the entry name when it was imported into the pool, but somehow it was knocked out) was not included in the final list yesterday.  This was added overnight and the pool should now be complete!

For those new to the Hopski, please note a plethora of reports exist on the Hopski Pool Website, including:

THE LEADERBOARD:  The Top 25 entries in the standings will always show up on the first page of the website.  After the 1st day and subsequent key break points in the tournament, the Leaderboard and the Current Standings will both show how many positions entries have move up and down the standings since the previous break point.  These breaks are at 16, 32, 40, 48, 52, 56, 58, 60 and 62 games.

Champions Summary report:  Summary of the teams picked to win the tournament and how many times. Kentucky leads the way with 88 entries trusting in Calipari and the Wildcats.  Wisconsin with 26 and Arizona with 18 entries are the next two.  11 teams have been picked to win it all this year, with Iowa State the first to exit the tournament.

Tournament Summary report:  Shows, by team, how many entries picked them to win in each round. I will change this report as the tournament progresses so it sorts by each round (unfortunately, I cannot exclude teams that have been eliminated).

Current Standings report:  Shows the entire pool standings.  This is a 4 pager and whilst you may not win or contend to win the pool, it is certainly a worthwhile objective to finish on the 1st page (and certainly avoid the dreaded last page).  From this report as well you can click on any entry name to see the entire bracket entered by that person.

Projected Standings report:  This is a sorted report by possible point totals, showing the maximum points an entry might get if all the remaining games go as they have picked.  This reports also shows predicted champ. 

Now that all entries are in - please feel free to email me your vote(s) for Best Entry Name.  Each entrant is allowed to vote for up to 3 entry names and the entry name with the most votes takes the title and gets free entry in 2016!

Re-charge those hoops batteries as Day 2 starts in 6 1/2 hours!!

Adios - 

The Commish