Wockey Day One - Controversy, Chicanery, and Dancing Fruit

Day One of the 2015 Wockey Pool is in the books and already we’ve had two overtime thrillers, two leading contenders for Puckhead, and too little of this.  62 brackets remain perfect after the first slate of games as the only “favorite” to lose was Minnesota even though they were the lower seed.  219 brackets had the Gophers beating in-state rival Minnesota-Duluth.

Several Wockeyites lost their national champion pick on the first day -- 11 had Michigan Tech winning the tournament, two had Quinnipiac, while one-seventh of the pool (an astonishing 52 brackets) went down with the Gophers loss.  Most of those 52 people (likely silly Gopher fans) are feeling like this right about now.  

In all, there isn’t an overwhelming Wockey consensus as to which team will win the whole thing.  Someone is guaranteed to pick the winner correctly as every team was selected in at least one bracket.  North Dakota leads the way with 78 picks.  72 brackets have Boston University taking it all.  68 have top overall seed Minnesota State-Mankato becoming national champion.  RIT, Harvard, and Yale were each selected in one bracket

The bracket selecting now-ousted Yale belonged to Erik Pederson. Erik not only blew the Yale pick, he along with Matt Mathiasen had the only two brackets to get completely shut out on day one.  Interestingly, they both created those brackets for other people--Erik for his lady friend Tiffany and Matt for his son Finley.  Could we have another Joe and Estella Frye debacle on our hands in the race for the Puckhead?  Who actually made the picks?  Who will take the fall for their failure?  What is the deep, metaphysical meaning behind this website?  Only time will tell.  But for at least one day, Erik/Tiffany and Matt/Finley can lay claim to being the lowliest of the Wockeyites, which is remarkably disgraceful considering how few upsets there were.  

Saturday brings the best day of the tournament -- six games spanning from 2:00 to 8:00 CT.  It’s like Christmas for college hockey fans, only without that weird, jolly fat man getting in the way.  I’m planning to spend the entire afternoon and evening watching college hockey (if my wife asks where I am, distract her with this).  I hope you’ll join me and partake in the most delightful day March Madness has to offer -- I’ll even grant you permission to turn away from that other NCAA tournament going on tomorrow.  You can catch all the action on ESPN’s various broadcast and streaming networks.  If you choose not to watch hockey, expect that the general Wockey public will question every decision you’ve ever made in life (though if you watch this, we can at least consider it an acceptable alternative).

Your Wily, Wacky, Watermelony Wockey Commisioner

Alex

P.S.  OK, I can’t give Gopher fans too much crap about their team bowing out early.  After all, one of their own did pull off this fantastic move earlier in the year.