Curry Wins Department Bracket Challenge
Posted Apr 14, 2016
Congratulations to Noah Curry on winning the Department's 9th Annual March Madness Bracket Challenge. For his accomplishments, he will receive a prize at this year’s Evanspalooza and will serve for the next year as the Mike Tyson World Heavyweight Champion of Bracketology.
Noah "beat" the other 17 participants this year to take home the title. While Daniel Langley led after the first two rounds, Daniel found that picking upsets in the early rounds can gain you points but picking too many upsets can cost you down the road. Picking these early upsets allowed Curry to deliver a haymaker to Langley in week 2 and drop him to 8th place. Soon thereafter, he floored Michayla Kramer, even though it took two punches, before being in control heading into the Final Four. By then, his only competition was Christina Young who had picked “OOOOk-lahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain,” to win it all. Unfortunately, Oklahoma took a dive against Villanova causing Christina to throw in the towel. More impressively, Noah punched above his weight by becoming the first freshman to win the bracket challenge.
In second place, Matt, the “Bost” of Illinois, Grove tied defending champion DJ “the Kentucky thoroughbred” Hollaway. Dr. Evans came in fourth while Christina Young came in 5th. Kudos also go out to Clark Hubbard who was the only participant to pick Villanova to win it all. With Noah, Matt, and Clark’s performances, the freshmen made a strong showing their first year in the department and prove that they will be a force to reckon with in the future.
Among faculty, Dr. Evans claimed another victory among faculty suggesting that “American [politics] exceptionalism” may allow him to continue winning the faculty’staff challenge. However, Dr. Ryan made a surprisingly strong comeback to finish 5 points behind Dr. Evans. If he had not picked Seton Hall to win it all, he probably could have won the faculty bracket. He also tied President Obama for 6th place which means that Dr. Baker, our congressional candidate, is leading from behind with his performance. Unfortunately, he can’t outmaneuver Drs. Evans and Ryan and get more caucus points and win the bracket challenge on the 2nd or 3rd ballot. We can only assume that his congressional campaign duties kept him from making good picks, but we are confident that he will finish much higher this August than 11th place.
At the bottom of the standings, we find that Trey Gerrell, our Christian Ethics major, is taking literally Christ’s admonition that “the first will be last.” Since he lost to Michayla Kramer who made her picks by flipping a coin, we hope that he makes better moral decisions than basketball decisions. Overall, the fact that three of our bottom five have connections to the Theology and Missions Department, we may have proof that either (1) T&M does a good job preparing their students to be meek so “they can inherit the earth” or that (2) Political Science students are better able to use their talents to make decisions about more worldly issues like March Madness.