A Perfect Finish
What a game to close out a Final Four with all #1 seeds! The Kansas Jayhawks, seemingly defeated, pulled off an amazing comeback with a hail mary 3pt shot to win!
Congratulations to Charles Goudl and Toby Byrum! We watched the game with Amy and her husband David who watched the winnings slip away in the final seconds of regulation. An amazing swing of emotions for all involved!
#1 Charles Gould
#2 Toby Byrum
Congratulations to the winners and thank you all for another wonderful year! Have a great summer, see you all next season.
Bradshaw Hoops History
Since this is the 15th year for this Tournament Pool, I thought I would compile a brief history and a list of historical winners.
The Paper Days - The pool started in 1993 out at the Jackson Hole Airport when I was working with Delta Airlines. Brian Shelton and I organized the initial pool with 20 players comprised mostly of people who worked for Delta Airlines or at the airport. It was all originally done on paper, and those records are long lost, so I don't have the player lists and winners from those early years.
Going Digital - In 1996, Mark Sigman and I began taking things digital. We were up to 50 players and the paperwork was tremendous, with faxes and handwritten selections coming from friends all over the country. The entries remained on paper while the tabulations moved to digital with TurboTourney. We spent many a late-night Wed. with him reading each entry to me while I put it into the computer... those were the days of paperwork. In 1996 and 1997, we built the first websites by hand-coding the HTML. Reports were exported from TurboTourney and converted to HTML by hand then uploaded to the web. In those days we also had a discussion board with some heated discussion and rivalries, most notably 'Hoop Haven' (Uconn) and 'Coach J' (Duke).
Data Loss - In 1998, I had a terrible hard-drive crash that destroyed most of the historical data from 1996-1998. Therefore, other than the winners' memories, I have no real record of who won from 1993 (paper to 1996) to 1998 (hard drive crash 1996 to 1998). After 1998, I had better backups. TurboTourney also grew up and began producing the reports in HTML and as time went on they also customized the data entry to a web-based input form. All of this has saved me tons of time in producing the site. Meanwhile the number of players has grown from 20 - 200 over the years.
In 2000, Jim Stanford did a great article on the Pool and the tourney for the Jackson Hole News. He took this photo of me updating the web reports and yes, that's Bill Guthridge on TV in his heroic run to the Final Four!
Many of the participants in this pool are friends of friends and people I have come to know strictly through this pool! It's been a lot of fun and I look forward to 15 more years.
The History - Below is a chart showing the history of the pool for which I have records and also linking to the results so that you can see all of the players. Enjoy!
Year |
Tournament Champ | Pool Winner | Pool Runner-up | No. of Players |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1993 |
North Carolina | No Digital Record | ||
1994 |
Arkansas | No Digital Record | ||
1995 |
UCLA | No Digital Record | ||
1996 |
Kentucky | Data Lost (Harddrive Crash 1998) | ||
1997 |
Arizona | Data Lost (Harddrive Crash 1998) | ||
1998 |
Kentucky | Data Lost (Harddrive Crash 1998) | ||
1999 |
Connecticut | Shawn Veldhouse | Chris Hale | 73 |
2000 |
Michigan State | Ed Trigg | Gary Duniphan | 113 |
2001 |
Duke | Dave Black | Amy Christensen | 130 |
2002 |
Maryland | Jon Mahachek | Mary Lynn Wilmore | 162 |
2003 |
Syracuse | Chris Pittenger | James Shell | 167 |
2004 |
Connecticut | Harv Weisman | Scott Dukes | 204 |
2005 |
North Carolina | Lane Bennet | Kevin Wingfield | 192 |
2006 |
Florida | James Shell | Harv Weisman | 191 |
2007 |
Florida | Shawn Veldhouse | Carl Matsuda | 182 |