College Basketball Contests NCAA Challenge 2012: Mid-Season
NCAA Challenge 2012: Mid-Season
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Half-way home, JohnnyBeGood08 has barely flinched all season and finds himself comfortably at No. 1 on mid-season rankings. While the Colorado fan has a cushioned lead, sigsky and others inched closer over the last week and will look to knock him off his 2011-2012 throne. (Photo by Chris Chambers/Getty Images)
The 2012 NCAA Challenge is shaping up in similar form as last year's contest. Some might recall, sigsky carried a 16-point lead over kst8no1 and three others followed by the rest. Through the first eight weeks of 2012, contestants have separated themselves into comparable tiers of contenders. sigsky and kst8no1 are back among the top players in the race but both are eclipsed by JohnnyBeGood08.
Top Tier Contenders: No. 1 JohnnyBeGood08(262.53), No. 2 sigsky(250.63)
JohnnyBeGood08 has picked up where he left off after winning the college football equivalent Top 25 Challenge and will try and duplicate his success this Winter. Behind six Top 10 placings, he has consistently built upon a comfortable lead. His predictions fared especially well out of the gate with three consecutive 2nd place finishes the first three weeks. He took over the top ranking after Week 2 and has held it since. His 10-0 record in Week 2 was one of only two posted the entire season.
With so many upsets in Week 3, JohnnyBeGood08 could have easily fell back toward the pack but, instead, made some gutsy predictions that came through. He opted for unranked Michigan State to go out West and beat then No. 22 Gonzaga, picked Murray State over then No. 21 Memphis before Murray State was 18-0 and Top 10 in the nation and sided with Charleston to beat Tennessee. Those three picks delivered him a 2nd place (8-2 record) finish and an early season 17-point buffer from No. 2.
By Week 5, the Colorado fan's lead peaked at 26 points following two more above average placings.
Up until Week 7, JohnnyBeGood08 had been by far the most accurate predictor with a 55-15 record which was four games better than next best sigsky. Just when it looked like JohnnyBeGood08 couldn't be shaken from the weekly Top 10, Week 8 offered a challenge enough to give the rest of the field some hope of catching up in the second half of the season. A 16th place (6-4 record) this past week shrunk his lead from 25 points down to 12.
Finishing in the middle of the pack isn't enough for a lead to close that quickly unless a trailer is making a move of his own. No. 2 sigsky did just that and is back in high contention to make another run at the NCAA Challenge title after finishing runner-up last year.
2008's Tournament Challenge Champion has been on JohnnyBeGood08's heels from Week 1 on. In fact, the South Carolina fan won that first week of the contest and followed it up with two more Top 5 placings in Week's 2 and 3. sigsky has demonstrated a particular acumen for picking against Ohio State and, in Week 3, he got a big boost when Kansas upset the then unbeaten Buckeyes.
More recently, sigsky finished 5th in Week's 6 and 8. Again in Week 6, he went against the Buckeyes and selected Indiana over Ohio State in the biggest upset of the week. The pick helped him land in 5th place (8-2 record) for the week. His latest upset pick this past week was against Mountain West front-runner UNLV in a road game at San Diego St. The Aztecs lost major contributors from last year's 2-seed but sigsky and others went with them anyway and it paid off in another 5th place (7-3 record) finish.
In the most recent Week 8 results, sigsky made up one game and 12 points on JohnnyBeGood08 which brings us to the current 12-point separation. Either sigsky will end up playing the role of the trailer better than the leader he played a year ago or JohnnyBeGood08 will remain a steadfast No. 1 throughout, just like he did during the football season.
Or, perhaps others will have to something to say about it...
Second Tier Contenders: No. 3 kst8no1(235.41), No. 4 nitemare64(228.42), No. 5 tmack62(228.39), No. 6 jmartin1145(222.01)
The next crop of contenders are at least 27 points back so there is work to be done to catch up but there is ample time with which to do it.
No. 3 kst8no1 has gradually improved each week with rankings of 15, 10, 8, 6, 4 and now 3. He has five Top 10 finishes with four of them coming over the last five weeks. The Kansas State fan has had an unusual knack for picking Game 1 upsets including Butler over Purdue in Week 4, Notre Dame over No. 22 Pittsburgh (before Pitt collapsed) in Week 5 and West Virginia over No. 9 Georgetown in Week 7. Those upset picks got him off on the right foot and were a implicative of Top 5 finishes during those weeks. kst8no1 ended the 2011 season at No. 8.
No. 4 nitemare64 might be the most volatile predictor among the top six predictors. His placings read like so...26, 3, 9, 32, 6, 7, 12 and 2. However, despite two bottom placings early on, the first-year player has started to level out and he'll enter the second half with his highest finish ever in the weekly contest. He moved up four spots in just the last week from Nos. 8 to 4.
No one owns more virtual basketball hardware than No. 5 tmack62. He owns three of the four different major prediction titles including two from the NCAA Challenge ('08 and '10). Five Top 5 finishes had the vet flirting with No. 2 up until last week's upset plagued contest that bit him for a 23rd place (5-5 record) finish. The Georgia fan finished No. 5 in 2011 and seems to have the stars aligned in even years so watch out for him in 2012's second half.
The CFBlog stands corrected, No. 6 jmartin1145 tops all contenders in the volatility department. Placings of 17, 5, 28, 27, 16, 2, 13 and 6 have him all over the map but, like nitemare64, he's starting to iron things out in the latest contests. Some players that start off slow begin to figure things out and by the second half go on a tear. His trend line hints at it so jmartin1145 could fall into that category and be one to watch -- and Kentucky fans know their basketball.
Trailing Tier Contenders: No. 7 The DOMinator(212.29), No. 8 trevj2012(206.48), No. 9 scooby10672(206.44), No. 10 scoochnew(205.92), No. 11 crzyfrk(205.57)
The trailers have the most to prove in the second half but none of them should be counted out since last year's NCAA Challenge Champion, J06Powercat, rose out of this bunch. The DOMinator heads up this tier and currently occupies the same spot and nearly the same rating as J06Powercat did at this point last season. The Illinois fan has a Week 5 win to build on and finished No. 4 in 2011.
Good luck to all contestants in the second half!
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