Don’t forget to enter my Basketball Bracket group before Thursday Morning if you’d like to be entered to win a $110 gift certificate at CSNstores.com! for It’d go a long way in buying fun summer stuff like the wood swing sets and patio furniture I was talking about!
Also don’t forget to let your kids enter as well. Below is the account of mine and Ali’s attempts at creating her personal bracket…
This is the third year that I’ve helped Ali pick her basketball brackets.
In years past, I’ve had to get very creative to get her attention span to last through 63 choices.
When she was two, it started out with me getting her to choose between two post-it notes.
Then at three, I used her map of the United States to help her make geographically based choices.
But this year, at the age of four, I knew it would be simple. She’ll talk all day about any subject if I’ll let her, so the attention span isn’t a problem. Plus, she loves numbers, so she should understand the system. I’d explain to her how it works, and she might even make a great bracket!
So at the breakfast table this morning, I got her blank bracket out.
Me: “Here’s how it works. Teams are ranked by how good they are. So a team that is a #1 is better than a team that is a #16.”
Ali: “But they can’t SAY they’re better than the other team because that would be bragging, right?”
Me: “Right. I’m sure basketball players would never say they were better than someone else. But WE know that they’re probably better, so a #1 team would usually beat a #16 team, and the team with the lower number USUALLY (but not always) wins. Are you ready to pick your bracket?”
Ali: “Yup.”
Me: “Okay. Do you want #1 Kansas to win, or #16 Illinois?”
Ali: “I want Basketball to win!!!”
Me: “They’re both basketball TEAMS. So do you want #1 Kansas to win, or #16 Illinois?”
Ali: “I don’t wanna win any of those.”
Me: “YOU don’t have to win, but which team do you want to win?? Kansas or Illinois?!?!”
Ali: “I don’t want any of them to win unless basketball is in their name.”
Me: “Okay. Do you want Kansas Basketball or Illinois Basketball to win?”
Ali: “Illinois Basketball.”
Luckily, every choice didn’t take that long.
She was too impatient for me to call out all the numbers and her figure out which was smallest, so I ditched that effort. But she was quite perceptive on the skill level of the teams anyway – she nearly always managed to pick the worst team to win. I even tried swapping up the order in which I called them out, but she’d STILL pick the worst team.
So, after she made her 63 picks, her tournament winner-of-choice was the 15 seeded UCSB Gauchos, whom she predicted would beat the UNC Tarheels in the championship game by a whopping score of 6 to 5.
AWESOME.
Go Gauchos!
1 comment:
Hey, she has won before.
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