DADDY-DAUGHTER BRACKET CHALLENGE UPDATE | So far, it’s close

By SHAWN CHRISTOPHER

So, here’s an update on the daddy-daughter NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament challenge we’ve got going on here on ETBlitz.com.

If you missed it last week, they agreed to take their sports rivalry to a little wager, based on their brackets for the annual March Madness tournament – not based on the overall number of wins, but on the number of correct guesses for the tournament’s Elite Eight round.

If Ashtyn wins, she’ll choreograph a dance that lasts around 30 seconds that Mitch will have to try and duplicate – as he’s being filmed for it to stream everywhere, starting with the ETBlitz.com social media.

If Mitch wins, then Ashtyn will meet up with – and face off against – former Kilgore High School baseball player (and darn good athlete) Jason Silvey in a race to first base at Kilgore’s Driller Park.

After the first round is complete – and before play begins in the second round on Saturday – Mitch is 20-12 in 32 games that have been played, and Ashtyn is 19-13.

Super close – neither of them with brackets to write home about, just sayin.’

With a look at each:

• Both of them (and probably pretty much everybody who filled OUT a bracket) missed upsets over Kentucky, by Oakland, and over Auburn, by Yale.
• Ashtyn and Mitch both got bitten hard by two Texas teams in the first round. TCU fell short in its bid to oust Utah State in a game between eight and nine seeds. And North Carolina State DID upset Texas Tech, and both got that wrong on their brackets, as well.
• Both of them also picked Florida (gone, ousted by Colorado), South Carolina (gone, ousted by Oregon), St. Mary’s (gone, knocked out by Grand Canyon), BYU (gone, pushed out by Duquesne), and Florida Atlantic (beaten by Northwestern).
• Mitch tried to get a little cute with his bracket and pick a few upsets. He did manage to get correct James Madison’s upset of Wisconsin, and Michigan State’s very mild upset of Mississippi State. But he also completely whiffed by guessing that Morehead State would topple Illinois, that New Mexico would knock off Clemson, that Drake would beat Washington State, and, as mentioned, that TCU would get by Utah State.
• Ashtyn stuck with most of the favorites in her bracket, although she went out on a limb that Nevada would knock off seven-seed Dayton (nope), and that Akron would get rid of No. 3 seed Creighton (didn’t happen).
• Mitch had a big blow to his bracket when Auburn was upset, because the doofus had Auburn picked to get into the tournament title game against Houston. Mitch’s Final Four on his bracket are Houston, Purdue, Arizona and Auburn. Auburn went bye-bye on Friday, booted by Yale, so he’s got three of his Final Four picks left.
• All of Ashtyn’s Final Four picks are still in the tourney after round one: Iowa State, Baylor, Duke and Gonzaga.
• Let’s look at what really matters, because their bet hinges on how they do in the Elite Eight.

Right now, it’s at a push. Ashtyn and Mitch each lost two of their Elite Eight when Auburn and Kentucky were both knocked out. So each of them have six remaining.

The Elite Eight round is played Easter weekend, next weekend. So the bet will likely be paid off the first weekend of April, FYI.