The total error for the seven questions was 11, which was good enough to beat out six other contestants by one point. Although after missing Michael Lyons\u2019 point total by four in the third game of the tourney, it appeared Mr. Lemoine was done for. Even he admitted he thought he was doomed at this point. In an interview, Lemoine described the emotional roller-coaster of the next three nights\u2026<\/p>\n
\nI thought I was surely out of the running when Michael Lyons scored 17 points on Thursday, giving me an absolute difference of 7 through only 3 games. Things became a little less bleak when UNLV grabbed 6 offensive rebounds that night. When I was dead-on with Colorado St.\u2019s 30-point second half against SDSU (I couldn\u2019t believe it\u2014that was almost entirely a \u2018gut\u2019 pick), I figured I had a shot.<\/p>\n
As for the Championship: the ESPN box score originally had each team pegged for 18 three-point attempts when last night\u2019s game went final. I thought they\u2019d called Tapley\u2019s garbage-time shot a two\u2014I even convinced myself his foot was on the line\u2014but a few minutes later they credited it a three, bringing the combined attempts up to 37. Indeed, I thought that lone, stat-padding shot attempt might cost me the contest. I\u2019m grateful and happy it did not.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Mr. Lemoine also admitted, as all great champions do, that he \u201cgot very lucky\u201d. There was some<\/i> luck involved of course – while he would have won whether Tapley\u2019s late shot was ruled a three or a two, Lemoine benefited from an inconsequential garbage-time three-pointer by Colorado State\u2019s Dorian Green at the final horn of the fifth game that allowed Lemoine to nail the Rams\u2019 second-half total on the number. (No joke, the handshake line had started before Green released his shot.) <\/p>\n
Nonetheless, Mr. Lemoine put himself in position to win with good picks and now owns a subscription to my web site through December 31, 2099, and as he puts it, \u201clooks forward to a lifetime of tempo-free statistics.\u201d <\/p>\n
Congrats to Tommy and thanks to all the people that entered the contest. I hope to do more of this in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Congratulations to Tommy Lemoine of Manchester, New Hampshire who earned himself a lifetime subscription to my site by virtue of winning the Mountain West tourney contest. Tommy is a recent Michigan State grad and here was his winning scorecard: Question Pick Result What will be San Diego State\u2019s largest lead against Boise State? 12 11 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}