Busting Brackets Fantasy March Madness Tournament

Last week, the Busting Brackets staff participated in a unique fantasy draft. Each writer selected a five-man team of their favorite college basketball players with respect to positions (no one picked five point guards or five big men). In addition to their five-man squad, the writers/GMs also “hired” a coach and “rented” a gym for the fantasy festivities to follow.

By this point, I hope you’re wondering why I’m not one of the people that was selected to draft a team. That would be because I have something called a job, giving me slightly more obligation than the eight bums that were able to participate in this draft in the middle of the day on a Thursday. Instead, I’ve been tasked with analyzing the eight teams and fantasy booking our very own Busting Brackets Fantasy March Madness Tournament (I even made up that extremely long but kinda catchy name).

Essentially, it works out like this. This is our version of Wrestlemania. I get to be WWE Creative. Daniel Tran is Vince McMahon. Jacob Rude is Stephanie McMahon (that’s for leaving me out the draft, Rude). Now that we’ve got that straight, allow me to explain how all of this will work:

• The eight drafted teams will be placed in a double-elimination tournament bracket, seeded one through eight. Higher seeds play at home in the winners bracket, lower seeds play at home in the losers bracket. The losers bracket will reseed. The winners bracket will not. I’m sure you grasped all of that on the first try. I didn’t ask my editors to make this a double-elimination tournament. I’m using some poetic license to ensure that the gym rentals are just as important for the eighth seed as it is for the first seed. Remember that WWE Creative reference? Just call me Vince Russo. This fantasy tournament is the college basketball equivalent to this.
• The seeds will be determined by three factors: career coaching wins, arena capacity, and classification of players (seniors are worth four points toward the ranking, freshmen are worth one). The three rankings will be calculated and then averaged together to determine seeds. Despite the fact that I’m ultimately deciding who’s winning these games, I still want to be objective as possible.
• Assume that these games are five-on-five with no subs. There will be no fouling out (because there are no subs), and no injuries. Assume that every player is 100% healthy, every coach is 100% innocent of all NCAA controversies (you’re safe here, Jim Boeheim), and every seat is filled in every arena. Suspension of belief is required for this exercise.

Next: Rosters