The madness has finally come to an end.  Kansas has won the national championship after a great overtime victory against Memphis. It was a crazy game and just like the game coming down to the final seconds determining our winner game down to the final game.  The entry, "Up The Bracket" is our winner.  Congratulations to all our winners!!!!

1. Up the Bracket

2. Tear Drops on My Guitar

3. Early Exit

4. Pittsnoggle

5. Fran I

6. nova dreams

7. js

8. TOO MUCH CHOP TO STOP

9. JLewis 2

10. Marc AKJZT

11. Bob Knight is a quitter

12. jflegend

All our winners can be seen in the standings including our Anchor Man for 2008, "Aliye" with 58 points and 20 wins.  Don't feel too bad you get to play for free in 2009.  We also had 105 entries that correctly picked the Final Four and thus all get to share in the $400 Coach's Award which means $3.81 each.  I'm hoping no one makes me send this out and all these winners ask me to keep their $3.81 as part of our charitable donations.

The Survivor Pool (new for 2008) has been a great success.  We had 68 entries and ended with two survivors, Scott Delatte and Tim Galu, that will share the Survivor Pool prize money.   The selections for the Survivor Pool can be viewed at The Survivor Pool Results.

I also want to thank everyone for their generous donations to our charities.  As result of everyone's kindness we are able to donate over $3600 to our charities for 2008.  Thank you all very, very much.

For the few of you that were lucky enough to finish some where in money please email me at pooladmin@thehoopspool.com your contact information (name and address) and entry number as soon as possible so that I can get your winnings out to you next week.  Remember tipping The Administrator is allowed and welcomed plus an extra little donation for our charities is always appreciated.

This was a record year for our tournament pool with 1087 entries and 897 of those being activated.  Perhaps next year we can get 1000 of those activated.  I want to thank everyone for participating and I especially wanted to thank everyone who made extra donations to our charities.  Your donations are greatly appreciated.

As we have done for many years now $2 from every entry fee will be used for a charitable donation.  This year the donation will be split between two different charities, The Texas Children's Hospital and The Maisey and Jake Lowe Children's Fund.   In May my son Gehrig was diagnosed with a heart defect known as coarctation of the aorta which required surgery to repair his damaged heart.  Gehrig was 4 years old at the time of his successful surgery at Texas Children's hospital.  Maisey (9) and Jake (6) Lowe are my niece and nephew and they live in Fairbanks, Alaska.  This past January their father, my brother-in-law, Jimmy Lowe died in his sleep as a result of heart condition.  Jimmy was 37.  As you can see both of these charities are very important to me and any extra donations to these charities will be greatly appreciated.

I hope everyone had as much fun with this tournament as I did and I hope to see you all back for next year.

The Administrator

• Big Prizes!!!
• Top 12 places payout prize money.
• Enter your own picks online.
• Online standings