All four No. 1 teams remain as the Sweet 16 is ready for Thursday’s NCAA Tournament action, and I’d say that’s pretty remarkable considering how crazy these games have been. Two 2-seeds and two 3-seeds have been booted, and a few of them were heavy favorites to win it all – especially by one certain jackass, who had Missouri defeating Florida State in the National Championship game. Ha, I mean who could be that stupid? *loosens tie, looks around nervously*

But you guys, you’re the real prognosticators, as there were 8 freaking upsets on Friday and 22 commenters correctly guessed 5 of them. Well, 22 people guessed the winners and 2 people didn’t bother including scores, so *fart noise* to them. Unfortunately, the rules only permitted 5 winners. Hmmm, 5 upsets and just 5 t-shirts, I wonder if that means that the prediction with the closest score from each upset wins a t-shirt. Yes, that’s exactly what it means.

Without further ado, Friday’s big swag winners are:

NC State 79, SDSU 65: “Guest” (71-67)
Ohio 65, Michigan 60: “Starks” (64-58)
Purdue 72, St. Mary’s 69: “SenatorThimble” (74-66)
USF 58, Temple 44: “UFGrad” (60-53)
Xavier 67, ND 63: “Mighty914″ (69-65)
UPDATE: “Mattox” had Lehigh over Duke. And “Codename Duchess” also had the closer score on Xavier over ND, so you two email me addresses and shirt sizes. Apologies.

(Disclaimer: Previous shirt winners were excluded, not that it really mattered.)

Congrats, you Miss Cleos, and email me your addresses and shirt sizes to BurnsyWL@gmail.com. All you other disenfranchised and discouraged Nostradamuses, keep your chins up, because we’ll be back Thursday with another giveaway. There will be t-shirts (including the most limited edition vintage style) and possibly much, much more, pending the results of my robot that was designed to steal Kate Upton’s underwear. Oh no, why did I give it the ability to sniff?

Leave your expressions of rage, rotten produce and stories of bracket pool grief in the comments.

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Diana Inch is a 44-year old high school librarian and girls soccer coach in Oregon. She is also the only person out of 3 million entrants in the Yahoo! Tourney Pick ‘Em to correctly predict the Final Four teams. She also correctly predicted Connecticut and Butler in the Championship game, and sure enough she had the Huskies winning the title. So how did this seemingly extraordinary sports genius make her predictions? By using her favorite numbers and picking dogs and cats, of course.

Inch’s formula included her favorite numbers and team mascots. She titled her entry Di’s 711 XV Cats & Dogs. In the first round she picked the No. 7 and 11 seeds in almost every round. In ensuing rounds she picked according to team mascots, leaning to those with cats or dogs.

“I have watched the games on my computer,” Inch said. “I’m as surprised as anyone that I got the Final Four.” (Via the Albany Democrat-Herald)

Why are you surprised, Diana? This is how it always happens. You should try fantasy football next year and draft your team based on which player has the cutest ass.

Unfortunately for Diana, though, her luck has brought her no instant wealth, and just some bragging rights. Even before UConn won the (incredibly boring) championship game last night, Diana was in 781st place in the Yahoo! competition, 13 wins behind the first place entrant, so she won’t see any of the $5,000 top prize. But with that cushy high school librarian/soccer coach salary, she hardly needs it.

"Let's name jspearlman the ambassador to Libya."

ESPN reported last night that just two of the 5.9 million submitted Tournament Challenge brackets predicted the Final Four correctly. That’s roughly two more than I would have ever imagined picking Butler and Virginia Commonwealth to make the Final Four, but nevertheless I tip my cap to those two evil geniuses. After all, it takes real balls to put an 8- and 11-seed in your bracket’s Final Four, especially on the same side.

One of the two perfect Final Four entrants, “jspearlman”, is in first place, while the other isn’t even close (6,343rd place). But the man currently on top of the World Wide Leader’s $10,000 mountain isn’t in the clear just yet. He chose VCU to win it all, but the entrant only 50 points behind him, “dawgpound513”, still has 3 Final Four teams alive and Kentucky winning it all. And the person in third place has 3 teams remaining and UConn winning it all. And none of us really care that much because we lost weeks ago.

How about your “celebrities”, ESPN?

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