Butler's Newcome contest winner
Better to be lucky than good — especially when it comes to filling out an NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket.
The top three finishers in the 2018 Butler Eagle March Madness Contest — Steve Newcome of Butler, Rex Grossman of Slippery Rock and Amber Tressler of Butler — will certainly attest to that.
Newcome, 64, said he has been playing the Eagle's contest “for the past 10 or 12 years and I've never even been on the first page before.”
More than 1,000 people enter the contest every year and the Eagle prints the contest's standings periodically throughout the tournament.
“I follow Pitt and West Virginia in college basketball, but that's about it,” Newcome said. “Besides that, I start watching games in the conference tournament finals to try to get a feel for things.
“I wish I could say I had a system for filling out the thing ... I don't. You pick an upset here or there, but I try to keep my 1's, 2's and 3's (seeds) in play as long as possible.”
Newcome did predict Villanova to defeat Michigan in the championship game. He also correctly picked Kansas to reach the Final Four. His other choice was Kentucky.
“When Virginia lost in the first round, I'm sure that screwed a lot of people up,” he said.
Newcome won $500 for first place. Grossman, 64, won $250 for finishing second and Tressler, 45, got $100 for taking third.
Grossman said he had Villanova winning the tournament “because I just love the way they play. They seemed like the best team going in.”
He has played the contest for seven years and, like Newcome, never came close to finishing on top.
“I mix and match my choices all the way through the bracket every year and it never worked,” Grossman said, laughing. “This year, I finally got lucky.”
Perhaps no one got luckier than Tressler, who never played the March Madness contest before this year.
“I don;'t know a thing about basketball,” she admitted. “I didn't even know what this was about. My uncle (Denny Clark) plays and he talked me into filling one out.
“He helped me make the picks. I didn't know what I was doing. I picked some games on my own ... I don't even know why I picked certain teams.”
Tressler said her son, Gavin, helped her as well.
“We got a pretty good laugh out of it,” Tressler said. “Of course, I teased my uncle for finishing ahead of him. We'll probably all go out to a nice dinner with the money, then try again next year.”
