Frogs O’ War Survivor Pool: Champion

The most brutal single elimination tournament in all of sports came to a close last week, as Boilerup was crowned One True Champion of our Survivor Pool, taking down Lara Harris in a winner-take-all props contest during the National Championship. We don’t need to acknowledge the result of the actual basketball game that took place (and perhaps that’s why it took so long for me to publish these results), but let’s take a quick look back at how these two contenders reached the pinnacle and how Boilerup ended up as our Champion:

Both finalists employed the strategy of saving the top teams for later rounds, taking some chances on “lesser” teams early on. Lara Harris was lucky to escape the first day, as its Day 1 pick Florida needed overtime to escape Virginia Tech. Meanwhile, Boilerup’s First Round picks Loyola Chicago and UCLA were each able to skate to easy 11-point victories. It was the Second Round where Boilerup announced its presence as a favorite to make a deep run in this game - taking big underdogs Syracuse and Oregon to take down 3-seed West Virginia and 2-seed Iowa. Calling those two upsets correctly set Boilerup to be able to continue to save the strongest 1 and two seeds. Lara Harris didn’t take quite as difficult a route to get there, but was still able to hold onto Baylor and Gonzaga.

Ultimately, these two were able to navigate the landmines and outlast 102 other contenders to make to the Title Game. Being as both had Gonzaga as their team remaining in the finale, there had to be another way to determine which entry would walk away victorious, so I turned to a series of prop-bets. The entry that had the most correctly picked prop bets would be our Champion.

For the most part the props I selected were close to coin flips, with short odds on either side, allowing for opportunity for several of them to be the deciding factor. However Lara Harris & Boilerup were so aligned that they only differed on two selections, and even had their Tiebreaker 1 number separated by just one point.

Boilerup got the early lead, as Baylor got off to a fast start, jumping out to an 11-1 lead, making the Bears the first team to score ten points. The only other different prop pick was “Will Mark Vital (Baylor) make his first free throw attempt?” Lara Harris had to watch the entire game awaiting Vital’s first trip to the charity stripe, while hoping for a low scoring game to win via the tiebreaker. Well, Vital played 27 minutes and did not attempt a single free throw. There were 39 free throws attempted in the game, but none by Vital.

It was a very impressive run by both finalists, but with bold calls throughout and a successful performance in the Finals Prop Contest, Boilerup is the winner of the 2021 Frogs O’ War Survivor Pool. Congratulations!

Thank you to all the participants, I hope you enjoyed the game, good luck next season.