Rhode Islander Leads Millions In ESPN’s Tournament Challenge
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Each year, millions of people participate in ESPN’s Tournament Challenge filling out a bracket for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. This year, a Rhode Islander is tied for first with 10 other people from across the country heading into the Final Four.
Michael Hennessey of Barrington has been nearly perfect in picking this year’s tournament game and, in fact, has been perfect picking every game from the Sweet 16 on without so much as a single mistake. He is one of a few people tied for first in the competition placing him in the 100th percentile of fans who filled out a bracket with ESPN.
Just to give you an idea of how great that it, my bracket has 3 of the 4 teams (Kentucky, Ohio State and Kansas) in this year’s Final Four and my champion (Kentucky) and runner-up (Kansas) are still alive. I am in the 97th percentile of those who filled out brackets but still have 203,101 people ahead of me including Hennessey.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTHennessey was born and raised in East Greenwich and attended college at Clemson University. It was there he got the bug for big-time college football and basketball.
Since his graduation almost 20 years ago, the 40-year old Hennessey has looked to sports to stay connected with some of his college buddies. “Ever since we graduated, a bunch of us have played fantasy football and filled out NCAA tournament brackets as a way of staying in touch with each other,” he said. “Normally we’d have as many as 20 guys fill out brackets but now that we all have kids it’s hit or miss. Only four of us filled them out this year.”
Hennessey has always been a fan of our local teams attending local college football and basketball games. “It’s great now because my kids are 10 and 7 and they’re kind of hooked into it so I get the best of both worlds by getting to go the games and taking my kids,” he said.
Hennessey said that his kids got “hooked” on big-time college athletics when he took them to his alma mater last fall to see the Clemson football team host Wake Forest. “I actually took them to the Brown-Harvard game under the lights and we had a great time. But when they ever saw 70,000+ fans in Death Valley, their jaws dropped,” he said.
So the natural question for Hennessey is: who is our local college basketball expert picking to win it all? “I have Ohio State playing Kentucky in the championship game with Kentucky winning it all.”
Given how well he has predicted the outcome of games so far, I wouldn’t bet against him.
