Holy crap and balls, every time I think I have y’all’s voting patterns figured out, you throw me for a loop. I thought this was going to be the round where we’d get a couple of runaway games, but…. but! Our Elite 8 was so close in all four match-ups. Three of the four match-ups could have swung either way at any time. This has been one of the best tournaments we have had. We only had one match-up total come within one vote of a 100-0 win (no one hit that mark this year) and every round has been a nailbiter!

So here we are. The Semi-Finals begin now and voting will end Sunday, April 7 at 5pm Central. I truly cannot believe we are already at the Final 4, this year’s tourney has absolutely flown by!

But first — Let’s get on to the results! Remember all “scores” are percentages from voting.

At the close of the first day of voting on Thursday, with the exception of one match-up where “The Climb” was up by 5 votes in the Cartoon/Kid Region, all eight contests in the Sweet 16 were within 3 votes of each other and we had three ties. I told y’all these were almost impossible decisions!

And let me just say. Dudes, dudettes, and non-duderinos alike… y’all made some choices this week. I looked at the final votes on the way home Sunday night and truly had my jaw drop a couple of times. We haven’t really had any shocking upsets this tournament so far, but the Sweet 16 more than made up for it. We had two ties (almost three) and lost our first 1 seed. Holy jeez.

So here we are. The Regional Finals begin now and voting will end Wednesday, April 3 at 5pm Central. This tournament always surprises me every year with how fast it flies by. We are at the best vs the best. Good luck making up your mind going forward. Mine is mush.

But first — Let’s get on to the results! Remember all “scores” are percentages from voting.

First off – thank you everyone for voting. It makes me so happy to do these every year and see so much action from y’all. We had some nail biters in the first round (including our first tie of the year!) and some match-ups that mirrored the real tournament where the higher seed catches a punch to the mouth in the first half and then shows their muscle in the second half, blowing past the weaker competition.

I definitely seeded some of these with my heart instead of where they may have truly belonged but overall, this is the best I have ever done in regard to seeding after Round 1 of voting. We had two regions go scratch with the 1-8 seeds taking care of business, and one region almost go scratch with the exception of the 9 seed overtaking the 8 seed which is pretty much a toss up every time anyway. Then there’s the Rockstar Region. Which, hoo boy, did that region more than make up for the lack of shockers in the other three regions. More on that in a bit.