NCAA Tournament Trivia Contest

For those who think that public interest lawyers never have any real fun during the day, I provide this exchange between two of my colleagues

One of my colleagues, Scott Nelson, sent out this contest last nght.  If's cheating if you look at the answers before completing the quiz yourself.

Tournament Trivia Time! (Round one.)

1. What is FGCU?  What happens if you order it in a sushi restaurant?

2. What tournament competitor (men's) is based in the worst city?

3. Which school is better--Bucknell, Butler, or Belmont? Are they actually different schools?

4. Which team's mascot shares the same first name as the mascot of a defunct toothpaste commonly found in NYT crosswords?

5. What is a billiken?  And what does an iPad's spell-checker substitute for the word "billiken"?

6. which two teams are the Gaels? Why?

7. Which team is named after a car?

8. would it be possible to have a final four consisting entirely of Aggies and wildcats?

9. which team has the best name? the worst?

10. Do you think anyone went to Northwestern State thinking it was Northwestern? Or vice versa? Can you pronounce the name of the city where Northwestern State is located? how about its sister city? How about the town where Northwestern is located?

Bonus question: Harvard? Wtf?

Colleague Scott Michelman responded, and Scott Nelson then gave the authoritative rulings 

Harvard's first tourney win ever! Very exciting. I will add that Harvard's coach is a Duke alum, so that's a particularly nice win for me. Western Scott had a good day yesterday too -- Oregon got its Ducks in a row and pulled off an upset.

I will endeavor to answer the trivia questions using only a copy of the bracket. I'm sure answers are Googlable, but I have not been told this quiz is open-internet, and I don't want to perpetuate any bad Harvard legacies in that regard.

 1. What is FGCU?  What happens if you order it in a sushi restaurant?

Florida Gulf Coast University. If you order it, you risk being served a plate with a hole in the middle and no sushi on the plate.

[Scott Nelson] Correct on FGCU. On the follow-up question, that is a possibility. The other possibility is that you will be served FUGU, which could kill you.

 2. What tournament competitor (men's) is based in the worst city?

Albany. Clearly.

[Scott Nelson] No. Answer is University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA. But Albany is the correct answer to another question. See below.

> 3. Which school is better--Bucknell, Butler, or Belmont? Are they actually different schools?

They are in fact the same school, in much the same way Justices Stevens, Souter, and Scalia are the same Justice. In fact, there is even some crossover between the categories -- Coach Brad Stevens of Butler sometimes forgets which Stevens he is and shows up for games wearing a bow tie.

[Scott Nelson] Thanks for answering. I didn’t actually know the answer to this. The internet claims they are all in different cities – Lewisburg, PA, Indianapolis, and Nashville, but I doubt that is really true. Lewisburg, PA, in particular, seems made up. I think the selection committee matched up Butler and Bucknell in the first round because they weren’t sure which was which and figured if they got the seedings wrong it wouldn’t matter as much if they were playing each other.

> 4. Which team's mascot shares the same first name as the mascot of a defunct toothpaste commonly found in NYT crosswords?

This is a trick question. Toothpastes do not have mascots.

[Scott Nelson] Wrong. Ipana Toothpaste had the mascot Bucky the Beaver. See this video. “Bucknell” (if it really exists) has Bucky the Bison.

> 5. What is a billiken?  And what does an iPad's spell-checker substitute for the word "billiken"?

A billiken is a very small but pesky billy goat. I will guess that the iPad substitutes "mulligan."

[Scott Nelson] A “billiken,” mascot of St. Louis University, is an early 20^th Century fad toy invented by a St. Louis art teacher named Florence Pretz, who patented her design for it in 1908. Here’s an image: 

The iPad substitutes the word “billion.”

> 6. which two teams are the Gaels? Why?

St. Mary's is the Gaels, because, presumably, it is very windy where they come from. I'm going to guess the other one is Iona, because I know nothing about Iona.

[Scott Nelson] Right on both. I don’t have any idea why St. Mary’s is called that, but I doubt if it is because it is “windy where they come from.” Where do they come from? I have no idea. Iona is also the Gaels, presumably because the college is named after an island in Scotland.

> 7. Which team is named after a car?

Iona sounds like a good name for a car. Plus, if it were, "Iona Iona" would be a sentence.

[Scott Nelson] Wrong. The University of Cincinnati Bearcats.

> 8. would it be possible to have a final four consisting entirely of Aggies and wildcats?

I'm going to guess yes. I think you could have (in decreasing order of my confidence in these answers) Arizona Wildcats, NC A+T Aggies (?), Davidson Wildcats (?), and Northwestern State Wildcats (?).

Unlike my other answers, I'm interested in knowing whether I'm right about this one.

[Scott Nelson] You’re wrong. There are two Aggies and three Wildcats in the tournament: NC A&T Aggies and NM State Aggies, Arizona Wildcats, Davidson Wildcats and Kansas State Wildcats. (I think that is all, but a lot of land-grant universities are called Aggies, and Wildcats is a popular name.) But there could not be an all-Aggie/Wildcat final four because both Aggie teams were in the same region, as were two of the Wildcats, so theoretically there could have been a final four with two Wildcats and one Aggie, but the fourth team would have to be something else, most likely a Jayhawk. And both of the Aggies lost in the first round, as did the Davidson Wildcats. And one of the Aggies was a number 16 seed, and no number 16 seed has ever won a game in the tournament. Northwestern State are the Demons, by the way, and the “other” Wildcats, Kentucky, are definitely not going to be in the final four this year.

UPDATE:  Scott Nelson acknowledges an error in his official answer: 

I overlooked the Villanova Wildcats, whose presence would have made theoretically possible an all Aggie/'Cat final four, if both Aggies and Davidson hadn't lost yesterday.

> 9. which team has the best name? the worst?

Minnesota is the Golden Gophers. That wins for most imaginative and random.

The Creighton Barrels are the worst because of the obvious corporate sellout.

[Scott Nelson] No. Best name is the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers. Worst name would be the Creighton Barrels if they were not actually the Creighton Bluejays (matched against the aforementioned Bearcats in round 1). Scott, I think you need to send your suggestion for a name change to Creighton’s endowment office, as I expect they will make the change in a heartbeat for the right price.

Worst name is the Albany Great Danes. Is their mascot Marmaduke? (No – according to the internet, it is Damien the Great Dane! Damien?) But it could be worse. Before they were the Great Danes, they were, believe it or not, the Pedagogues (apparently it used to be a teachers college) and their mascot was Pedwin the Penguin. I kid you not. Here he (?) is:

Actually, now that I see him, I like Pedagogues more than Great Danes.

> 10. Do you think anyone went to Northwestern State thinking it was Northwestern? Or vice versa? Can you pronounce the name of the city where Northwestern State is located? how about its sister city? How about the town where Northwestern is located?

Yes, no, no, no, yes.

[Scott Nelson] I will accept Scott’s answers here because the questions all go to what he thinks and what he can pronounce, and I have no reason to question that he has responded truthfully.

By the way, NwSU is in Natchitoches, LA, whose sister city is Nacogdoches, TX. See Mike K. for the correct pronunciations, which I am confident he knows. The Louisiana one is particularly counterintuitive. I am glad Scott M. can pronounce “Evanston.” A lot of people incorrectly pronounce it “Chicago.”