NCAA Basketball: 10-Year-Old Boy Correctly Picks Final Four

Filed under: In The News

If you've been following NCAA basketball, you probably know that this year's March Madness was particularly maddening, with a record-breaking number of top-seed upsets.

To put that in perspective, consider that out of the 5.9 million brackets that were filled out for the tournament at ESPN.com, only two actually picked all four of the Final Four teams, while only 1,093 picked three of the four teams.

Which is why 10-year-old Patrick Lindsey is being hailed as somewhat of a wunderkind this week. Patrick, a fourth grader from Camden Elementary School in Camden, Ga., has completely bested the pros by correctly picking the teams from University of Connecticut, University of Kentucky, Butler University and Virginia Commonwealth University in this year's Final Four, WIS-TV news in Columbia, S.C. reports.

Patrick's picks were an offshoot of an in-class project thought up by his teacher, Darlene Cantey, which combined basketball and poetry.

"We started March Madness poetry because March is poetry month," Cantey tells WIS. "I felt if we got basketball involved I would get more motivation in my students to do poetry, which ended up teaching me a lot about basketball as well."

The project was so well-received by the students that Cantey decided to expand the concept to teach other subjects, like geography. Students picked the teams they thought would win each week and then posted them in the classroom.

And even though some doubted the 10-year-old's picks, Patrick didn't waiver.

"Some people that watched (the teams) thought I was OK, but some people were like, 'Are you sure about that?'" he tells the news outlet.

"A lot of people in our neighborhood thought, 'Who is VCU? That team is defi! nitely n ot going to win," one of Patrick's classmates tells WIS.

But VCU did win, as did all of Patrick's picks. In fact, he forecasted all of the big upsets, including Kentucky's win over Ohio State University.

"I felt excited," Patrick says, "because everybody said 'you're crazy' but I think the underdog wins a lot.

Patrick has picked UConn as the ultimate winner in this year's NCAA tournament.

"I was shocked," Patrick's classmate tells WIS. "I don't think anybody has gotten the Final Four correct except for him."

Well, him and at least two other people in the country.

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