Final Four: Is Obama the best celebrity bracketologist?
President Obama is still in with a shout at being the celebrity with the most accurate Final Four bracket, according to ESPN. But things are stacked against him this weekend.
Louisville forward Chane Behanan dunks the ball during a practice session for the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament Friday in New Orleans. Louisville plays Kentucky in a semifinals game on Saturday.
Gerald Herbert/AP
When college basketball's Final Four tips off Saturday night, President Obama is going to have a lot to be proud of. After all, he picked nearly every game correctly in the tournament's East bracket and nailed half of Saturday's contenders – Kentucky and Ohio State.
The Bracket-Soothsayer-in-Chief unfortunately pegged North Carolina and Missouri as the other half of college basketball's final weekend. Those slots are held by Louisville and Kansas.
Still, the POTUS has whipped 96.1 percent of bracket jockeys all over America, according to ESPN's figures.
There's just one problem with his bid to take home the title of best celebrity bracketologist: University of North Carolina. He picked them to win it all, but the Tar Heels were derailed in the Eleite Eight by point guard Kendall Marshall's wrist injury. (See Mr. Obama's full bracket here.)
Yet even with his champion eliminated, Mr. Obama still has an outside shot.
Who is the next greatest celebrity hoops pick 'em pro in the land, according to brackets submitted to ESPN.com? Former 98 Degrees star (and ex-beau of Jessica Simpson) Nick Lachey.
That's right, America. The best-ranked celebrity bracket in America belongs to one fourth of the crew that brought you a hit song in the Disney film, "Mulan."
What's Lachey's secret? Well, hailing from Cincinnati may have helped – he picked Xavier and Cincinnati to win tough first-round matchups but had too little confidence in the Musketeers or the Bearcats, who survived a round longer than Lachey foretold. Lachey has a shot at getting half of the championship matchup correct -- he thinks Kentucky will win it all, but he though they'd play now-eliminated Syracuse.
When sorted purely by percentage of games picked correctly, however, golfer Jim Furyk sits atop the charts with 99.6 percent. He's trailed closely by fellow savants Patrick Sharp of the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks and Jesse Williams, an actor on TV hit Grey's Anatomy.
Who could make the biggest moves over the weekend from our celebrity bunch? The two contestants with the most points remaining are sixth-ranked Rajon Rondo, point guard for the Boston Celtics, who is riding alma mater Kentucky all the way to the championship, and the top female in the pool, soccer star Alex Morgan. If things shake out right for those two (Morgan also picked Kentucky), Morgan would take home the crown by picking more early-round games correctly than Rondo.
Morgan, with a bracket better than 56.7 percent of all entries, can know she busted hardwood luminaries including Miami Heat megastar LeBron James (53.4 percent) while crushing legendary college basketball announcer Dick Vitale and Los Angeles Lakers Center Pau Gasol (who beat only 14.3 percent of other brackets).
If you're hoping Obama will reign supreme come the end of the tourney, root for anybody but Kentucky. If you're Team Lachey or Team Morgan, pull on your Wildcats gear, strap up your unibrow mask and get ready for a wild Saturday night.