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More than 590,000 basketball fans are playing GO.com's ESPN.com (NYSE:GO) for the Men's NCAA Tournament Challenge Presented By Pizza Hut and Courtyard by Marriott, the largest Internet tournament.
Facts and figures
Michigan State was selected by approximately 33 percent of the fans to win the championship this year, while 26 percent predicted Duke would win it all; Temple (9 percent) and Stanford (8 percent) are next up.
Injuries to star players could have been the reason that just 3 percent picked Arizona and 1 percent selected Cincinnati to win this year's championship.
Just 0.67 percent felt that defending champion Connecticut would repeat.
Making its first tournament appearance since "Big Cat" Bob Lanier led it to the 1970 Final Four, St. Bonaventure garnered .007 percent of the vote.
Southeast Missouri State brought up the rear, with .001935 percent going out on a limb to select the Indians from the Ohio Valley Conference.
On Monday, the day after the brackets were announced, ESPN Internet Group attracted 42.4 million page views and 4.7 million visits.
Defending champion Sgt. Robert Segreti, a weather forecaster stationed at Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Oklahoma, chose Temple, Ohio State, Iowa State and Louisiana State as his Final Four, with Temple upending Iowa State for the title; last year, Segreti correctly predicted the winners of 46 of the 63 games.
GO.com was created as part of the recent merger between Infoseek Corporation and The Walt Disney Company's online unit, Buena Vista Internet Group (BVIG). GO.com oversees many of the Web's most popular sites and services, including the GO Network portal, ABC.com, ABCNEWS.com, Disney.com, Disneystore.com, DisneyTravel.com, ESPN.com, EXPN.com, NFL.com, NBA.com, NASCAR Online, ESPNstore.com, ABCsports.com, Family.com and Mr. Showbiz.
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