Out of Bellevue, Nebraska.
03/28/2006
Hot Pickins! Bellevue man has Final 4
Zachary Baehr , Managing Editor, Posted at 9:52 p.m.
If only
Russell Pleasant and George Mason could both be winners. It's a long shot, but this is March Madness.
The Bellevue man and the Cinderella team of the NCAA men's Final Four are the talk of the sports world after Pleasant correctly picked the Final Four.
Pleasant is one of four entrants on ESPN.com to have pulled the feat and sits in first place heading into Saturday's semifinal games.
"When I checked on my bracket on Friday I was like in 250,000th place," Pleasant said. "I went back Monday and I was pulling it up, I was at the top."
Some have called Pleasant's fortune a case where the March Madness hype left this man mad for picking a virtual no-namer. George Mason is only the second team in NCAA men's tournament history to advance to the Final Four as an 11-seed.
"I was aware of George Mason and George Washington, and I liked George Washington a little better, but I also had an opportunity to see some highlights of when George Mason played Creighton," he said. "I knew I had an opportunity to change it, and I said, 'I'm going to keep it like this.'"
He's heard sports talk show hosts criticize his picks - even though he's four-for-four - and he spent most of his Monday talking to media outlets like the New York Post, New York Times, ESPN, CNN, ABC News and others.
The rest of Pleasant's bracket looks more successful than most. He picked 26 of the first 32 games correctly, had 10 of the Sweet Sixteen and had seven of the Elite Eight.
If only George Mason and Pleasant could both keep winning. In order for Pleasant to win the grand prize, George Mason will have to lose on Saturday to Florida, who will then have to beat UCLA in the championship game on Monday.
First place garners Pleasant $10,000.
"After a while, I'm pulling for George Mason, but I want to win this thing at the same time," he said. "I'm trying to figure out how to do the same thing at the same time."
And yet, he still likes his pick of Florida to win the national title.
Pleasant said he played basketball at Bryan High School in 1976 and 1977, and graduated from Omaha Central in 1978. He's been an avid basketball fan ever since.
He's married to Valerie, and his daughter Ashley is a freshman at West and his son Russell Jr. will be a freshman at West next fall.
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