What concluded Monday evening was a near-implausibly good NCAA Tournament, but as great as it was, we all know that it’s not the sort of thing we’ll be puzzling over for weeks to come. Remembering fondly, perhaps — the fleshtone tendrils of Matt Howards Speak-and-Spell Junior Mustache; the gauntly zombified good looks of Kyle Singler; the Gus Johnson soundboard; the numerous really excellent actual basketball games. But we all already know how Duke pulled this one out: by having more talent, by getting a few calls, by dint of Brian Zoubek’s bruising Colton-Orr-in-shorts routine. And in that way, if only in that way, this year’s CSTBracket may prove more enduring than the NCAA Tournament. Because I’m still not exactly sure how (the very excellently named) Sweetney’s Midnight Snacket and its author — esteemed commenter Hot Shit College Student — managed to pull off what amounted to a fairly easy victory.

The standings tell the story fairly clearly: HSCS’s entry finished with 116 points, which is eight more than second place finisher Williams It Was Really Nothing (and its author, the mononymic Sophia) and a whopping 22 points ahead of the third place finisher. And yet, my 19th-place entry featured two more correct predictions than did Hot Shit College Student’s winning 36. Fourth-place finisher 4AM In Bombay picked a whopping 43 games correctly. How this happened isn’t hard to figure out, necessarily, given that more points are awarded for picking Final Four teams correctly — HSCS had both West Virginia and Duke in his, and correctly picked Duke as the winner — than I did for figuring that Old Dominion could beat Notre Dame. But I was restless. I needed to know how this, this, hot shit college student pulled this off.

(McEntire – not previously featured in this context)

“I didn’t watch college basketball all year,” HSCS says. “And Duke’s Jon Scheyer kind of looks like a Bastro-era John McEntire.” And now it makes some sense. The rest of us humps are playing checkers; this guy is playing invisible 4-D chess.

So: congratulations to Hot Shit College Student on his victory. Your suitable-for-framing — at least relative to how suitable they are for wearing — Norfolk State game-worn shorts will be sent whenever I get your mailing address. Presumably GC is scouring the Internets for a suitably prestigious early-90s Capcom sports video game, as well. Clearly the route to success in this sort of thing involves both not-watching college basketball and rediscovering Gastr Del Sol-aligned projects. I’m not sure I’m up for either, personally, but all I can do is tip my cap to HSCS for his success in both areas. And thanks to everyone for playing.