Eleven hours between last Friday and yesterday were spent piecing together 18 different brackets for the upcoming intramural basketball tournaments.

Associate director of intramural sports, Garry Greenlee, and graduate assistant Nathan Pick labored together like clockwork to sort out the event. Greenlee hit the nail on the head when he said, “It’s not an exact science, but it’s the best we can do.”

If you’ve ever wondered how your team has been placed in a certain division that you just didn’t think was fair, than you may not have known about the rating every team receives after each preliminary intramural basketball game. It’s not so much the wins and the losses that are important to division placing, but more the team’s overall performance.

After each game, a supervisor – someone who has been working with intramurals for at least two years, is a ref, and also plays intramural basketball – gives each team a ranking, or grade, of A, B, C or D – minuses and pluses are added accordingly.

From there, Greenlee and Pick – the bracketeers – take a quick look at the teams’ rankings and record a margin of wins and losses.

“We can’t spent 10-15 minutes on each team, that would just take too long; we have to just take a quick look and move on,” Greenlee said.

It’s at this point when decisions are made and fates are sealed. The bracketeers do a run-through of the teams to determine whether they should move up or down, or simply stay put from the divisions their captains initially signed them up for.

Some teams embrace the changes and the challenges laid before them, while others are just plain confused.

Jeffrey Harris, sophomore in architecture, signed up his six-feet-and-under team to play in the D-league. After a wildly successful run in the preliminary rounds, his team was moved all the way up to B-league for the tournament.

“I feel it’s good and we were expecting it,” Harris said. “We’ll have more competition that way. It’s better to play against teams that are on your level and beat them. We were beating teams by like 40 and it just gets boring after a while.”

Rebecca Nelson, senior in health and human performance, was a bit more surprised with her team’s destiny. She signed up her team to play the D league preliminaries, and was bumped up to play in the C league tournament.

“It’s kind of a shock,” Nelson said. “We didn’t necessarily blow anyone out – all of our games were pretty close. I guess we were hoping for the D league tournament because all our preliminary games in the D league were competitive.”

After the 18 divisions had been established, Greenlee and Pick ticked away to fill in the brackets and then fill out the schedule of tournament games, which is the most tedious part of the process.

Then, the 268 teams were placed into bracketeer-approved groups to battle until the first week of March for a much desired intramurals champion T-shirt.

The teams with the best odds of winning belong to the men’s A bracket, with seven teams, the men’s greek D bracket, with eight teams, the women’s D bracket, with nine teams, and the men’s 6-feet-and-under league – affectionately dubbed the “little guys” by the bracketeers – with 10 teams competing.

On the flip side, the men’s independent B division has 51 teams, and the men’s independent C division has 48 teams. However, for those lucky enough to be placed in these divisions, can breathe a little easier. Each will be broken into two separate brackets, with two separate champions consisting of 25 and 26 teams in B, and 24 teams each in C.

If a team plays all three of its preliminary games, then it can receive a first-round bye.

“I want everyone to play as much as possible,” Greenlee said. “They signed up to play and we want them to play.”

The tournaments will begin Feb. 19 and will be completed by the end of the month – so instead of “March Madness,” Iowa State enjoys its “February Frenzy.” All 18 championship games will be held during the first week of March.

The final game being played by the cream of the crop, the men’s A division, at 10 p.m. on March 7 at State Gym.