One of the highlights of the NCAA tournament is that moment on Selection Sunday when you see the name of a school you’ve never heard of and think to yourself, “hey, that’s a pretty great/odd/interesting/weird name for a university.” In the interest of that — a fascination of mine since I started compiling brackets in a spiral notebook in 1990 — we present the FTW College Name Bracket.

The rules are simple: We chose the best 64 school names from the 351 Division I squads and made ourselves a bracket. We’re looking for fun, different names, which eliminates most state schools. (Sorry, Kentucky; though you might have a shot Vermont). Most importantly, we aren’t seeding each selection, because that essentially means we’re picking the best names beforehand. The top 64 names were randomly placed in our brackets, which made for some tough, tough calls early. So without further adieu, the FTWCBNT (For The Win College Basketball Name Tournament) to identify the best college name in Division I basketball. (That acronym would not make the list.)

East

We have schools named after hats (Stetson), Niles’ unseen wife from Frasier (Marist), guys with fantastic middle initials (Stephen F. Austin) and just a cool-sounding Ivy League name that’s fun to say and write (Dartmouth). UCLA rolls off the tongue, Temple is a great school name that confuses f0lks (why is it called Temple if it’s not a predominantly Jewish university?), Wake Forest is neither a wake nor a forest (discuss) and Iona leads to the start of hundreds of bad jokes (say it slowly). But, in the end, it came down to Louisville and Houston Baptist.

The first is one of college basketball’s bluebloods, from a city that’s mispronounced even by the most seasoned NCAA vets. (It’s LOO-a-vull.) The other sounds like the hospital you went to for your gallbladder removal. Advantage: Medicine pays more than linguistics.

Midwest

Why is Army called Army if the school is officially named “The United States Military Academy at West Point?” If it were just West Point, the Cadets might have advanced farther instead of losing to a school named after an old soap opera that once starred a guy named A. That’s it, just A.

As for other schools, Seton Hall sounds like a high-school basketball powerhouse (which is not a bad thing), Quinnipiac makes it by it by virtue of being only one of three D1 schools with a “Q” in its name and the only with it at the front. (Can you name the other two? One also makes this bracket: Duquesne, while the other just missed out: Marquette.) In other news, I’m a 33-year-old man who still chuckles when he sees Austin Peay and Longwood. Wofford sounds like something you’d order for breakfast and IUPUI (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis) gets the award for most unnecessary name.

(Come on, you have the brainpower of TWO fine universities. Let’s think this through a little better.) Though IUPUI is interesting, it lost to Army in the equivalent of a 104-57 blowout, which is odd because Army’s never made the NCAA tournament. But in the end, it’s Incarnate Word, a team in just its second year at the top division of basketball that wins this quarter. Incarnate Word. I can’t believe that hasn’t yet been the title of a Nas album.

First Names of People/South

Though the schools were randomly placed, once I realized how many colleges that double as first names were in this bracket, I added a few more to honor the theme. These schools include Troy, Howard, William, Mary, Lamar, Drake, Bryant and Winthrop. The last seven names sounds like roll call at the Princeton Club. Drake lost in the first round because — and this is a note to all you youngsters out there — Drake is horrible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVeVF20Nw6k

Real Sports is great, but Bryant still couldn’t get a W. (If there was a Deford, Goldberg, Kremer or Scott Pelley University, they might have won.) Ball St. is always a fun one and who doesn’t love seeing Hawaii in the big dance, but our battle in the Elite Eight is between Troy and Winthrop. It’s the surfer versus an entitled blue blood who loses everything because some old, rich men make a dollar bet. And though Winthorpe (yes, they’re spelled and pronounced differently, but tell me you don’t think of Trading Places when you see Winthrop basketball on TV) and Valentine gain everything at the end of the movie, wasn’t the eventual loser in that film not Mortimer and Randolph, but the brief era of Eddie Murphy’s hilarity? (Miss you, old Eddie. Miss you every day.)

West

Where’s Edwardsville? Doesn’t Maryland Eastern Shore know people from Maryland don’t call the beach “the shore?” LIU Brooklyn surely needs more shout-outs in Jay Z songs. Still, cool names all. George Mason and James Madison were American statesmen who get their whole names in the colleges named after them, not just partway, like Georgetown. (Sadly, if you polled most of America on which one was president, half would probably get it wrong and most of the other half would only get it right because it was a multiple choice answer of two.) And did you know Milwaukee had a team? I’m sure Alice Cooper did.

The Citadel vs. Grand Canyon was the toughest decision of the entire bracket. One describes a great fortress and sounds like the title to a season finale of Game of Thrones, but the fact that The Citadel rarely plays good enough defense to live up to its name (it’s one of five original D1 schools to never make the NCAA tournament) and the fact that the Grand Canyon is the coolest freaking thing in the world gives the nod to the (looks up name of team) Antelopes. Oh, well Antelopes just clinches it anyway. Great nickname for a school I didn’t know existed before today. But don’t take this as a knock, The Citadel. You’d have come out of any other region. Sometimes you eat the bracket and, well, sometimes the bracket eats you.

The Final Four

No one likes going to the hospital, but everyone would have liked what should have been the follow-up to Illmatic, so Incarnate Word wins that Final Four matchup easily. The other wasn’t as easy, with Winthrop and Grand Canyon fighting until the final seconds. Then, with the clock winding down, we looked at this picture and had ourselves a Final Four buzzer beater.

So which school wins FTW’s coolest college name contest? This may — nay — WILL be the most important vote you ever make.