Getty Image / Adam Bettcher / Mark Wilson
President Barack Obama has released his 2024 NCAA Tournament brackets for both the Men’s and Women’s Tournaments. For the second year in a row, Barry O has opted against picking Caitlin Clark to win the National Championship though he does have Iowa going further than last season.
In 2023, the 44th President of the United States picked Stanford to upset Iowa in the Elite 8 of the Women’s NCAA Tournament. As we now know, the 2023 tourney came down to Iowa vs LSU in the Championship Game and LSU blew out Caitlin Clark’s Hawkeyes 102-85.
This year, Barack Obama has picked Caitlin Clark’s Iowa to go further than he had the Hawkeyes going in 2023. However, Obama has picked Iowa to lose to undefeated South Carolina in the finals:
Barack Obama
President Obama picking Iowa to lose to South Carolina in the Championship Game is certainly a gamble. Caitlin Clark‘s team could quite possibly lose to LSU, Colorado, or UCLA before facing undefeated South Carolina in the Finals. But the only reason we’re talking about this is Barack has picked the best NCAA Tournament brackets of any US President over the years. The man knows ball and his brackets are always worth paying attention to.
As for President Obama’s Men’s Tournament bracket, he thinks the UCONN Huskies will go back-to-back and win it all again this year:
Barack Obama
The former President also shared a video from his ‘Bracketology’ podcast episode where he talks about the first year he did this publicly, 2009. That year he picked UNC to win it all and they did. He said “my bracket was beautiful” looking back at that year.
My picks are in! I sat down to talk about them with @CraigMalRob and @UKCoachCalipari on their podcast Ways To Win from @HGMedia. Check out our conversation wherever you get your podcasts. And please don’t rub it in when my bracket gets busted. https://t.co/pVLfuHjYmo pic.twitter.com/la2NTDh1z7
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) March 19, 2024
It will be interesting to look back in a few weeks and see how President Obama’s brackets did. Will Caitlin Clark see his pick against her and play with extra motivation? Or is she just happy to be competing one last time before the WNBA?