{"id":100598,"date":"2016-04-03T06:45:44","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T11:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=100598"},"modified":"2016-04-03T12:32:39","modified_gmt":"2016-04-03T17:32:39","slug":"the-final-four-2016-middleearth-march-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2016\/04\/03\/100598-the-final-four-2016-middleearth-march-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"The Final Four &#8211; Middle-earth March Madness &#8211; Gandalf vs. Galadriel &#8211; Morgoth vs. Beorn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"intro\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/2016-middleearthmadness-bracket-rd5.jpg\" class=\"no-lazyload\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/final-four2016-267x300.jpg\" alt=\"final-four2016\" width=\"267\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-100599 no-lazyload\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/final-four2016-267x300.jpg 267w, https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/final-four2016-600x675.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/final-four2016.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 267px) 100vw, 267px\" \/><\/a>While the NCAA Men&#8217;s Basketball Tournament may have set their final last night, we at TheOneRing.net are getting set for our Final Four match-ups!<\/p>\n<p>The winner of the Beauty division, Galadriel, will take on the two-time champion from the Brains division, Gandalf. In the 2012 edition of Middle-earth March Madness, Gandalf defeated Galadriel in the Elite Eight round&#8230;can he do it in 2016? If Gandalf wins this year, he will be our first repeat champion and will lead the total championship count with three. <\/p>\n<p>On the other side we have two first time Final Four combatants. Defeating Eowyn by just 9 votes, Beorn wins the Brawn division and moves on to face the ultimate Baddie &#8211; Morgoth! As an interesting side note, this is the first time Morgoth has made any type of run in Middle-earth March Madness. He has soundly defeated all combatants in this year&#8217;s event, but he is coming up against the top seed from the Brawn division in the form of Beorn. (Speaking of, which &#8216;form&#8217; will Beorn take in this match-up? We&#8217;ll let you decide.) It&#8217;s an ultimate battle of two number 1 seeds&#8230;let&#8217;s see who wins! <\/p>\n<p>Voting is now open in our Final Four! It will remain open until <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">April 4th<\/span> at 10pm ET. Our Final will be set and announced on <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">April 5th<\/span>. Follow after the break for a complete bracket image (<a href=\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/2016-middleearthmadness-bracket-rd5.jpg\" class=\"no-lazyload\">download it<\/a>), and to vote on all of our two Final Four match-ups! [<a href=\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/2016-middleearthmadness-bracket-rd5.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"no-lazyload\">Final Four Bracket<\/a>]  [<a href=\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/2016-middleearthmadness-bracket-rd4.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"no-lazyload\">Elite Eight Bracket<\/a>]  [<a href=\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/2016-middleearthmadness-bracket-rd3.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"no-lazyload\">Sweet Sixteen Bracket<\/a>] [<a href=\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/2016-middleearthmadness-bracket-rd2.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"no-lazyload\">Round 2 Bracket<\/a>] [<a href=\"http:\/\/www-images.theonering.org\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/2016-middleearthmadness-bracket-rd1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"no-lazyload\">Round 1 Bracket<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<br style=\"clear: both;\" \/><strong>FInal Four<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>April 3th &#8211; 4th 2016<\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"float: left; padding: 5px;\"><a id=\"pd_a_9372405\"><\/a><div class=\"CSS_Poll PDS_Poll\" id=\"PDI_container9372405\" style=\"\"><\/div><div id=\"PD_superContainer\"><\/div><noscript><a href=\"https:\/\/polldaddy.com\/p\/9372405\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Take Our Poll<\/a><\/noscript><\/div>\n<p><br style=\"clear: both;\" \/><\/p>\n<div style=\"float: left; padding: 5px;\"><a id=\"pd_a_9372406\"><\/a><div class=\"CSS_Poll PDS_Poll\" id=\"PDI_container9372406\" style=\"\"><\/div><div id=\"PD_superContainer\"><\/div><noscript><a href=\"https:\/\/polldaddy.com\/p\/9372406\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Take Our Poll<\/a><\/noscript><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><br style=\"clear: both;\" \/><\/p>\n<p><br style=\"clear: both;\" \/><br \/>\n<em>A note on how the bracket combatants were determined. TheOneRing.net created a document containing all combatants, sub divided into divisions. We asked staff to cast sixteen votes per division, with the votes having a weight of 1-4. Each staffer cast four 4 votes, four 3 votes, four 2 votes and four 1 votes in each division. We then totaled all the votes from each division to determine their rank, and ultimately placed those into our bracket for seeding.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While the NCAA Men&#8217;s Basketball Tournament may have set their final last night, we at TheOneRing.net are getting&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":100599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,197,107,22,6,148,149,156,159,152],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-fans","category-gaming","category-headlines","category-tolkbooks","category-hobbit","category-lotr","category-torn-announcements","category-torn-community","category-tolkien"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/final-four2016.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-qay","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100598"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100606,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100598\/revisions\/100606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}