One one side of the Final Four bracket, you have Kentucky and the University of Connecticut going at it in a battle of traditional basketball powers. On the other side, however, upstarts reign supreme in the form of Virginia Commonwealth and the Butler Bulldogs. While it’s true this is Butler’s second-straight trip to the Final Four, their appearance in the 2011 Final Four still comes as a surprise. That being said, whatever shock Butler’s inclusion may cause, it’s being overshadowed by completely unexpected VCU Rams.

While the details of VCU’s amazing run to the Final Four will be spared — learn more here if interested — the fact that the Rams are such and unexpected participant has had an impact in regards to Google searches. As is becoming the norm, whenever there’s a sporting event of note, certain Internet services like Google track the interest level of each team the only way they know how: with analytics.

According to Google’s blog, VCU is the most popular team, in terms of search volume. Of course, one of the main motivating factors in these “VCU” searches could very well be ignorance. When you take into account that VCU is not considered one of “big teams” of college basketball, a designation reserved for primarily for the BCS schools, the increased search volume is understandable.

When Google’s image is observed:

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It’s clear that, even though there are upstarts coming to the Final Four party, UConn and UK, popular teams in their own right, also receive a healthy share of Google’s search volume. Oddly enough, however, Kentucky’s search volume actually decreased as their also-unexpected run to the Final Four continued.

Google also posted their findings concerning the Women’s Final Four, and as you would expect, the most popular team in that bunch is Geno Auriemma’s UConn Huskies, and it’s not even close. Of course, this is the same team that broke the record for most wins in a row for college basketball — all of college basketball, including the men’s divisions — so their surrounding popularity is easy to understand.

With Google’s data in mind, who ya got in the Final Four? Will your picks mimic the search volume winner or do you decide using another method?

VCU is the top-searched team in the Final Four with searches for “VCU basketball” up 143% this week, Yahoo says. Kentucky is the second-most-searched team, followed by Butler and then UConn.

I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest a good portion of the people searching for VCU are people that have no idea who VCU is, and are therefore looking to find out.

The top coach searches are as follows:

1. Shaka Smart, VCU (searches up 2,199% this week)
2. Brad Stevens, Butler (searches up 416% this week)
3. John Calipari, Kentucky (searches up 252% this week)
4. Jim Calhoun, UConn

“VCU coach Shaka Smart has caught the country’s attention,” Yahoo says. “People seem most interested in his bio, wedding and ethnicity with searches for those things spiking off the charts on Yahoo!”

Some other nuggests from the search trends:

-  As Butler appears in the Final Four for its second straight year, there are 119% more searches this week for “Butler basketball” than there were during the same week last year.

- Searches for “unthinkable Final Four” and “lowest seed to make Final Four” are spiking off the charts this week, Yahoo says.

- Fewer people are searching for Final Four tickets. Searches this week for “Final Four tickets” on Yahoo! are 42% lower compared to searches last year,  and 94% lower compared to searches in 2009.

UConn’s Kemba Walker is the most-searched player in the Final Four – 2.4 times higher than searches for Kentucky’s Brandon Knight, 6.4 times higher than searches for Butler’s Matt Howard and 13.6 times higher than searches for VCU’s Jamie Skeen.

That being said, team popularity can be a boon, especially if it’s a college sport where much of a program’s success depends on how much talent can be recruited. Naturally, being a popular entity would help here. Maybe that’s why Duke does as well as it does when it comes to recruiting basketball players. According to one of the latest Harris polls — Just in time for March Madness!!! — the most popular team in land of college basketball is the Duke Blue Devils.

Before we continue, a simple question: Did Duke win? Oh, wait… Well, if Coach K can’t find some solace after losing to Arizona, perhaps he can find some in Duke’s popularity.

The poll reveals that while four of the original Sweet 16 are in the top 10, teams like the Kansas Jayhawks, the Arizona Wildcats, the Florida Gators — they were actually second in eBay’s “sales equal popularity” March Madness data crunch — and the Florida State Seminoles are not represented.

While the absence of FSU and Arizona might not be surprising, KU and Florida’s certainly are. Harris’ top ten:

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Apparently, everyone Harris polled believed the hype about the Big East being the best conference in college basketball. As for Duke’s latest college basketball win, it’s just business as usual for Harris Interactive. According to the Marketing Charts blog post:

Duke was also ranked #1 in 2008, with current #2 UNC tying for first last year and coming in first in 2009 and second in 2008.

I take what I said above back, because it seems like the only people Harris asked were residents of Durham and Chapel Hill… Maybe they ESPN’s array of on-air college basketball analysts, too.

Take eBay, for instance.

To celebrate the 2011 Tournament, eBay has released shopper data related to team memorabilia that’s been purchased. From there, the team with the most revenue spent was then projected as the tournament winner. In this case, say hello to the Ohio State Buckeyes, winners of eBay’s data crunch. According to the auction house, Ohio State had over $170,000 worth of memorabilia sold, while the second place team, the Florida Gators, was a closer runner-up with $162K worth of sales. Rounding out the “Final Four” of eBay’s data crunch are the Duke Blue Devils ($127,000), and the Kentucky Wildcats ($111K).

Oddly enough, three out of eBay’s four are still alive. Unfortunately for Duke, they ran into a freight train named Derrick Williams and were summarily bounced from the Tournament. As for eBay, they released a graphic of the data crunch findings, complete with every team in the Sweet 16 segment of the tournament:

The report goes on to reveal that the most expensive item bought during this crunch session was, “a 2011 Men’s Big East Basketball Tournament- All Sessions ticket package, for which one lucky fan paid $13,600.” Not sure if “lucky” is the right adjective there, but I digress.

Perhaps the oddest thing, at least to this contributor, has to do with the title of eBay’s report, “eBay Data Predicts Winner for College Basketball’s Big Event.” Ah, the struggle with the term “March Madness.” You can’t use the phrase to promote products, so eBay got a little hamstrung with the title. Clearly, we don’t need the name of the NCAA getting sullied, they do a good enough job of doing that themselves, and using “March Madness” in promotion materials would ruin the trademark. At least, that’s what the NCAA thinks.

Forget about how such an association would only help further promote the NCAA’s basketball tournament that much more. I mean, it’s not like phrase association — that is, people associating a phrase with the intended product — is good thing for businesses, right?

As businesses lose billions of dollars in productivity while employees focus on the tournament games, one such business is not losing much of anything. In fact, in regards to ESPN, the exact opposite is true. According to MultichannelNews.com, the Worldwide Leader in Sports received a record number of tournament bracket entries for their 2011 Tournament Challenge, racking up almost 6 million (5.9) entries, which is an increase of 24 percent from 2010′s total.

The post goes on to reveal that, at its peak, ESPN was receiving 5180 bracket entries per minute, or 86 a second. Clearly, in March, the madness of college basketball rules — at least for the first weekend — and as a place to post your bracket entries, ESPN’s tournament challenge apparently does too. It’s also clear that any loss businesses incur due to March Madness-infused lower productivity is ESPN’s (and other bracket challenge services) gain.

Perhaps some revenue-sharing is in order.

As for ESPN’s service, there are, of course, some in-depth analytics available about which teams were picked to go the farthest. According to ESPN’s “Who Picked Whom” page, Ohio State, Kansas, Duke and Pitt are the top four teams in terms of appearing in the National Championship game:

Championship Game
Ohio State – 25.9%
Kansas – 23.7%
Duke – 16.0%
Pittsburgh – 6.2%

The lowest percentage, 0.0, belongs to a number of schools, including first-round upset winner Morehead State. The Eagles are among the 25 teams who, according to the ESPN entries, have a zero percent chance of winning the National Championship. I wonder if the Louisville Cardinals share that same sentiment concerning Kenneth Faried and the rest of his Eagles teammates?

Because Domino’s is leveraging March Madness with its latest Facebook promotion — they are already considered the “Official Pizza of March Madness” — this competition is presented in the tournament format, with popular pizza styles getting the top seeds. The pizza that receives the most votes will advance to the next round, until their is only one style remaining.

16 pizzas will enter and only one will win.

Unfortunately, details about Domino’s bracket setup — that is, which pizzas will be in the tournament — are still under wraps because voting does not begin until tomorrow, March 17th. There is, however, a nifty graphic to remind their 2.2 million-plus Facebook fans about the promotion.

The pizza National Champion will be crowned during the Final Four, and without even looking at the participants, I’ve already got my money on pepperoni pizza destroying the competition. In fact, my Final Four of Pizza is any kind of derivative of these styles: Pepperoni, sausage, meat lovers and a meat and veggie combination.

What about you? What’s your favorite pizza style? Let us know in the comments.

The company has created a special page to help people manage their tournament experience over the next few weeks. Fans will be able to view an up-to-date tournament schedule, tour college campuses in Street View and click through to watch games on NCAA March Madness on Demand.

Google has included a “Distance Tool” as well. The Google Blog offers more details. “There’s been a long-running debate over whether teams playing closer to their home court have an advantage, we added a “Distance Tool” on the map to make it easier to measure how far schools have to travel from game to game.”

Watch the NCAA Tournament for Free

You may have caught Mike Sachoff’s article of March Madess on the IPad, but if you missed it, he talks about how last year the NCAA offered a paid app with a small fee to watch the games. This year, they are streaming free and boast having every game available to watch. I’ve got to say, I wish I had one of these bad boys when I was on Spring Break in college.

Watch Netflix Movies

Why need a portable dvd player if you have an IPad anyway? Personally, I find that watching a movie on a mobile device can be pretty unfulfilling given their generally microscopic screensize, but the IPad’s larger screen actually lends itself to watching movies on the go.

Read Marvel Digital Comics

Stoked for Thor, Captain America and the Avengers but don’t know what’s going on in the crazy comic book universe? Most people can’t be bothered to make special Wednesday trips to a local specialty store to pick up fairly pricey comic book floppys to polyethylene bag and store in multiple cardboard longboxes. Marvel Digital Comics is one a really cool way to make all this material accessible to those interested in the lore.

Use It as a Gaming Device

While not a powerhouse like the Playstation 3, there are some definite high quality options available for the gaming enthusiast. For instance, Labyrinth 2 HD takes full functionality of IPad features and actually alters the perspective of the 3D as you tilt and turn the device. Not only does it effect how it looks, but you can actually control the physics of the metal ball as it bounces about the maze. Other noteworthy titles with high marks across the board have been Plants vs. Zombies HD and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars HD.

Give It To Your Cat

“I CAN HAZ IPAD?”

This is very gen 1 IPad stuff but it’s a cat playing an IPad piano. Surely Iggy can justify her owner upgrading to IPad 2 this early in the game, right?

Although the NCAA will be streaming all the games live online, I expect to see some equally spectacular memories coming from twitter and Facebook this year. As social media’s relevance continues to gain, so does the crossover between social media and major social events like the NCAA tournament. The obvious place to start is on NCAA’s twitter and Facebook pages. The Facebook page seems to be a open venue for rooting for your favorite team, as already evident:

Michael MarrUniversity of Louisville will surprise everyone – go Cards!! 22 seconds ago · Like · Comment

Also look for some great lists of tweeps to follow during March. The Official NCAA March Madness twitter has a great list of college basketball coaches. Universities have done a great job utilizing these twitter accounts to promote their team:

and even their sponsors:

Enjoy the great college basketball action, and be sure to share your favorite lists, pages, tweeps, and other social media sources in the comments here.

The contest is inviting users to join the Tournaggeddon Yahoo Tourney Pick ‘Em group. Users will be asked to fill out their tourney selection before the March 17 tipoff of the tournament’s first game. During the selection process, Kenny Powers (Danny McBride) will offer users his input on every team and matchup to help create a bracket.

Links to join Tournageddon will be available on Yahoo and via the K-Swiss website and the K-Swiss Facebook page with secondary support from Twitter. Kenny will also take over a page on the K-Swiss Facebook page where people can find an app that invites users to challenge friends to college basketball selection and allows them to get updates, analyses and trash talk from Kenny throughout the Tournament.

The Tournageddon group page and message board will include Kenny’s custom “scientific analysis” of each team and game in the tournament, “must watch” game recommendations.

The campaign rollout includes banners and homepage takeovers with the Tournageddon messaging on Yahoo Sports and partner site, Citizen Sports, multiple ESPN platforms and a Facebook application (tournageddon.com).