One of the most prominent annual signs that baseball season is almost at hand is the onset of the NCAA college basketball tournament. If you would like to submit a bracket in a High Heat Stats group, I’ve set one up at Yahoo’s “Tourney Pick ‘Em” website. Choose “Join a Group” and then enter Group ID# 79192 and password highheatstatspck.
How about doing the same thing based on RPI stats? Except for 3 favorite ACC teams, that’s how I based my picks, based on RPI. Which means my picks for virtually the entire first round were the higher-seeded teams. And why my West Regional is now toast thanks to New Mexico (#1 RPI in the country) losing in the first round, and Gonzaga in the second!
My Yahoo account had been inactivated and according to the message I got back it could take up to 24 hours to reactivate. When it does I’ll be back in with my picks but since I’ve only watched a couple of college hoops games all year I’m gonna be picking in the dark. I’m guessing that my chances of winning are about the same as Miami has of going to the World Series. If I DO win however I’m changing my tag line to March Madness Poll Winner Hartvig.
Someone has to almost open a thread for us to talk about it, but I’m still a little surprised too. Here’s some thoughts on it: -If you watched any of the US games, you learned to appreciate how much better umps have gotten at calling balls and strikes. Some of the calls were awful and brought back painful memories of Eric Gregg’s strike zone in the deciding game of the ’97 NLCS. Pitch f/x has been a good thing. -If the number of vuvuzelas allowed into the stadium is a number larger than zero, it makes watching the game on… Read more »
I added my bracket. I do them on the fly. In 2 pools so far and 2 online contests. This one is going nowhere, I can tell already: 2 #2s and 2 #1s in final four. 2 from Big East and 2 from the Big Ten. There has to be a 3, 4, or 5 seed in there, and a school from another conference definitely. It never goes logically, though sometimes all the usual suspects do show in the Big Dance.
Ken Pomeroy, one of the top stat-sophisticated college BB analysts around, uses a formula that produces Florida as the top-ranked team in the country. I’m putting my faith in him, as I personally know absolutely nothing about the 2013 teams (with so many players staying only a short time, college basketball has become more of an annual free-for-all that’s very hard track).
Ed, my ENTIRE FAMILY hates Duke, mainly because of Christian Laettner’s miracle shot to beat Kentucky in the early ’90s. The rule in the Howard household is to root for A.B.D. (Anybody But Duke). So it wasn’t easy to pick them as my champion, either.
But I think they’re flying under the radar right now. I picked them mainly because I thought few others would.
My sister went to Duke, and dated a basketball player. I’m not telling her about the contents of my bracket.
Also regarding Florida, Billy Donovan is a New York area native, with the old Big East connection via Providence in the Rick Pitino era. The Big East in the 80s is the Golden Age of college hoops for me. So I’m happy to go with Donovan’s Gators.
Ed, when I saw you went with Florida I kind of guessed you’d probably looked at Pomeroy, too
The Big East WAS killer in the ’80s. But everything was better in the ’80s.
I love the SEC, but without a doubt some of the better games I’ve ever watched were some of those Big East games back in the day, especially when Syracuse was playing in the Carrier Dome. Packing so many people into that stadium just took things to a whole ‘nother level of excitement.
And Georgetown was sort of the Duke of the ’80s, the team everyone loved to hate.
Regardless of what my bracket says (which puts Florida in the National Finals, but losing to Gonzaga), I’ll be openly rooting for Florida (or Duke, but I have Duke losing in the 2nd round) to win it all. I overlapped a year or two of elementary school with Florida’s Erik Murphy, and knew his brother Alex (who now plays for Duke) in middle school. The Murphys’ awesome talent was obvious even back then; our middle school basketball team had a dynastic run centered on the Murphy brothers. Unfortunately, they both went off to a private high school in Massachusetts, but… Read more »
I have seen some Florida games this year when they’ve played Kentucky (my team) and Tennessee. They looked unstoppable when UK played at Florida, but Kentucky beat them recently at Rupp Arena.
Yes, I pretty much was guessing on everyone else outside the SEC. I haven’t seen a lot of the top teams even once.
Only the first day and I’m already reminded why I hate doing this.
1) Picked Wichita State to win, then changed my mind and switched to Pitt. Oops!
2) Picked St. Mary’s to pull off an upset and they lose by two.
3) Picked Davidson to pull off a really big upset. They led the whole game only to lose on a last second shot. Ugh!!!
Regarding #1: That’s why I go with my gut. Unless a key player gets injured at the last minute, then I go back and change it, but to my knowledge there was none of that this year.
Regarding #2: Memphis is a surprise Sweet 16 if not Elite 8 team this year. You just watch.
Regarding #3: Me too. I absolutely cringed after that ending.
However, why does that mean that bracketology deserves your hate?
Thanks for pointing that out. I went to MU and saw many of their games this year and they are too inconsistent to be a 3rd seed. In fact, they ended up ranked 16th, which should make them a 4 at best. Davidson looked like, and played better than, a 14, while MU looked like, and played like, about a 10, until the last 2 minutes.
My bracket has been pitiful so far — 8 misses in the first 19 games, that’s pretty miserable. Fortunately only two of the eight teams I’ve missed with were teams I picked to go to the Sweet 16 and neither of those did I pick to go any further than that. So I’ve still got room to recover. But at some point I need to actually pick games correctly.
Joe Pos has an interesting post looking at how #1 seeds perform in the tournament based on how they do in their first round game. Basically #1 seeds that win by 20+ points do much better than #1 seeds that win by 19 or fewer points. And the last team, regardless of seed, to win the tournament after winning their first round game by 7 or fewer points (a la Kansas and Gonzaga this year) was Mighigan back in 1989.
http://joeposnanski.blogspot.com/2013/03/does-first-round-score-really-matter.html
UNC should have been able to hang on, I really cant stand watching these games that don’t involve the big ten, I mean why do these teams even have coaches, they do nothing? All these teams do is grab the rebound and immediately push push push and run into the lane at full speed and throw up some terrible shot. Also Davidson should have beaten Marquette and be in the sweet 16 right now, that was quite the choke job. I see no significant MLB players went to Davidson, Im surprised Bill Buckner didnt go there. And for the record… Read more »
Tell me about it. I had Wisconsin going to the final 4, and I still have Marquette going, but they’re going to have a tough time getting past Miami.
Should be some good games with big 10 teams this week, classic matchups really. Michigan-Kansas, Indiana-Syracuse, Michigan St-Duke, and Ohio State-Arizona.
Yeah, I rarely have the confidence to pick Ohio State to do well in the tournament. But when the bracket came out, it looked to me like an easy road to the Final Four. Then all the top seeds fell making it look like an even easier road.
I wouldn’t mind them losing a close game to Wichita State. But getting blown out by the 9 seed??? Ugh!!! That I don’t get at all.
I recently read a piece in an airline magazine (of all places) about the perilous state of college basketball – about how flow has largely disappeared from the game, that many players struggle with basic skills, etc. Well, I follow college hoops about as closely as bowling (okay, closer than that, but not by much). But, I figured, hey, final four, the best teams, it can’t be as bad as the writer was making out. So, I tuned in the last 10 minutes of the Michigan/Syracuse game. That writer nailed it. What should have been an exhilirating game with a… Read more »
Doug, I read things like the article you cited and both agree and disagree. I played major college ball (many moons ago) and coach here in Switzerland. I watch the NCAA tourney when the times permit and, like you, am often horrified. It seems as if no one can shoot anymore (except for unheralded freshmen and sixth men). Or make entry passes to big men. Or set good picks, etc. But I wonder if it’s not the incredible athleticism of these guys making such basics that much harder (every single player these days is a lot more athletic than I… Read more »
I’ve long thought that high-level basketball might benefit from expanding the playing area of the court, and perhaps even raising the rim. As the players have gotten bigger and faster, the physical dimensions of the contest area have remained unchanged, to the detriment of the esthetics of the game, I think. The endless intentional fouling at the end of games is not my favorite thing either. It seems to me only fair that the team that is fouled should always have the option of taking one foul shot and keeping the ball, in lieu of taking two foul shots. That… Read more »
