SWC75
Bored Historian
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Now it’s time to pick my bracket. Once again my goal isn’t to get everything right or even to win anything, although that would be nice. My goal is to minimize the precious seconds of my life that slip away while I figure this out.
For years I carefully researched every team and applied every theory I could think of to each game and then, with this music playing:
After doing that 63 times, my beautiful prediction sheet was ready to conquer the world! After the first weekend, it looked like this:
Fly the Friendly Skies!
Then I came up with a plan: figure out the NCAA records based on seeding to determine how many first round upsets there usually are and focus on choosing that number. Then figure out the likely Final Four participants based on historical seeding and focus on who that will be. Those two determinations will give you results for the vast majority of your games and many of them you don’t have to look anything up. Thus my annual “NCAA Seed Stats” post.
NCAA Seed Stats (Updated through 2018)
That gave me some structure to streamline the decision-making but didn’t deal with a major problem: I’m lousy at predicting basketball games. I’d pick my 8 upsets a year and there would usually be 7 or 8 or 9 upsets but they would be the wrong upsets. From that point on the tournament tends to get chalky and so did my predictions, so that’s good, (I prescribe plenty of chalk and a little bit of charcoal to make it interesting), but I didn’t have enough teams still in the tournament and several games that had yet to be played were already ‘losers’.
Meanwhile, I had been in search of a formula for evaluating the regular season accomplishments of teams. I like evolving standings: it’s like watching a horse race where each horse is moving forward but the rates vary and their ranking varied with it until you get to the stretch and see who finally wins. I wanted it to be something simply and understandable instead of something you need a computer to figure out and that produces numbers with decimal points. I noticed that there was much discussion about how teams had done against ranked teams at the end of each regular season: that was to be a major indicator of whether they deserved to be in the tournament, BCS Bowl games, etc. I thought that could be reduced to a metric: Most games in both sports are won by 25 or less points. How about giving a team from 1-25 points for playing a ranked team, the exact number being dependent on the ranking of the opponent in the last poll, (25 for 1st , 24 for 2nd , etc. down to 1 for 25th ). Then add or subtract the point differential in the game. If you play the 10th ranked team, you get 16 points for playing them. if you lose to them by 10, that gets reduced to 6 points. Then you add up these ‘points’ vs. ranked teams as the season goes along and you have a number that represents how that team has done against ranked teams.
Of course rankings change. You could play a 10th ranked teams that later goes into a slump and drops from the rankings or you could play an unranked team that winds up 10th. It could be argued that I should wait for the end of the season to compute the number based on the final poll. But I wanted to see the standings evolve as the season goes along. And it could be argued that the 10th ranked team was really the 10th best team when you played them: they had injuries, suspension, dissension, a rough schedule or maybe just was snake-bit, losing close games after that. And the unranked team may have been deservedly unranked when you played them but got better after that are young players matured, injured players returned and they just got more confident. So I chose to go with the week-by-week model.
Last year, when faced with the task of filling out my NCAA sheet again, knowing that I was good at seeing the question but not so good at coming up with the answers. I decided: why not use the ART points to make the decisions for me? It wouldn’t be precisely chalk but it would be close enough that I’d probably do better than I had been doing. So I filled out my sheet based on that. Then I got hit with the worst possible thing that can happen to an NCAA bracket: My chosen national champion lost in the first round! It crushed my bracket- except that this bracket sheet had more resilience than I anticipated and despite this, I did better than I had in years, (I don’t keep the sheets: they get recycled in April so I can’t quote numbers). I’ve this decided to take this approach again. It does have one limitation: the schools in the “one bid” conferences don’t’ have the steady diet of ranked teams that you get in the power conferences. So, I’m going to use the ART point total as a guideline rather than a punch-press.
Against Ranked Teams (basketball) Week 19
That will involve a bit of research, (I’m not going beyond scores) and some gut feelings but I’m not going to sweat the details.
So…
STEP 1: Pick all the 1 seeds (99.3%) and 2 seeds (94.1%) to win in the first round. Yeah, Maryland-Baltimore County. It took 34 years for a 16 to beat a 1. You wanna bet that it will happen two years in arrow? You just picked 8 of the 63 games.
If you ARE asked to pick the “First Four”, pick Arizona State (59 points ART) over St. John’s (31) and Temple (20) over Belmont (0). The others are eanie-meanie-minie-mo. I love the name combination of Fairly Ridiculous vs. Prairie View Neither played a ranked team. North Dakota State is -16 ART and North Carolina Central is -17. Fairleigh-Dickinson is 0-5 in the NCAA D-1 Tournament. Prairie View is 0-1. I’ll pick FDU for making it to more tournaments. The Bison beat Oklahoma in the 2014 tournament: they are 1-3 overall. NC Central is 0-3 in the tournament. Both teams are 18-15. I’ll go with the Bison. Maybe the football team will inspire them. None of these teams are likely to win a game in the next round, (although we did last year).
STEP 2: Pick on each of the 14, 13, 12 and 11 seeds to win.
On the 14 vs. 3 level Yale is -10 ART, LSU +93. Northern Kentucky played no ranked teams. Texas Tech is +67. Old Dominion is +7, Purdue +72. Georgia State is -11, Houston is +30. LSU - Yale has the biggest gap but is going through some distraction with the suspension of their coach. But no players have been suspended in the scandal and this is the SEC regular season champion. Houston –Georgia State has the smallest gap but Houston was a 31-3 American conference champion. Georgia State beat an 18-11 Wisconsin team by a point in 2001, then lost to Maryland by 19. That was a 29-5 GSU team. They beat a 24-10 Baylor team by a point in 2015, then lost to Xavier by 8 with a 25-10 team. They are 24-9 now. I’m just not feeling it. ODU beat us and won their conference tournament. They are 26-8. Purdue’s kind of a one-man team with Carson Edwards scoring 23 a game. I’ll go with the Monarchs as my pick here.
On the 13 vs. 4 level St. Louis is -9 ART, Virginia Tech +91. Vermont is +8, Florida State is +142. Northeastern is -18, Kansas +134. UC Irvine didn’t play a ranked team. Kansas State is +65. UC Irvine has the smallest gap and they are a 30-5 team. That’s good enough for me.
On the 12 vs. 5 level Liberty hasn’t played a ranked team, Mississippi State is +51. Murray State is +14 but Marquette is +101. New Mexico State is +21 but Auburn is +112. Oregon is +26, Wisconsin +109. Liberty has the closest gap but that’s because they didn’t play a ranked team, not because they did well against them. They lost to Vanderbilt, Georgetown and Alabama but all were by 9-10 points. MSU beat Vandy by 16 and Alabama by 19 but they also lost to the Tide by 4. Liberty was 28-6 and tied for the Atlantic Sun title at 14-2. Murray State has Ja Morant (24.6ppg) and Marquette has Markus Howard (25.0) but the rest of Marquette will beat the rest of Murray State. New Mexico State is 30-4 and has incredible balance (one double figure scorer at 11.3ppg but they average 78 points a game). But Auburn looked awfully good against Tennessee in the SEC final. I like the looks of Oregon vs. Wisconsin. The Ducks came back from losing Bol Bol to win their last 8 in a row, sweeping through the Pac 12 tournament. They are a power conference team. They are 23-12 to Wisconsin’s 23-10. The Pac 12 was weak but they are still a power conference. I’ll go with the Ducks.
On the 11 vs. 6 level Temple (+20) plays Maryland (+79). Arizona State (+59) plays Buffalo (+6). Ohio State (+8) plays Iowa State (+156). St. Mary’s (+30) plays Villanova (+65). Buffalo appears the most vulnerable but they are 31-3 and ripped through the MAC. They beat us handily as well as West Virginia, and San Francisco. They lost a shoot-out with Marquette as Markus Howard went off for 45 points. I don’t see the Bulls going one and done. I’ll go with St. Mary’s beating a Villanova team that isn’t near the level they have been when winning their national championships.
So, I’ve just picked 16 more games.
STEP 3: Pick two 10 seeds and two 9 seeds to win.
On the 10 vs. 7 line, Richard Pitino’s Minnesota team, (+61) plays Louisville (+166). Florida (+97) plays Nevada-Reno (+12). Seton Hall (+29) plays Wofford (+4). Iowa, (+65) plays Cincinnati (+27). Nevada has been high in the rankings all season, topping off at 5th. Florida is 19-15 and has not been ranked all season. Nevada played one ranked team- Arizona State, who was ranked 20th when the Wolfpack beat them 72-66. Florida lost to Florida State by 21, Michigan State by 4, Tennessee by 11, Mississippi State by 3, Kentucky by 11, Tennessee by 12, beat LSU by 5 in OT, lost to them by 1 in OT, lost to Kentucky by 9, Beat LSU again by 3 and lost to Auburn by 3. They are battle tested but that doesn’t mean they are better than Nevada. Wofford is another 29-4 team from a lesser conference but they have not been as highly ranked (19th has bene their ceiling). They opened with an 11 point loss to North Carolina and later lost by 25 to Kansas and 11 to Mississippi State. Seton Hall has another high-scoring guard in Myles Powell, (22.9ppg). They beat Kentucky by 1 in OT. They had a 5-9 stretch but have won 4 of 5 since, including four games ART, three of which they won. The fourth was 2 point loss to NOVA in the Big East final. I like them to knock off Wofford. I’ll pick Iowa to beat Cincinnati based on ART.
On the 9 vs. 8 level, Central Florida (+37) plays Virginia Commonwealth (+14). Baylor (+6) plays the ‘Cuse (+90). Washington (+17) plays Utah State (+11) Oklahoma (-4) plays Mississippi (62+). Give me JB and Hop to win but I need another 9. Central Florida seems the obvious choice.
Now I’ve picked the entire first round, 32 of 63 games, (or 36 of 67 with the play-in games).
STEP 4 – Who will win second round games?
Based on historical averages, (this taken from my Update NCAA Seed Stats post):
“If you go with percentages, pick 2 nine seeds to upset eight seeds but that's as far as they go. Also pick two 10 seeds to win in the first round. Give one of the winners a trip to the sweet 16 but that’s it. Pick one each of the 11, 12, 13 and 14 seeds to win. They will stop there.” Nine seeds are 6-60 against #1 seeds in the second round. Ten seeds are 21-32 in the second round. I’ll be very hopeful we can beat Gonzaga again in a second round game but after we’ve twice beaten them there, it might be their turn. So, if my predictions hold, I’m looking at Seton Hall (+29) vs. Kentucky (+138) and Iowa (+65) vs. Tennessee (+112). At this point we are dealing with teams that played plenty of ranked teams so the stat becomes more meaningful and I’ll do what the numbers tell me and pick Iowa to knock off the Vols. Then they will lose in the Sweet 16. I’ve got a problem- two of them actually. Two of my first round upset teams are bracketed against each other – in two spots in the South. I’ve got 12 seed Oregon (+26) playing 13 seed UC Irvine (0) and 11 seed St. Mary’s plays 14 seed Old Dominion. Rather than re-think the first round, I’ll go with the seedings and the ART and pick Oregon and St. Mary’s to win those games and to lose in the next round. That should provide some charcoal to go with the chalk.
That’s 7 more games I’ve picked. That eliminates the first round upset teams. Probably one of them will make a run beyond that but, rather than guess at which one, (who had Loyola last year?), I’ll tend to go with the track record from here on.
STEP 5: Pick your Final Four teams.
From NCAA Seed Stats: “The chances of a team seeded less than #4 making the final four, (based on a percentage of who made it) are 17%, (only 23 of 136).” In 34 years 55 #1 seeds have made the Final four, 29 #2 seeds have made it, 16 #3 seeds 13 #4 seeds and 23 seeds below that. So the numbers suggest I should pick two #1 seeds, a #2 seed and a #3 or #4 seed unless I want to go out on a limb and pick someone below that.
The first round upsets I picked and the resulting additional games I had to pick in the South have greatly weakened that regional. (It often seems to happen that way: too many upsets collapse a regional and open the way for somebody.) Virginia will be on a mission after last year. They look like they could be handled against Florida State in the ACCT but they would seem to have the virtues you’d look for in a Final Four team: they play good defense, get good guard play and can shoot the rock. It’s time for Tony Bennett to make the Last Dance of the Big Dance.
Donna Summer - Last Dance (HQ)
I heard on the radio that Duke was the biggest Vegas favorite to win it all since the 2015 Kentucky team. Of course that Kentucky team didn’t win the title that year, although they did make the Final Four. Maybe because they were unable to blow out SU in three tries, (of course they were never 100% but neither were we), I have a feeling that somebody will beat them along the way. Tom Izzo hasn’t made the Final Four in a while (he was in that 2015 FF) and his team has +260 ART, neatly as much as Duke, (+277). I’ll predict the Spartans will find a way to tether Zion to earth and hold his teammates down and win the East regional.
I really like North Carolina. I like their personnel. I love the way they play, running at every opportunity, (I wish we would play that way). I look at the other teams I have in the round of 32 in that regional: Washington, Auburn, Kansas, Iowa State, Houston and Kentucky, who I already have Seton Hall, and I don’t see any of theme beating the Tar Heels, Although I’ll be rooting for Mike to knock them off and Kentucky to make it interesting. But I’ll put UNC in my final Four.
That leaves the West regional where I’ll pick a #3 or #4 seed. I prefer Florida State (+142) to Texas Tech. They made it to the Elite 8 last year and looked good against us and in the ACCT. They’ll beat Gonzaga in the Sweet 16. That gives me 12 more games plus the two that would match Duke with Michigan State.
STEP 6: Fill in the gaps.
I’ve got 8 pre- Final Four games I haven’t selected yet: #4 Virginia Tech (+91) vs. #5 Mississippi State (+51) and #3 Louisiana State (+93) vs. #6 Maryland (+79) in the East, #3 Texas Tech (+67) vs. #6 Buffalo (+6) and #2 Michigan (+195) vs. #7 Nevada-Reno (+12) in the West, followed by the winners of those games meeting in the Sweet 16. In the Midwest I need to do #4 Kansas (+134) vs. #5 Auburn (+112), #3 Houston (+30) vs. #6 Iowa State (+156) and then the winner of that one vs. Kentucky (+138).
I’ll go with the Hokies over Mississippi State. Then they lose to Duke. I think a first round win over Yale will clear some of the distractions from LSU. A team under stress either comes together or falls apart. I’m guessing they will beat Maryland but lose to the Spartans. Buffalo and Nevada-Reno are under-rated by the ART stat. I think Michigan will have what it takes to tame the Wolfpack but I like Buffalo over Texas Tech. Michigan will beat them but lose to Florida State. Kansas has stumbled to a 25-9 record after a 10-0 start. Auburn has won 8 in a row and the SEC tournament. I’ll go with them to beat Kansas but lose to UNC. I will go with the big ART gap and pick Iowa State to beat Houston but I like Kentucky over them despite a small ART gap.
That’s 60 of 63, (or 64 of 67) games. One more step.
STEP 7: Pick the Final Four games.
I’ll take Michigan State (+260) over Florida State (+142). North Carolina lost to Virginia 61-69 but also twice beat Duke who twice beat Virginia. If they had won that back-and-forth game with Duke in the ACCT that they lost by 1 point they probably would have beaten FSU in the final and be the #1 overall seed in this tournament. Roy Williams has already brought three national titles to Chapel Hill and I predict a fourth.
So now I’ve picked the whole thing and retained my sanity. Or what there was of it.
For years I carefully researched every team and applied every theory I could think of to each game and then, with this music playing:
After doing that 63 times, my beautiful prediction sheet was ready to conquer the world! After the first weekend, it looked like this:
Fly the Friendly Skies!
Then I came up with a plan: figure out the NCAA records based on seeding to determine how many first round upsets there usually are and focus on choosing that number. Then figure out the likely Final Four participants based on historical seeding and focus on who that will be. Those two determinations will give you results for the vast majority of your games and many of them you don’t have to look anything up. Thus my annual “NCAA Seed Stats” post.
NCAA Seed Stats (Updated through 2018)
That gave me some structure to streamline the decision-making but didn’t deal with a major problem: I’m lousy at predicting basketball games. I’d pick my 8 upsets a year and there would usually be 7 or 8 or 9 upsets but they would be the wrong upsets. From that point on the tournament tends to get chalky and so did my predictions, so that’s good, (I prescribe plenty of chalk and a little bit of charcoal to make it interesting), but I didn’t have enough teams still in the tournament and several games that had yet to be played were already ‘losers’.
Meanwhile, I had been in search of a formula for evaluating the regular season accomplishments of teams. I like evolving standings: it’s like watching a horse race where each horse is moving forward but the rates vary and their ranking varied with it until you get to the stretch and see who finally wins. I wanted it to be something simply and understandable instead of something you need a computer to figure out and that produces numbers with decimal points. I noticed that there was much discussion about how teams had done against ranked teams at the end of each regular season: that was to be a major indicator of whether they deserved to be in the tournament, BCS Bowl games, etc. I thought that could be reduced to a metric: Most games in both sports are won by 25 or less points. How about giving a team from 1-25 points for playing a ranked team, the exact number being dependent on the ranking of the opponent in the last poll, (25 for 1st , 24 for 2nd , etc. down to 1 for 25th ). Then add or subtract the point differential in the game. If you play the 10th ranked team, you get 16 points for playing them. if you lose to them by 10, that gets reduced to 6 points. Then you add up these ‘points’ vs. ranked teams as the season goes along and you have a number that represents how that team has done against ranked teams.
Of course rankings change. You could play a 10th ranked teams that later goes into a slump and drops from the rankings or you could play an unranked team that winds up 10th. It could be argued that I should wait for the end of the season to compute the number based on the final poll. But I wanted to see the standings evolve as the season goes along. And it could be argued that the 10th ranked team was really the 10th best team when you played them: they had injuries, suspension, dissension, a rough schedule or maybe just was snake-bit, losing close games after that. And the unranked team may have been deservedly unranked when you played them but got better after that are young players matured, injured players returned and they just got more confident. So I chose to go with the week-by-week model.
Last year, when faced with the task of filling out my NCAA sheet again, knowing that I was good at seeing the question but not so good at coming up with the answers. I decided: why not use the ART points to make the decisions for me? It wouldn’t be precisely chalk but it would be close enough that I’d probably do better than I had been doing. So I filled out my sheet based on that. Then I got hit with the worst possible thing that can happen to an NCAA bracket: My chosen national champion lost in the first round! It crushed my bracket- except that this bracket sheet had more resilience than I anticipated and despite this, I did better than I had in years, (I don’t keep the sheets: they get recycled in April so I can’t quote numbers). I’ve this decided to take this approach again. It does have one limitation: the schools in the “one bid” conferences don’t’ have the steady diet of ranked teams that you get in the power conferences. So, I’m going to use the ART point total as a guideline rather than a punch-press.
Against Ranked Teams (basketball) Week 19
That will involve a bit of research, (I’m not going beyond scores) and some gut feelings but I’m not going to sweat the details.
So…
STEP 1: Pick all the 1 seeds (99.3%) and 2 seeds (94.1%) to win in the first round. Yeah, Maryland-Baltimore County. It took 34 years for a 16 to beat a 1. You wanna bet that it will happen two years in arrow? You just picked 8 of the 63 games.
If you ARE asked to pick the “First Four”, pick Arizona State (59 points ART) over St. John’s (31) and Temple (20) over Belmont (0). The others are eanie-meanie-minie-mo. I love the name combination of Fairly Ridiculous vs. Prairie View Neither played a ranked team. North Dakota State is -16 ART and North Carolina Central is -17. Fairleigh-Dickinson is 0-5 in the NCAA D-1 Tournament. Prairie View is 0-1. I’ll pick FDU for making it to more tournaments. The Bison beat Oklahoma in the 2014 tournament: they are 1-3 overall. NC Central is 0-3 in the tournament. Both teams are 18-15. I’ll go with the Bison. Maybe the football team will inspire them. None of these teams are likely to win a game in the next round, (although we did last year).
STEP 2: Pick on each of the 14, 13, 12 and 11 seeds to win.
On the 14 vs. 3 level Yale is -10 ART, LSU +93. Northern Kentucky played no ranked teams. Texas Tech is +67. Old Dominion is +7, Purdue +72. Georgia State is -11, Houston is +30. LSU - Yale has the biggest gap but is going through some distraction with the suspension of their coach. But no players have been suspended in the scandal and this is the SEC regular season champion. Houston –Georgia State has the smallest gap but Houston was a 31-3 American conference champion. Georgia State beat an 18-11 Wisconsin team by a point in 2001, then lost to Maryland by 19. That was a 29-5 GSU team. They beat a 24-10 Baylor team by a point in 2015, then lost to Xavier by 8 with a 25-10 team. They are 24-9 now. I’m just not feeling it. ODU beat us and won their conference tournament. They are 26-8. Purdue’s kind of a one-man team with Carson Edwards scoring 23 a game. I’ll go with the Monarchs as my pick here.
On the 13 vs. 4 level St. Louis is -9 ART, Virginia Tech +91. Vermont is +8, Florida State is +142. Northeastern is -18, Kansas +134. UC Irvine didn’t play a ranked team. Kansas State is +65. UC Irvine has the smallest gap and they are a 30-5 team. That’s good enough for me.
On the 12 vs. 5 level Liberty hasn’t played a ranked team, Mississippi State is +51. Murray State is +14 but Marquette is +101. New Mexico State is +21 but Auburn is +112. Oregon is +26, Wisconsin +109. Liberty has the closest gap but that’s because they didn’t play a ranked team, not because they did well against them. They lost to Vanderbilt, Georgetown and Alabama but all were by 9-10 points. MSU beat Vandy by 16 and Alabama by 19 but they also lost to the Tide by 4. Liberty was 28-6 and tied for the Atlantic Sun title at 14-2. Murray State has Ja Morant (24.6ppg) and Marquette has Markus Howard (25.0) but the rest of Marquette will beat the rest of Murray State. New Mexico State is 30-4 and has incredible balance (one double figure scorer at 11.3ppg but they average 78 points a game). But Auburn looked awfully good against Tennessee in the SEC final. I like the looks of Oregon vs. Wisconsin. The Ducks came back from losing Bol Bol to win their last 8 in a row, sweeping through the Pac 12 tournament. They are a power conference team. They are 23-12 to Wisconsin’s 23-10. The Pac 12 was weak but they are still a power conference. I’ll go with the Ducks.
On the 11 vs. 6 level Temple (+20) plays Maryland (+79). Arizona State (+59) plays Buffalo (+6). Ohio State (+8) plays Iowa State (+156). St. Mary’s (+30) plays Villanova (+65). Buffalo appears the most vulnerable but they are 31-3 and ripped through the MAC. They beat us handily as well as West Virginia, and San Francisco. They lost a shoot-out with Marquette as Markus Howard went off for 45 points. I don’t see the Bulls going one and done. I’ll go with St. Mary’s beating a Villanova team that isn’t near the level they have been when winning their national championships.
So, I’ve just picked 16 more games.
STEP 3: Pick two 10 seeds and two 9 seeds to win.
On the 10 vs. 7 line, Richard Pitino’s Minnesota team, (+61) plays Louisville (+166). Florida (+97) plays Nevada-Reno (+12). Seton Hall (+29) plays Wofford (+4). Iowa, (+65) plays Cincinnati (+27). Nevada has been high in the rankings all season, topping off at 5th. Florida is 19-15 and has not been ranked all season. Nevada played one ranked team- Arizona State, who was ranked 20th when the Wolfpack beat them 72-66. Florida lost to Florida State by 21, Michigan State by 4, Tennessee by 11, Mississippi State by 3, Kentucky by 11, Tennessee by 12, beat LSU by 5 in OT, lost to them by 1 in OT, lost to Kentucky by 9, Beat LSU again by 3 and lost to Auburn by 3. They are battle tested but that doesn’t mean they are better than Nevada. Wofford is another 29-4 team from a lesser conference but they have not been as highly ranked (19th has bene their ceiling). They opened with an 11 point loss to North Carolina and later lost by 25 to Kansas and 11 to Mississippi State. Seton Hall has another high-scoring guard in Myles Powell, (22.9ppg). They beat Kentucky by 1 in OT. They had a 5-9 stretch but have won 4 of 5 since, including four games ART, three of which they won. The fourth was 2 point loss to NOVA in the Big East final. I like them to knock off Wofford. I’ll pick Iowa to beat Cincinnati based on ART.
On the 9 vs. 8 level, Central Florida (+37) plays Virginia Commonwealth (+14). Baylor (+6) plays the ‘Cuse (+90). Washington (+17) plays Utah State (+11) Oklahoma (-4) plays Mississippi (62+). Give me JB and Hop to win but I need another 9. Central Florida seems the obvious choice.
Now I’ve picked the entire first round, 32 of 63 games, (or 36 of 67 with the play-in games).
STEP 4 – Who will win second round games?
Based on historical averages, (this taken from my Update NCAA Seed Stats post):
“If you go with percentages, pick 2 nine seeds to upset eight seeds but that's as far as they go. Also pick two 10 seeds to win in the first round. Give one of the winners a trip to the sweet 16 but that’s it. Pick one each of the 11, 12, 13 and 14 seeds to win. They will stop there.” Nine seeds are 6-60 against #1 seeds in the second round. Ten seeds are 21-32 in the second round. I’ll be very hopeful we can beat Gonzaga again in a second round game but after we’ve twice beaten them there, it might be their turn. So, if my predictions hold, I’m looking at Seton Hall (+29) vs. Kentucky (+138) and Iowa (+65) vs. Tennessee (+112). At this point we are dealing with teams that played plenty of ranked teams so the stat becomes more meaningful and I’ll do what the numbers tell me and pick Iowa to knock off the Vols. Then they will lose in the Sweet 16. I’ve got a problem- two of them actually. Two of my first round upset teams are bracketed against each other – in two spots in the South. I’ve got 12 seed Oregon (+26) playing 13 seed UC Irvine (0) and 11 seed St. Mary’s plays 14 seed Old Dominion. Rather than re-think the first round, I’ll go with the seedings and the ART and pick Oregon and St. Mary’s to win those games and to lose in the next round. That should provide some charcoal to go with the chalk.
That’s 7 more games I’ve picked. That eliminates the first round upset teams. Probably one of them will make a run beyond that but, rather than guess at which one, (who had Loyola last year?), I’ll tend to go with the track record from here on.
STEP 5: Pick your Final Four teams.
From NCAA Seed Stats: “The chances of a team seeded less than #4 making the final four, (based on a percentage of who made it) are 17%, (only 23 of 136).” In 34 years 55 #1 seeds have made the Final four, 29 #2 seeds have made it, 16 #3 seeds 13 #4 seeds and 23 seeds below that. So the numbers suggest I should pick two #1 seeds, a #2 seed and a #3 or #4 seed unless I want to go out on a limb and pick someone below that.
The first round upsets I picked and the resulting additional games I had to pick in the South have greatly weakened that regional. (It often seems to happen that way: too many upsets collapse a regional and open the way for somebody.) Virginia will be on a mission after last year. They look like they could be handled against Florida State in the ACCT but they would seem to have the virtues you’d look for in a Final Four team: they play good defense, get good guard play and can shoot the rock. It’s time for Tony Bennett to make the Last Dance of the Big Dance.
Donna Summer - Last Dance (HQ)
I heard on the radio that Duke was the biggest Vegas favorite to win it all since the 2015 Kentucky team. Of course that Kentucky team didn’t win the title that year, although they did make the Final Four. Maybe because they were unable to blow out SU in three tries, (of course they were never 100% but neither were we), I have a feeling that somebody will beat them along the way. Tom Izzo hasn’t made the Final Four in a while (he was in that 2015 FF) and his team has +260 ART, neatly as much as Duke, (+277). I’ll predict the Spartans will find a way to tether Zion to earth and hold his teammates down and win the East regional.
I really like North Carolina. I like their personnel. I love the way they play, running at every opportunity, (I wish we would play that way). I look at the other teams I have in the round of 32 in that regional: Washington, Auburn, Kansas, Iowa State, Houston and Kentucky, who I already have Seton Hall, and I don’t see any of theme beating the Tar Heels, Although I’ll be rooting for Mike to knock them off and Kentucky to make it interesting. But I’ll put UNC in my final Four.
That leaves the West regional where I’ll pick a #3 or #4 seed. I prefer Florida State (+142) to Texas Tech. They made it to the Elite 8 last year and looked good against us and in the ACCT. They’ll beat Gonzaga in the Sweet 16. That gives me 12 more games plus the two that would match Duke with Michigan State.
STEP 6: Fill in the gaps.
I’ve got 8 pre- Final Four games I haven’t selected yet: #4 Virginia Tech (+91) vs. #5 Mississippi State (+51) and #3 Louisiana State (+93) vs. #6 Maryland (+79) in the East, #3 Texas Tech (+67) vs. #6 Buffalo (+6) and #2 Michigan (+195) vs. #7 Nevada-Reno (+12) in the West, followed by the winners of those games meeting in the Sweet 16. In the Midwest I need to do #4 Kansas (+134) vs. #5 Auburn (+112), #3 Houston (+30) vs. #6 Iowa State (+156) and then the winner of that one vs. Kentucky (+138).
I’ll go with the Hokies over Mississippi State. Then they lose to Duke. I think a first round win over Yale will clear some of the distractions from LSU. A team under stress either comes together or falls apart. I’m guessing they will beat Maryland but lose to the Spartans. Buffalo and Nevada-Reno are under-rated by the ART stat. I think Michigan will have what it takes to tame the Wolfpack but I like Buffalo over Texas Tech. Michigan will beat them but lose to Florida State. Kansas has stumbled to a 25-9 record after a 10-0 start. Auburn has won 8 in a row and the SEC tournament. I’ll go with them to beat Kansas but lose to UNC. I will go with the big ART gap and pick Iowa State to beat Houston but I like Kentucky over them despite a small ART gap.
That’s 60 of 63, (or 64 of 67) games. One more step.
STEP 7: Pick the Final Four games.
I’ll take Michigan State (+260) over Florida State (+142). North Carolina lost to Virginia 61-69 but also twice beat Duke who twice beat Virginia. If they had won that back-and-forth game with Duke in the ACCT that they lost by 1 point they probably would have beaten FSU in the final and be the #1 overall seed in this tournament. Roy Williams has already brought three national titles to Chapel Hill and I predict a fourth.
So now I’ve picked the whole thing and retained my sanity. Or what there was of it.
