Kentucky beats Duke: Yosarian, ZachB, 7
Duke beats Kentucky: Pookie, Juho, 4
Kentucky beats Michigan St: Yosarian, ZachB, 13
Michigan State beats Kentucky: Juho, One Shining MGF, 2
Wisconsin beats Duke: Monte, ZachB, 6
Duke beats Wisconsin: ZachB, Monte, 4
Wisconsin beats Michigan State: ZachB, Wally, 15
Michigan State beats Wisconsin: Wally, ZachB, 3
We. Are. Still. Alive.
Disclaimer: I’m not guaranteeing that everything here is correct. Please verify everything for yourself if you plan on using this information to hedge.
There are only 32 possible scenarios left for the rest of the NCAA tournament. There are two scenarios that would make us repeat champions.
1.) Final Four of Kentucky, Wisconsin, Gonzaga, and Michigan State with Gonzaga beating Kentucky in the finals.
2.) Final Four of Kentucky, Wisconsin, Gonzaga, and Louisville with Gonzaga beating Kentucky in the finals.
There are three scenarios that we finish second in:
1.) Final Four of Kentucky, Wisconsin, Gonzaga, and Louisville with Gonzaga beating Wisconsin in the finals.
2.) Final Four of Kentucky,Wisconsin, Duke, and Louisville with Louisville beating Kentucky in the finals.
3.) Final Four of Kentucky,Wisconsin, Duke, and Michigan State with Michigan State beating Kentucky in the finals.
There are 4 possible final four scenarios. Each has its own heading. Under each of the 4 scenarios, I list a finals result, and, given that result, who finishes first, second, and what place my team finishes.
Kentucky beats Duke: Yosarian, ZachB, 8
Duke beats Kentucky: Juho, Pookie, 3
Kentucky beats Louisville: Yosarian, Bayz, 16
Louisville beats Kentucky: Juho, One Shining MGF, 2
Wisconsin beats Duke: Monte, Wally, 7
Duke beats Wisconsin: Monte, ZachB, 4
Wisconsin beats Louisville: Monte, Wally, 18
Louisville beats Wisconsin: Wally, Monte, 3
Kentucky beats Duke: Yosarian, ZachB, 7
Duke beats Kentucky: Pookie, Juho, 4
Kentucky beats Michigan St: Yosarian, ZachB, 13
Michigan State beats Kentucky: Juho, One Shining MGF, 2
Wisconsin beats Duke: Monte, ZachB, 6
Duke beats Wisconsin: ZachB, Monte, 4
Wisconsin beats Michigan State: ZachB, Wally, 15
Michigan State beats Wisconsin: Wally, ZachB, 3
Kentucky beats Gonzaga: Yosarian, Lavarel, 5
Gonzaga beats Kentucky: One Shining MGF, Coop, 1
Kentucky beats Louisville: Lavarel, Yosarian, 15
Louisville beats Kentucky: Juho, Wally, 3
Wisconsin beats Gonzaga: Wally, ur1, 6
Gonzaga beats Wisconsin: Wally, One Shining MGF, 2
Wisconsin beats Louisville: Wally, Monte, 16
Louisville beats Wisconsin: Wally, Monte, 4
Kentucky beats Gonzaga: Lavarel, ZachB, 7
Gonzaga beats Kentucky: One Shining MGF, ZachB, 1
Kentucky beats Michigan State: Lavarel, ZachB, 13
Michigan State beats Kentucky: Yosarian, Juho, 3
Wisconsin beats Gonzaga: Wally, ZachB, 7
Gonzaga beats Wisconsin: ZachB, Wally, 3
Wisconsin beats Michigan State: Wally, Zach B, 15
Michigan State beats Wisconsin: Wally, ZachB, 3
Arizona -1.5
Kentucky -11
Gonzaga +2.5
Louisville +2.5
Cheers.
If I had to bet every game (Games I really like in BOLD):
Oklahoma +2.5
Utah +6
Louisville -2.5
Gonzaga -8.5
Xavier +10.5
West Virginia +13
North Carolina +6
Notre Dame +1.5
Cheers.
If I had to bet every game. Bets I really like in bold:
San Diego State +9
Gonzaga -6
Oregon +12
Maryland EVEN
Wichita State +1.5
Oklahoma -4.5
Louisville +2.5
Cheers.
If I had to pick all 8 games today against the spread (Games I really like in bold):
Arkansas +5
Butler +4
Cincinnati +16
Georgia State +6.5
NC State +9.5
Ohio State +9.5
UCLA -5.5
Utah -4
Cheers.
P.S. This is pretty cool.
It’s that time of year again, and while you can go to just about any media outlet for March Madness advice, I’m fairly confident you won’t get most of the stuff that I’m going to write about here. I think that’s a good thing?
As preliminary thoughts, feel free to check out my two posts from last year:
What are the actual odds of someone picking a perfect bracket?
Okay, here are some thoughts and general strategies.
1- Your first round choices depend on your scoring system. And maybe even your second round picks, too.
Most pools can generally be separated into one of two categories – those with upset points or those without upset points.
Strangely enough, the vast majority of people entering picks in pools with upset points pick the same way as they would in pools without upset points. This is silly. In upset pools, for example…
View original post 529 more words
Kentucky.
Wisconsin
Arizona
Duke
Virginia
Gonzaga
Villanova
Ohio State
Texas
BYU
Indiana
Davidson
Purdue (9) over Cincinnati
Texas (11) over Butler
UCLA (11) over SMU
Someone (11) over Xavier
Someone (11) over Providence
Ohio State (10) over VCU
Buffalo (12) over Virginia
Valparaiso (13) over Maryland
Georgia State (14) over Baylor
All four 11 seeds win in round one.
Utah to the final 4.
Notre Dame lose in the first round.
Kentucky
Wisconsin
Duke
Virginia
Kansas
Arizona
Oklahoma
Iowa State
Texas
Ohio State
Michigan State
Utah
1 – Kentucky
2 – Arizona
3 – Oklahoma
4 – North Carolina
5 – Utah
6 – SMU
7 – Wichita State
8 – San Diego State
9 – Oklahoma State
10 – Ohio State
11 – Texas
12 – Buffalo
13 – Harvard
14 – Georgia State
15 – New Mexico State
16 – Coastal Carolina
1 – Villanova
2 – Kansas
3 – Notre Dame
4 – Georgetown
5 – Northern Iowa
6 – Butler
7 – VCU
8 – Cincinnati
9 – St. John’s
10 – Georgia
11 – Boise State
12 – Wofford
13 – Eastern Washington
14 – Albany NY
15 – Texas Southern
16 – Hampton
Northeastern +13
Lafayette +23
Harvard +11
Utah -6.5
Arkansas -7.5
Georgetown -7
Louisville -8.5
Oklahoma State +1.5
Oklahoma -13
Ohio State +10000
Texas +10000
Utah +6000
Oklahoma +6500
Number of correct teams predicted: 66 out of 68.
Number of correctly seeded teams: 29 out of 68
Number of teams correctly seeded within one seed: 60 out of 68
Teams I had OUT that made it: Cincinnati (9) and Boise State (11)
Teams I had IN that didn’t make it: Stanford and Texas A&M
Biggest discrepancies: Texas (predicted: 8, actual: 11), Xavier (predicted: 9, actual: 6), Michigan State (predicted: 5, actual: 7), Georgetown (predicted: 6, actual: 4), Ohio State (predicted: 8, actual: 10), Dayton (predicted: 9, actual: 11), San Diego State (predicted: 10, actual: 8), LSU (predicted: 11, actual: 9)
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Here are my updated tournament projections with seedings. I’ve got Kentucky (obviously), Villanova, Virginia, and Duke as my top 4.
I’m pretty sure this won’t really happen, but if I was selecting the teams for the bracket, I’d take 7 teams from the Big 12 (Kansas, Iowa State, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Baylor, Texas, and Oklahoma State). It’s a really good conference.
Also with 7 teams is the Big Ten (Wisconsin, Maryland, Michigan State, Iowa, Purdue, Ohio State, and Indiana).
I’ve got 6 teams each from the Big East (Villanova, Butler, Georgetown, Providence, St. John’s, and Xavier), SEC (Kentucky, Arkansas, LSU, Georgia, Texas A&M, and Ole Miss) and ACC (Virginia, Duke, Notre Dame, Louisville, North Carolina, and NC State). Though I think the committee is going to have a hard time letting in NC State over Miami, if it let’s either of these teams in at all.
I have the Pac 12 with 5 tournament qualifiers: Arizona, Utah, Oregon, UCLA, and Stanford. Though Stanford still has quite a bit of work to do in this tournament to be that fifth team.
From the Atlantic 10, I’m taking 3 teams: red hot Davidson, Dayton, and VCU. Rhode Island is going to be pissed if they get left out, but they don’t have any really good wins. They are 0-4 against top 50 teams and 0-1 against the top 25. VCU, however, is 3-3 against the top 50 and 1-2 agains the top 25 including wins over Tennessee, Oregon, Northern Iowa, and Cincinnati. The Rams haven’t beaten Dayton, Davidson, nor VCU this year. In fact you have to look really hard to find their best win. Maybe Richmond? or Nebraska? It’s really hard to see ANY quality wins on their schedule.
Rounding out the multi-team conferences I have two each from the Mountain West (Boise State and San Diego State), the West Coast (Gonzaga and BYU), and the Missouri Valley (Northern Iowa and Wichita State). Basically everything I read has BYU as a bubble team. I’m couldn’t disagree with this more. If they don’t get a bid, I’m going to lose my mind a little bit. Not only do I have them in, I have them as a 9 seed and ranked 36th. And don’t just take my word for it, Sagarin has them ranked 34th and Pomeroy has them ranked 29th (that’s one spot AHEAD of Arkansas who is a virtual lock.) Unfortunately, if you live in the dark ages (like the committee) and you use the RPI, they are ranked 44th, which does put them on the bubble.
Davidson has now won 8 in a row and this last week they beat VCU and Duquesne to take sole possession of first place in the Atlantic 10. I’ve got Davidson as an 8 seed right now (I had them as an 11 seed last week), but if they keep winning a 6 or 7 seed could reasonably happen.
NC State won both of it’s games this week over Clemson and the Syracuse Orange Cheaters. They finish with a record of 19-12 and 10-8 in the ACC. As long as nothing disastrous happens in their tournament, I think they are in. Last week I had them as a 12 seed, but I’ve moved them up to a 9 seed. This jump has a lot more to do with teams ahead of them falling (e.g. LSU, Georgia, Oklahoma State, Stanford, Indiana) than them doing something impressive.
Oregon won last Sunday at Stanford in a game that both teams really needed. Add in a win this week against Oregon State and that equals Oregon moving up to a 7 seed from a 9 seed where they were last weekend.
Other teams that moved up at least one seed this week include Iowa State, Oklahoma, Georgetown, Ohio State, Iowa, Providence, Texas, Xavier, San Diego State, and UCLA.
Stanford, unlike Oregon, did not have a good week. Last Sunday they lost at home to Oregon and since then have lost two more games. Since then, they have also lost to Arizona and Arizona State. Losing to Arizona isn’t that big of a deal, but they absolutely had to have that win over Arizona State. This all leads to a 3 game losing streak. It is not a good time to be riding a 3 game losing streak. They are also 2-5 in their last 7 games. Not a good look if you’re trying to get into the tournament. Last week I had Stanford as an 8 seed, but I’ve dropped them all the way to 11 and are one of the last 4 in. I wouldn’t be surprised if the committee leaves them out.
I dropped Oklahoma State down to an 11 seed from a 9 seed. They beat TCU this week and lost to West Virginia. Realistically, I don’t see the committee taking a team that is 8-10 in conference and 18-12 overall. This team is somewhat of an enigma. On the one hand they beat Kansas once and Baylor twice, but they also lost to TCU and Texas Tech. I don’t know what the committee will do with that.
LSU got a big win over Arkansas yesterday, but any gain from that win is over shadowed by their home loss to Tennessee on Wednesday. The Vols are 7-11 in conference and 15-15 overall. That’s a bad March loss. I dropped LSU down two seeds to a 10.
Purdue lost to Ohio State and Michigan State this week leaving them at 12-6 in conference and 20-11 overall. I had Purdue as high as a 6 seed, but I’ve knocked them down to an 8 after back to back losses.
Other teams that fell at least one seed this week included Wichita State, SMU, VCU, Georga, Ole Miss, and Indiana.
