Seth’s 2018 Bracket Assist Tool
Tourney time is bracket time. There are a lot of good helpers out there these days to make your brackets that give you win predictions and whatnot. I’m not as cool or fancy as Bart Torvik (let’s be honest, you should be using Torvik) I like just having all of a ton of information in comparable form when I do it, so I make this little tool on Google Sheets that you can have too:
Most of the data are from Kenpom, though since last year I also included ThePowerRank.com. (You know Ed Feng from the MGoBlog Roundtable on WTKA and his wheelhouse is NCAA brackets (he wrote a book on it!). Ed’s TPR is an expected margin of victory over an average opponent, so like Michigan should beat the 160th-ish team by 15. Both he and Kenpom wound up pretty close, but it’s a bit more data when you’re deciding things like how soon should “1 seed” Xavier go out?
The Tool The Tool The Tool:
To use this you:
- Follow this link to make a copy of the spreadsheet.
- Select the two teams you want to compare.
The site will be pulled from Team 1, fyi, so if you pull a match that doesn’t exist you’ll still get the distance each team will have to travel to their real site.
Resources:
Kenpom, Torvik, Hoop-math, ThePowerRank, why Ohio State-Gonzaga returns a weird number, Printable Bracket with minimal ads, funky-ass bracket-making music
that the guy who knows the least about any sport seems to win the office pool so often?
Because the main strategy to winning an office pool is having your bracket be different than everyone else's. That's why DraftKings employees got in trouble by using data of how often certain players were drafted, etc.to help their chances of winning.
If you live in the state of Michigan, you should not choose UM or MSU to do well in the tournament, if you only care about winning your office pool. Even if one of them wins is all and you chose right, you'd still probably have a very little chance of winning the pool. If you choose Arizona, Purdue, etc. that nobody else likely chooses to win, you'll win the pool if that team happens to win it all.
March 15th, 2018 at 11:02 AM ^
...means you should fade any team you think is overrated by kenpom.
Thank you!
Much appreciated!
THIS kind of stuff. The Michigan Difference.
Not sure it is working correctly (or I could just be an idiot which is a distinct possibility). I am not able to select any teams, it seems to be just a copy of what we are seeing above.
You have to be logged into your google account. If not I think it will still let you export it as an excel file and it should work that way just as well.
March 13th, 2018 at 10:14 AM ^
Awesome. Thanks Seth!
March 13th, 2018 at 10:06 AM ^
I am a connoisseur of implements and I can say that this, sir, is a fine tool!
March 13th, 2018 at 10:11 AM ^
to win it all, are looking at the total number of wins, rather than who they lost to.
March 13th, 2018 at 11:06 AM ^
Perhaps when you typed 9-lol for MSU last 10 games record you wiped out the proper formatting, because that is not working on mine.
Edit: it was just not working for a couple teams, no biggie
March 13th, 2018 at 11:13 AM ^
March 13th, 2018 at 11:29 AM ^
Huh?
March 13th, 2018 at 11:28 AM ^
Update: I added a filter to the play-in games on the 1st round tool.
March 13th, 2018 at 11:31 AM ^
I used this last year and was able to win 2nd place in the bracket contest I was in.
March 13th, 2018 at 11:50 AM ^
Awesome work, Seth. Thank you for taking the time to put this together. Much appreciated.
March 13th, 2018 at 12:17 PM ^
.... but it has Michigan as a 3 point dog against MSU should they meet in the final.
LOL, beat them twice during the season and conference tourney and we'd be riding a 14-game win streak with wins over OSU, MSU, Purdue, Houston, UNC (probably), Gonzaga/Xavier, Virginia/Cincy...I'd take the 3 points all dayyyyyyy.
March 13th, 2018 at 10:37 PM ^
the spread sheet is not able to properly analyze 9-lol. If it did properly analyze 9-lol, it would have Michigan a double digit favorite.
March 13th, 2018 at 12:49 PM ^
Love discovering the occasional easter egg in the Injuries section.
Suggestion for future iterations...
# of upper classman starters, or # of minutes played by class.
Another suggestion: Include the team nicknames.
Possibly even an additional cell for who would win in a theoretical no-holds-barred mascot cage match. Sometimes that's a critical deciding factor on those coinflip games and I NEED THAT INFO.
March 13th, 2018 at 10:43 PM ^
can help you with that.
If the Ohio ever plays Ohio State in the tourney, the Ohio mascot will will win a no-holds-barred mascot cage match handily over Brutus.
It's always a push-pull of how much linking the source of these data is valuable to its creators versus how much I can steal from them instead of directing to their sites. I thought about adding KP's effective height and experience but I shared enough of Ken's stuff and if people want more it's way more than worth the measly $20/year it costs for a subscription.
I look forward to every year.
March 13th, 2018 at 10:40 PM ^
is one other guy in my office pool picking Michigan, but he has them playing MSU; so I feel confident that if Michigan wins, so will I.
March 14th, 2018 at 12:43 PM ^
Thanks for this, Seth! Much appreciated.
Wondering how Virginia's inury will affect them now however.
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