Busted Bracket
My brackets are usually at least in the top half and I've won a few of these, so how did I miss it so badly this year?
I haven't actually been watching the NCAA tournament as closely as usual since we didn't get invited to the dance and the hockey team is awesome. To top it off, my bracket is now completely locked into my bottom feeding spot. This number of upsets has to be off the charts, right?
Well, I looked into it and used info from Andy Wittry's recent article on how to pick your bracket.
To summarize, relative to upsets:
- This year is definitely way above the mean in the Sweet 16, Elite 8 and total.
- The 1st and 2nd rounds were only slightly above average.
- Two #1 seeds losing in the first weekend is highly unusual.
OK. So this is an outlier that I didn't see coming. I'll probably watch the Final Four this weekend and pull for FAU to win out and tie the most upsets ever in NCAA tournament history, but fortunately that will just be an appetizer for the Frozen Four later in the week that is Must See TV.
The thing about "busted brackets" is that everyone's bracket is busted. Picking a bracket is akin to picking a lottery ticket. In my tournament I am now about 80th out of 200. I have no teams in the final four. Only one bracket in the top 100 has a final four team (UConn).
My Indy wife had the following final 4:
Miami, UConn, Creighton, MSU
She crushed all of us in the family pool. Aside from her alma mater, she did her picks based on free-throw percentage.
she still has more points on the table with Miami advancing to the final.
Free throw percentage is a really interesting idea. Free throw differential also might be worth looking into.
March 27th, 2023 at 10:28 AM ^
It really doesn't matter how you pick. Sure, free throw percentage helped this person out *this one time*. Kind of like how one time someone won my high school bracket pool because she liked the color orange. It was a great strategy *that one time*.
March 27th, 2023 at 11:47 AM ^
For the record, I completely agree with your logic stevie
March 27th, 2023 at 10:21 AM ^
The qualification “my Indy wife” leaves open room for the thought that there are other wives of yours…
March 27th, 2023 at 10:52 AM ^
Or she's an artsy hipster.
Nobody gives a shit about your ( or my) bracket.
Can I interest you in a discussion about my fantasy baseball team? No? OK, never mind.
March 27th, 2023 at 10:28 AM ^
Yes, I’m down for this discussion.
Thoughts on Luis Robert’s and Michael Harris?
Robert can't stay healthy, and Harris is a 2nd year guy. I drafted Harris in the 3rd over Luis, FYI.
I have both on one team. Harris actually scares me more than Robert’s bc of sophomore slump. If both hit projected numbers I’ll be happy.
Feels like this is the year Robert’s and the White Sox take off.
My bracket is looking pretty good. I picked:
Denver
Michigan
Minnesota
Quinnipiac
March 29th, 2023 at 12:04 AM ^
I’d have a perfect hockey bracket if OSU had beaten Quinnipiac. My own fault for relying on the Buckeyes.
Three things are certain in life:
- Death
- Taxes
- No one cares about your fantasy sports team or NCAA bracket
Dude, cool. While everyone else was fighting over Tom Brady, I routinely picked up Drew Brees in my fantasy league for years, winning multiple championships with him. Then he bombed and I didn't win. I never saw that coming either.
A variety of factors at the current moment in time is leading to a scenario where "mid-majors" are as good as "blue bloods." It is basically impossible to accurately pick a bracket where there is really no probability bias toward a particular team based on the objective quality of the play. 30 years ago, when the Fab Five is playing Coastal Carolina, you can look on the floor and see that Coastal Carolina is not playing the same game, they might as well be playing the Harlem Globetrotters. That isn't the case anymore.
When you watch FAU, it doesn't feel like you are watching "a Cinderella," it feels like are watching the better team and you just didn't know it. IMO, in the short-medium term, NIL is going to start keeping higher level players at the traditional power teams for longer, and the gap will widen back closer to resembling brackets of old where chalk was a good bet through the Sweet 16. (Good development or not is in the eye of the beholder).
Right now, bracketology is just dumb luck and very little more. That is why "somebody's kid who picked the games by mascot" is winning a lot of office pools these days.
Funny, I wrote the same thing to my friends over the weekend about FAU. They don't feel like a real Cinderella like George Mason or Loyola of Chicago. They feel like a damned good team that I simply didn't know about.
Find out they had the best record in the country this year, and beat some legit teams from power conferences. They're legitimately good.
March 27th, 2023 at 12:37 PM ^
You guys just don't follow college basketball that closely all season.
FAU was a top 5-10 team ALL season against the spread. They were in the top 25 at one point. I believe they had a 20 game unbeaten streak during the season. 3 total losses. Won the Conference USA regular season championship and tournament championship definitively.
Oh, and Conference USA also has 2/4 NIT Semi finalists in North Texas and UAB (UAB should've been a tourney team IMO). And Charlotte also won the CBI.
If it makes you feel any better, I obviously knew all of this and still had FAU losing to Memphis in the first round. FAU won on a buzzer beater layup.
March 27th, 2023 at 12:54 PM ^
Correct. I don't follow FAU basketball. That is the entire point. 25 years ago, it was not necessary to follow FAU basketball to know they were going to get blasted by the #1 seed by 20 in the second round.
No I meant you don't follow college basketball that closely, as in the entirety of college basketball from the beginning of the season to the end.
Because if you did, you would know FAU was legit, San Diego St was legit, Miami was legit, etc. These teams were very good all season if you pay attention to the whole sport and not just the Big Ten or Power 6.
March 29th, 2023 at 12:16 AM ^
They have a great record, but their only wins over tournament-level teams have been in the tournament. Their best wins this year were over NIT teams Florida and North Texas. They also lost to Ole Miss, who went 3-15 in the SEC and is in the 120s in KenPom.
They are legitimately good, but they didn’t really play anybody until the tournament started. Sort of like when Gonzaga was making deep runs as a 10 seed in 1999 and 2000.
Nah, there are still a couple things that hold true. One is to go against the grain in larger pools where you know that if you pick the overall 1, you'll be fighting it out w/ the other 100 people who did so if that team wins it all. Also, that team has only won it all 3x in the past 16 tourneys now, so don't pick them. The other big one is KenPom and similar metrics. Those suggested that 3 of the Final Four participants are substantially better than their seed indicates (the other is Miami, who just got hot at the right time). Combine these pieces of information and you can find some good contrarian champ picks - I wasn't bold enough to go w/ SDSU or FAU in any pool, I did take UConn in one though.
One other thing is I've never been that successful at picking the right early-round upsets so I usually don't try to pick very many of them anymore. Better to save those picks for the later rounds when the points per round increase, IMO.
I always pick George Mason.... it worked really well once
Same philosophy for Middle Tennessee State. And Syracuse when seeded 11 or below. And Nevada as a 10.
But alas, only one of these teams can 'hit all the lucky shots'* to knock Sparty out each year.
*Izzo near-annual post-game press conference after losing as a massive favorite to a double-digit seed since 2000.
I am in a pool where the leader has 3 of 4 in final four… SD st, UConn, and Miami.
They must be a time traveler from the future.
Gray’s Sports Almanac
March 27th, 2023 at 10:20 AM ^
Let me guess, his name is Biff and he drives a DeLorean.
This year's hoops reflects the state of college hoops, "one and done", the NBA's approach to drafting for potential, the transfer rule, and Covid.
From my perspective, The Dance has been refreshing and enjoyable - which reflects parity in men's basketball.
As for the Frozen Four - it's great to see the Maize & Blue heading to Tampa.
I had ALL four of my Final Four still alive in my only bracket (with a ~$10k payout) Friday - with 12 teams remaining, I had 2 FF in the Elite 8, and 2 more to play in the S16.
By Sunday night, I had 0 (Gonzaga, TX, Bama, K State).
With so many outliers and data points, it's no wonder platforms such as BetMGM can put up a free promo to win $10M with a perfect bracket - it will simply never happen.
We talking about brackets?
March 27th, 2023 at 11:11 AM ^
I am 16th out of 150 players and have zer0 final four teams left. That’s hard to do.
I assumed this year's combination of "seeds" - in terms of total number - is among the highest in final four history. The seeding of the four teams remaining are - one 4 seed, two 5 seeds, and a 9 seed. So, that total is 23 - which provides an average of "almost" a six seed.
After a quick review of NCAA history - there are now five tournaments when a combined Final Four seeding of more than twenty (20) occurred. Those seasons were:
- 2023 - Winner TBD - (combined seeding of 23)
- 2011 - UConn (combined seeding of 26),
- 2006 - Florida (combined seeding of 20),
- 2000 - MSU (with a combined FF seeding of 22), and
- 1980 - Louisville (combined seeding of 21).
I have somehow limped my way into winning our group of 25 friends bracket challenge. Going into the Sweet 16, I had my whole final four still in it, after the weekend, UCONN is my only team standing. It was down to me and one other guy, we both had UCONN and Texas in the final four, so with the Texas loss, I am the winner before the final four. On a side note, this is probably the least amount of points a winner has had since we have been doing this for the last 10 years or so.