Bracketology 2014

This year has been really, really hard for me.   Part of it is just because I want certain things to happen that in the back of my mind, I realize probably will not.  Part of it is because there are several places where there are a lot of teams clustered around each other that have beaten each other that make it hard to handicap.  When Team A swept Team B, Team B swept Team C, and Team C swept Team A – and other than that, their profiles look the same, how do you differentiate.   Anyways, this is my lame attempt at trying to guess the bracket.

 

But a couple of my initial thoughts when I was coming up with the bracket.

  • The last #1 seed has been a space no one seems to want in the last 2 weeks.  When Kansas had finished the regular season championship of the Big 12, it looked like it was theirs to lose.  Then, Joel Embiid gets hurt and Kansas started losing.  So, Villanova looked like they would slide into the spot.  They had fewer top 25 wins than the others, but no losses outside the other top teams.  Then, they got upset by Seton Hall.  At that point, it has been a question mark.  I have seen Wisconsin, Louisville, Michigan, Duke and Virginia all listed in that group.  I was ready to give it to Michigan – but if Michigan State wins, it looks like Virginia will sneak in.
  • I think the chances of the crazy 14 or 15 seed upset is going to be less.  With all the conference tournament upsets, I just don’t have the same expectation that one of these teams will continue their run (although will be happy to see it).
  • I have no clue about what to do with either the Atlantic 10 or the Pac 12.   Several of their teams in the middle of the standings look the same to me.
  • I moved around a bunch of teams at the very last second thanks to today’s games.  Hopefully, I haven’t messed up any bracket rules of setting up matchups, or more importantly, didn’t copy and paste something wrong so that I deleted a team.  J 
  • When it came to where I had the bubble bursting, in my bracket, it came down to Dayton and Green Bay.  If it was me, I would put Green Bay in.  I would rather put in a conference regular season champion that beat a top 5-10 team in Virginia than put in the 6th place team in the Atlantic 10.  But at the end of the day, if I ignore those situations and look at the two teams results.   I see a Green Bay who has an amazing victory against Virginia (which happened at their home), a close loss to Wisconsin (which also happened at their home), and then really not much of anything.  Then, I have Dayton, who beat Gonzaga on a neutral court, St. Louis on the road, and George Washington and UMass at home.  None of those are as good as the Virginia win, but there are just a lot more wins.  My hunch is, especially with the play-ins being in Dayton, the Flyers are going to get the last bid.
  • I’ve used colors to match up where my rankings are:

à        Green – Conference champions – automatic bids

à        Blue – Main At-large teams (28 teams)

à        Orange – Last four At-large teams not in the play-in games

à        Yellow – Last four At-large teams – thus in the play-in games in Dayton

à        Red – First four out and Second four out

 

SEED

SOUTH (Memphis)

EAST (New York)

WEST (Anaheim)

MIDWEST (Indianapolis)

1

Florida (SEC)

Virginia (ACC)

Arizona

Wichita State (MVC)

16

Albany (AE) / Texas Southern (SWAC)

Wofford (Southern)

Coastal Carolina (Big South)

Mt St Marys (NEC) / Cal Poly (Big West)

8

Providence (Big East)

Baylor

Texas

Oklahoma St

9

Pittsburgh

St. Josephs (Atlantic 10)

George Washington

Massachusetts

5

UCLA (Pac 12)

Connecticut

Cincinnati

Kentucky

12

Tulsa (Conf USA)

Harvard (Ivy)

North Dakota State (Summit)

Arizona State / Nebraska

4

New Mexico (Mt West)

Syracuse

Michigan State (Big 10)

Creighton

13

Stephen F Austin (Southland)

Manhattan (MAAC)

New Mexico State (WAC)

Delaware (Colonial)

6

VCU

North Carolina

Ohio State

Oklahoma

11

Stanford

Iowa

Xavier

Dayton / BYU

3

Kansas

Iowa State (Big 12)

San Diego State

Wisconsin

14

NC Central (MEAC)

Mercer (Atlantic Sun)

Eastern Kentucky (OVC)

Western Michigan (MAC)

7

Oregon

Memphis

Gonzaga (WCC)

St Louis

10

SMU

Colorado

Kansas State

Tennessee

2

Michigan

Villanova

Duke

Louisville (American)

15

La-Lafayette (Sun Belt)

American (Patriot)

Weber St (Big Sky)

Milwaukee (Horizon)

 

 

 

 

 

FIRST FOUR OUT

Green Bay

NC State

Louisiana Tech

Florida State

NEXT FOUR OUT

California

Minnesota

St Johns

Missouri

 

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So, if I look at how I did – according to the Bracket Matrix……

 

 

LUNATIC

LUNARDI (ESPN)

PALM (CBS)

EVANS (YAHOO)

FAGAN (SN)

BELLER (SI)

Correct in the Field

67

67

67

67

67

67

Correct Seed

31

39

33

36

27

30

Correct +/- 1 seed

57

60

58

63

54

60

TOTAL

320

339

325

336

309

321

 

I did really bad this year – although I think I still proved my point that it doesn’t take much to be able to get the same teams (and selection really is the important part – at the end of the day, it is more critical to be dancing than who you will be dancing with.   All of us missed North Carolina St.

But I did horrible with seeding compared to the other bracketologists.   Maybe I should spend more than 2-3 days forecasting things.  Maybe I should just give up.  Then again, I still did better than one person who gets paid for covering college basketball and was pretty close to the CBS and Sports Illustrated guys….