Bracketology 2016

I think this has been a really tough year to pick. So many regular season champions put themselves on the bubble list – and then, just didn’t have enough major victories to make comparisons easier. Do you take a team who won their regular season with a 16-2 record but no wins against the top 50 RPI, or do you take the middling major conference team that goes 4-10 against the top 50? At the end of the day, I found myself remembering years past, and how this tends to end poorly for the small conference champion.

I am hoping that I will be wrong – since I would love to see some of the mid-majors get their chance. But I just don’t see it happening.

At the top of the bracket, it came down to 6 teams

· Kansas is the easy #1 team – they were ranked at the top to start the week in the polls and they won their conference tournament.

· North Carolina played their way into a #1 seed by winning both the regular season and conference tournaments in the ACC.

· Michigan State is a #1 seed as long as they win the Big 10 championship.

· Oregon has snuck into the last top seed – they made the statement in their conference championship against Utah. Can’t deny a team with a top 4 RPI, a top 2 strength of schedule, and destroyed a top 16 team.

· Virginia is the odd man out – I think they will steal the bid from Michigan State in the case that Purdue pulls the upset in the Big 10 championship.

· Villanova probably would have been the 4^th top seed if they had not lost to Seton Hall in the Big East championship.

Now for the all important bubble – I found myself looking at 14 teams with only 6 spots.

· Oregon St went 4-8 vs the Top 50, but 11-11 against the Top 100, which was the most of these of the bubble teams

· South Carolina went 8-5 vs the Top 100 and had one of the better records of the bubble teams

· St Bonaventure gets in on having the best RPI of the bubble– they were 3-2 against the top 50 and 7-5 vs the top 100.

· USC’s resume looked similar to Oregon St’s – going 9-12 against the Top 100 was enough to get them in

· Vanderbilt won the last spot – they had a really good Adj Scoring Margin, and went 7-10 against the Top 100.

· Michigan almost got in on their run in the Big 10 tournament – but most of the times they played against a top 50 team, they lost by double digits – this ended up being my deciding factor between them and Vanderbilt

· San Diego St had a big victory against California and nothing else. At the end, the losses to Fresno St ended up being their downfall (along with the loss to RPI 302 San Diego)

· Valparaiso had a big victory against Oregon St and a close loss to Oregon – but I just didn’t see the Committee giving them the bid by simply beating the Beavers.

· Monmouth had a few more victories – they also had those 3 RPI 200+ losses to Army, Canisius and Manhattan.

· Florida played everyone close – but you have to win some of those games.

· Syracuse might have had the most impressive victories on the bubble – but too many bad losses – when Pitt is one of the last teams to get in, and you lose 3 times to them, you end up on the wrong side of the bubble.

· Tulsa might have been in the field before the conference tournament, but you can not lose to Memphis when you are that close to the cut line

· George Washington needed the opposite – they were on the outside and needed a big conference tournament – but St. Joseph’s knocked them out early.

	MIDWEST	EAST	SOUTH	WEST
1	Kansas (BIG 12)	Michigan State (BIG 10)	North Carolina (ACC)	Oregon (PAC 12)
16	Holy Cross (PAT) / FGCU (ATL SUN)	Southern (SWAC) / FDU (NEC)	Hampton (MEAC)	Austin Peay (OVC)
8	St. Josephs (ATL 10)	Providence	Connecticut (AMERICAN)	Gonzaga (WCC)
9	St. Marys CA	Temple	Butler	Texas Tech
5	Maryland	Iowa St	Baylor	Duke
12	South Dakota St (SUMMIT)	Yale (IVY)	Chattanooga (SOUTHERN)	Little Rock (SUN BELT)
4	Utah	Arizona	Texas A&M	Purdue
13	Stephen F Austin (SOUTHLAND)	UNC-Wilmington (CAA)	Fresno St (MT WEST)	Hawaii (BIG WEST)
6	Dayton	Texas	California	Seton Hall (BIG EAST)
11	Northern Iowa (MVC)	USC / Pitt	St. Bonaventure / Vanderbilt	South Carolina
3	Miami FL	Xavier	Indiana	Kentucky (SEC)
14	Green Bay (HORIZON)	Iona (MAAC)	Middle Tennessee (CUSA)	Stony Brook (AE)
7	Iowa	Wisconsin	Wichita St	Notre Dame
10	Colorado	Oregon St	VCU	Cincinnati
2	Villanova	Virginia	West Virginia	Oklahoma
15	CSU Bakersfield (WAC)	Buffalo (MAC)	UNC-Asheville (BIG SOUTH)	Weber St (BIG SKY)
LAST 4 IN	St Bonaventure	USC	Pitt	Vanderbilt
FIRST 4 OUT	Michigan	San Diego State	Valparaiso	Monmouth
NEXT 4 OUT	Florida	Syracuse	Tulsa	George Washington

In the case of a miracle 15 point come back in the last 2 minutes by Memphis, Memphis would get the automatic bid for the American and would be a 14 seed. This would push Vanderbilt out of the bracket, and move Iona, UNC-Wilmington, and Yale up a line. Lets hope that doesn’t happen. J

We will see how I do…… J

The Lunatic – master bracketologist (well – in his delusional world)

Well – once again, I proved that I have no clue how to seed the teams. In fact, I did horrible at predicting the field as well. I didn’t do much of anything right. Except – many of the others did poorly as well.

Compared to the experts who get paid to do this by the major sports sites – thanks to Bracket Matrix.

	LUNATIC	LUNARDI (ESPN)	PALM (CBS)	EVANS (YAHOO)	FAGAN (SN)	BELLER (SI)	MANDEL (FOX)
Correct in the Field	65	65	66	66	65	67	66
Correct Seed	33	34	34	34	34	40	40
Correct +- 1 seed	56	60	60	65	59	61	65
TOTAL	317	323	326	331	322	342	343

I can’t decide if this year, I should be upset or happy that I was so far away from the bracket. I think the bracket was messed up this year. While I was further off, I will mention the following. I had two of the teams who pulled major upsets, Middle Tennessee St and Stephen F Austin seeded one spot higher than the committee. I had Wichita State as a 7 seed and Gonzaga as a 8 seed – considering Gonzaga is in the Sweet 16, I think I did better than the committee putting them as 11s. I had placed Connecticut and Providence as 8 seeds instead of 9 seeds - which put them ahead of the Colorado and USC – the teams they beat. I had both Oregon St and VCU as 10 seeds, which makes VCU’s upset much less of an upset. So, of the 13 upsets, 6 of them, I had seeded better than the committee and only 1 (Syracuse) did I have seeded worse.

I guess the committee could make a similar statement about the top, since I had teams like Michigan St, West Virginia and Purdue seeded better – and they were all upset. But, I would argue if you take a team and put them behind 3-5 teams you shouldn’t have, and then make them play a team that is 3-5 teams better than what even a team in that position would play, can you claim that you were right in ranking them worse.

Since it makes me feel better, I am going to say that I am happy with the results – I feel that my seeding would have been better – not perfect, just better. And at the end of the day, I guess the best thing that did is it really helped me scout out some of the teams.

Maybe one of these years, I will set up a more planned Bracketology so that I don’t start seeding teams 2 hours before the bracket is released. Oh – and who am I kidding – we all know I will never get that organized……

The Lunatic – master bracketologist (of selecting the better teams)