Please remember that even if you have done this in previous years, I need you to register again. The way I set up my database is by year. So, if you have not done so already, register first – that will take you straight to the main page to enter your brackets.
Good luck everyone!!!
Only missing three games – the ACC Championship Game, Atlantic 10 Championship Game, and Big 10 Championship Game. Don’t have a good explanation why the SEC game was available and the other three were not from today – but it is the best I can do at the moment.
Obviously, take the data with a grain of salt. I have done some basic cleaning and quality checks against RPI data – but to be fair, it is also 1 am – and so my chances for errors have probably increased. 🙂
Joking aside, I am pretty sure that all the basic information that you might need should be here. And for those of you who are not familiar with this tradition, I will give you some more details.
As many of you know, one of my insane features is that I try to provide people with data about the teams in case they want to do research on the teams. Each year, we get several people who have demonstrated the power of statistics by building models in order to predict the games. Some of them have been extremely successful with this – especially Bill Kahn with his Bradley-Terry models, showing that even something extremely unpredictable as sports can be forecasted through good statistical techniques. But the part of this that has made me happy – and why I do this – is because a few people who were not statisticians but were taking a stats training course at work used this data for their class project and ended up having some success – including our 2006 champion, David Shaddick.
So, since that point, I decided to provide the scores to everyone in an attempt to provide people as much of a chance to try to leverage data to make their decisions. I realize that most of you will probably spend three to five minutes just looking at the teams and figuring who will do best – I probably don’t need a model to decide that the number 1 seeds will beat the 16 seeds… In fact, I typically spend so much effort maintaining the site that I just randomly pick late Wednesday evening.
However, if I can give people a chance to try to learn something about statistics in a very fun environment, it is well worth the effort. So, just click on 2013 Schedule in the Admin menu and get an Excel spreadsheet with summary box score and standing / RPI information for each game for every Division I team.
One potential error – I did not have the RPI data available to help me error check the final week of games. So, I made some educated guesses on venues – for example, considering Vanderbilt, St. John’s and Tulsa as hosts of their conference tournaments since the games were played in the same city as their schools. Not sure this is how the NCAA considers it, but I figured it was probably an accurate reflection.
If you notice something terribly wrong, let me know – no promises I have time to fix it, but at least everyone will know.
Enjoy the data!!!!
The Selection Committee has done their job – now it is time for you to do yours!!!!! STOMP THE LUNATIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The brackets are ready to be entered – if you have already registered, just go to the login page. Otherwise, please register first!!!!
Good luck to everyone in Stomping the Lunatic!
Well – I have now validated that I have all the games through March 10th correct. I also know I have the games between March 11th – 14th are correct as far as scores – not 100% sure about venue – my interpretation from other neutral court games is that Vanderbilt playing the SEC tournament in Nashville, TN actually counts as a home game for them because it is the city of their school. But don’t have any final rankings to compare against.
So, I know the games missing from Friday and Saturday. Now, it is just a time issue. I should hopefully be able to get the full set of stats up some time late tonight. I am really sorry if that messes anyone up.
I must apologize, but I made a tactical mistake. I noticed on the NCAA Official Site that they have much more available information on the games and thought it would be good to leverage the official source. Figured this would save me lots of time figuring out the neutral games since their schedule would officially say what were neutral games (instead of the obnoxious process I have had to do in previous years of getting all the stats and then manually identifying all the games).
Well, I went in this morning to update all the schedules, read in all the games, and started to do a quick sanity check on standings. Much to my chagrin, the site is fully updated through Thursday – with some Friday games. And of course, my standings are updated through Saturday. 🙂 Who would have guessed that the official NCAA site would not have their stats available for games that happened over 24 hours ago. So now I don’t know if I am missing anything. While I always say take the stats with a grain of salt, it also feels horrible to put the data out there without knowing that I have all the games.
I am looking for some other ways to sanity check (without having to look through the schedules of 347 teams – which is over 5,700 games). I will try to get this out by the time the weekend ends – sadly, this might impact my ability to put out a bracketology page (or maybe I will wildly try to take a stab at a bracket in one hour late Sunday afternoon).
At least this gives me an excuse to stay awake and watch / listen to the Pac 12 championship game between UCLA and Oregon. See what the Bruins do without Jordan Adams….
A few days ago, I was reading the ESPN bubble watch – when the writer basically went on his yearly complaints about how the bubble is so weak. Well, lets see how weak the bubble is – according to their own expert. Here are the teams that will likely be left out.
And this leaves out some of the top teams from smaller conferences – such as Akron – who are looking to still win their way into the Dance. All these teams have flaws and lost games they shouldn’t. But I wouldn’t say teams that are beating the likes of Duke, Florida and Wisconsin as weak. Inconsistent – but then again, isn’t that the reason they are a bubble team…..
Hope tomorrow’s games are good – lot of championship games and bids to be won……
I will be sending out an email tonight to everyone who participated last year!!!! As always, please feel free to invite your friends and family – everyone is welcome.
At this point, you can register for the contest – although for obvious reasons, you won’t be able to enter your brackets….. 🙂
Good luck to everyone in Stomping the Lunatic!!!!!
In case you have come here from a bookmark, I am still working on getting the final site tested. So, if you try to register or login, you might get some really weird results (including the fact that the 2013 tournament has already happened and there is only 4 entries – myself, Charlie and Katie…. 🙂
I am trying to clean up a few things before the tournament starts – once the site is really ready, I will send out the emails to everyone!!!!
In the meantime, I will congratulate Creighton for winning the Missouri Valley bid as well as Lehigh – who at 15-20 – knocked off top-seeded Charleston Southern to take the Big South bid. Also, my sympathy to Middle Tennessee State. Went 19-1 in the Sun Belt conference to get a 28-4 overall record and an RPI = 24. Then, they lost in the quarterfinals tonight of the conference tournament to Florida International. Now the Blue Raiders will have to wait a week to see if winning almost all their games against relatively weak competition (best wins are Ole Miss and UCF) will be enough. Wouldn’t be March without these kinds of upset – will this be a sign of things to come….
Should also mention that ESPN and Lunardi have brought Virginia back into the field after their overtime win against Maryland and kicked Tennessee back out. Guess beating Missouri doesn’t look as great the next day. 🙂 Then again, after having 24 hours to think about La Salle’s blowout loss to Saint Louis, he decided to bump them back up over Kentucky and Boise State – who were only coming off victories on Saturday against teams of similar caliber (or better in the case of Florida) to St Louis.
I guess I can’t talk – I never correctly pick the teams who will make the field (of course, I also don’t get to interview the committee members throughout the weekend either…)
Many of you probably know by now that I am not a big fan of the bracketologists. To be fair – it is hypocritical. I love reading them – so I am sucked in just like everyone else who follows college basketball. But then they make my skin crawl when I read some of it.
ESPN and Joe Lunardi have pushed my buttons today – maybe simply because I have watched them change their last 4 teams throughout the day. I think the part that bothers me is when he complains about criticism, he will mention things like individual games don’t happen in a vacuum – your favorite team might have won but another team’s win might have been more impressive and changed the rankings. Fair enough – but what he has done today makes me believe he isn’t very consistent.
Lets look at the last day of updates:
Going into today, his rankings are: Wichita St, Villanova, Iowa St, La Salle, Temple, Virginia, Boise St, and Tennessee are in – Ole Miss, Alabama, Southern Miss, Baylor, Arizona St, Kentucky, Providence and Iowa are out.
In early games, Kentucky wins against Florida – while Providence loses at UConn. So, Lunardi puts an update.
3 pm IN: Wichita St, Villanova, Iowa St, La Salle, Temple, Virginia, Kentucky, Boise St – while OUT: Tennessee, Ole Miss, Alabama, Southern Miss, Baylor, Arizona St, Maryland, Iowa are out.
So, can appreciate that the Kentucky victory might be large enough to get the Wildcats in. Also makes sense Providence dropping out of the picture – but a little odd that Maryland – who is not playing today now has jumped in ahead of Iowa.
Now, for the next wave of games. Wichita St, Iowa St, Boise St, Tennessee, Ole Miss, Alabama, and Iowa all win. Two had victories against teams projected in the field (Boise St beat San Diego St and Tennessee beat Missouri). La Salle gets blown out by 24 at St. Louis, and Arizona St gets blown out by 15 at Arizona. Both St. Louis and Arizona are ranked teams playing at home – but those are still pretty big losses. This leads into the next update:
7 pm IN: Wichita St, Iowa St, Villanova, Temple, Kentucky, Boise St, La Salle, Tennessee – OUT: Virginia, Ole Miss, Alabama, Southern Miss, Baylor, Arizona St, Iowa, Maryland.
Wait a second – what just happened. Tennessee jumps into the tournament for their big victory. Fine. Can understand that it isn’t Boise St who drops out since they had a big victory also. But at 3 pm, Kentucky’s jump for their victory put them behind Virginia – who doesn’t play today. Yet, it is Virginia that has fallen out of the tournament. Maybe he is reconsidering because he doesn’t like the idea of bringing Kentucky in and then putting them back out. But it is still rather curious that the team to take the fall is Virginia. Why wouldn’t it be La Salle – the team that just lost by 24 points. Lets not even mention the fact that Iowa and Maryland are still behind the Arizona State team that also just lost big.
There is also a curious part about Wichita State – they had just won by 15 points to make their conference championship game. Meanwhile, three teams just a few spots above the Shockers the day before (Minnesota, Oklahoma and Colorado) all lost to teams with losing records. Apparently, Lunardi also feels it is not necessary to look at the middle of the rankings – we will just leave Wichita St on the bubble.
Finally, Baylor upsets Kansas and Southern Miss beats UCF. This leads to next update.
10 pm IN: Iowa St, Colorado, Villanova, Temple, Kentucky, Boise St, La Salle, Tennessee – OUT: Virginia, Baylor, Ole Miss, Southern Miss, Alabama, Iowa, Maryland, Arizona St.
Lunardi finally gives credit to Wichita St and moves them off the bubble. He also moves up Baylor and Southern Miss for their victory – and moves up Iowa and Maryland over Arizona St. At least he is finally catching up – but to be fair, Wichita St, Colorado, Iowa, Maryland, and Arizona St all finished their games (or didn’t play) before the 7 pm update. Nothing happened between 7 pm and 10 pm that should have changed the rankings for those teams (other than movement from teams that did play during that time).
It tells me one of three things is happening:
OK – that was mean – of course, the whole thing is about creating hype – whether he is inconsistent or not. But here’s my problem. You can’t tell me that these things don’t influence the committee. They know they can go to the ESPN or CBS site and the guy who is following the games and creating real time ratings believes Team A should be out. While I like to believe the committee at the end of the day does what they want, it is hard not to believe that the media doesn’t somewhat influence opinions – and that is tremendously unfair to Team A if the only thing they have done wrong that day is not play a game.
I agree with Lunardi that things don’t happen in a vacuum. Teams can win and lose games and find themselves in an unexpectedly different place in the rankings because others have won or lost. But at the end of the day, if I believed Virginia was better than Kentucky at Time A – and neither team played by Time B, there is no reason that these teams should switch places. Other teams that have won or loss – sure. But once I have made a choice that a team is better, I need one of them to play before I can move them compared to each other.
To be fair, Virginia is just an example. I personally don’t have an opinion yet on whether the big victories the Cavaliers have had make up for the crazy bad losses they have. They are one of the most difficult decisions that the committee has – especially if they don’t do something special over the last week. But the point is that tomorrow, that team inconsistently moved could be Boise St or Villanova or Kentucky – and all of that can influence opinions – potentially unfairly.
OK – that’s enough of my rant. Just figured I should get my bracketology rant out of the way during the weekend. Now, I can go back to enjoying the games (San Diego is trying to upset St. Mary’s in the WCC tournament…..)
March is an amazing time for basketball. In Nashville, Tennessee – top seeded Belmont finds themselves down 7 with just 2 minutes left to Murray State. Before tonight, they were 23-6 with an RPI = 23. When looking closer, their top victories are Middle Tennessee State and a road game against Stanford. But then of course, they went on to win their conference’s regular season – making them an interesting bubble case if they lose. Being down 7 and going against last year’s Cinderella team led by amazing guard Isaiah Canaan, that was becoming more of a reality.
Then March happened. Belmont hit a three pointer, Murray State misses a few FTs, and suddenly with 10 seconds, Kerron Johnson from the Bruins drives with the ball and ties the game – eventually sending it to overtime. Then, with the game tied and the clock running down in overtime, an amazing thing happens. Murray State’s star – probably still destined to play in the NBA – catches a pass from a teammate being pressured, and accidentally dribbles the ball off his foot for a back-court violation.
The ball is now back in Kerron Johnson’s hands. He runs the clock down to 5 seconds, drives into the lane and hits a well-contested jumper to win the game and send Belmont to the Big Dance – breathing a sigh of relief that they don’t have to sit on Selection Sunday wondering if they will get a chance to play. And one of last year’s Cinderellas realizes that they will not likely get a chance to relive some of the magic from last year.
It is a harsh reality for these smaller conferences – but it is what makes March so amazing. There is so much emotion and passion that happens on these courts around the country. And that intensity is only going to continue to grow over the next few weeks…
Meanwhile, I need to mention two more important things.