How awesome – only 15 minutes away from the Bracket being released.  And as always, in last second fashion – with no talented knowledge whatsoever, the Lunatic has posted his version of Bracketology.

Those who follow the Lunatic know that while I love reading the Bracketology pages from those experts like Jerry Palm from CBS and Joe Lunardi from ESPN.  But then I hate how afterwards, they talk about how great a job they did by picking 67 of the 68 teams.  It is a relatively straight-forward sorting exercise.

This year will be a true test of that – since I have not been following as much as I normally do – yet, I can still pick the best 6-7 teams from the Big 10, the best 6-7 teams from the ACC, the best 6-7 teams from the Big 12 (and so on) and guess what teams are going to make it.  I have more fear that I have one wrong – since I picked RPI 60 Indiana and RPI 49 UCLA over RPI 34 Temple.  But if you start looking at the rest of the numbers, it looks like Indiana and UCLA are better teams…..

Anyways, if you want to see how badly I did – I have posted my picks for everyone to see and criticize.

The schedule data is now available on the links – notice “2015 Schedule” in the Research links.  This data is up to date through all games this season.   I will at some point update the final 5 Sunday games (championships for Atlantic 10, SEC, Sun Belt, American and Big 10) after the brackets have been announced and the most important parts of the site are ready for use.

Obviously, take the data the traditional Lunatic disclaimers.  I have done some basic cleaning and quality checks against RPI data – but there are a lot of games, and so I will not make the claim that I have checked every piece of the dataset.

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.   You will notice that the data has up-to-date RPI rankings, conference standings, and then each team’s schedule and results for the season.

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!!!!

And not just any Pi Day – it is the centennial Pi Day, since it is 3/14/15.   I will add some credit to my friend Mikel Pulins, who reminded me that not only is it the centennial Pi Day, but at 9:26 am (at 53 seconds), we can honor Pi Day to the 10th digit!!!!!!

For those who feel bad of missing this important moment in time, NPR points out that you can do it again this evening at 9:26 pm at 53 seconds).  If you want to be totally nerdy, you can celebrate it for two seconds – the 11th digit is 5 – so you can round up to 54 seconds.  Just think about that while you are enjoying the Big East, MAC, Big Sky, or Southland championships tonight.    (Or whatever more normal thing that you might be doing this evening).

Hope everyone enjoys Pi Day!!!!!   I know that I will have a fantastic one enjoying tons of college basketball!!!!!!   Might even have to see if I can get some actual pie to celebrate.

The site is ready for another year of madness!   The Lunatic is ready to come out and try to prove his amazing amount of basketball knowledge – but we all know better – he is CRAZY!!!!!

Right now, the site is ready for people to register (although there probably isn’t any real value in doing that until next week).   Once the Selection Committee announces the Field of 68, I will enter them into the database – and we will be ready to start!!!!

So, watch the Conference Championships, start reading about the teams on the bubble, and do whatever analytics you typically do – whether that be build a model or make sure you know which team’s mascot you are rooting for.    And hopefully everyone will be ready to STOMP THE LUNATIC!!!!!

Just a test

With 3.2 seconds left in the game, Taylor Barnette hit what might be the biggest three point shot in his entire life.  His three-pointer was the game winner to give the Belmont Bruins an improbable 88-87 victory over Murray State to claim the Ohio Valley Conference Championship and make the Bruins the first team in 2015 to punch their ticket to the dance.

Poor Murray State was 16-0 in conference play and were literally 3 seconds away from going undefeated in their conference – now forced to wait anxiously for a week to see if the Selection Committee will reward the Racers for their 27-5 season.  And while sad for Murray State, it was probably the perfect way to start off March – with a reminder that every team is a buzzer beater away from an incredibly emotional victory or a horrible agonizing defeat.

It must be March!!!!!!!!!!   We are only 8 days away – March Madness is on its way.  I am sure that means that the Crazed Lunatic won’t be far behind.