As always, John Calapari represents the University of Kentucky with class and grace with the following quotes about his team’s seeding, location and game times.

“I didn’t see all of it,” he said of the NCAA Selection Show, “but you guys … is ours like the toughest again? Like, by far? Is anyone in here surprised? We’re not playing on Thursday, right? Because we just got done playing today. We’re playing on Thursday? Oh, but we’re close?”

“Anchorage or Boise?” he quipped. “It is what it is. They’re not going to make it easy for us, and they can all say, ‘This is all by the numbers and all that.’ OK.”

“They’re a good team,” Cal said of Arizona. “I’m surprised they were a 4. How did they drop to a 4? Didn’t they win their tournament? Did Davidson win their tournament? Did Virginia win their tournament? Oh, wow. Did we win our tournament? Wow.”

“I had to ask my guys, ‘How many of you know what state Boise is in?’”

Lets remember that Kentucky was ranked 27th in the AP poll going into the SEC tournament and ended up getting ranked 17th by the committee.  By the way, if the bracketologists of the Bracket Matrix made the bracket, Kentucky would have been the 3rd 5 seed instead of the 1st one.  But of course Cal thought his team should have been ranked higher than that, and that the Committee was out to get him.

He is complaining about having to play on Thursday – which would mean that they would have to play 5 games in 8 days to get to the Sweet 16.   Well – the Selection Committee didn’t decide to have the SEC Championship on Sunday.  His conference did.  Of course, he fails to mention that his team’s opponent Davidson is in the same boat of having to play 5 games in 8 days to get to the Sweet 16.

Also, he would be playing in Boise even if he was a 4 seed.  He can’t be delusional enough that he would have been ranked a 3 seed (or maybe he could).  The top 4 protected seeds are sent to their most favorable geographic location available, starting with the 1 seeds.  By the time we got to the last two 4 seeds available, all that was left was San Diego and Boise – which by the way, both were scheduled to be Thursday / Saturday sites.  They were sent to Boise since if they win, it would send them to Atlanta (a more favorable Sweet 16 location).

He is complaining that all of his upcoming opponents won their conference tournament making the draw tough.  Well, guess what Coach Cal.  32 teams won their conference tournament.  You had pretty good odds of eventually having to play one of them.

And then to continue his sarcasm, he insults the intelligence of his players suggesting that some of them might not know where Boise, Idaho is.  I guess it is naive of me to believe that college students know that much geography – or maybe he is implying that his athletes aren’t really college students….

There are teams that have rights to complain about their seeds.  We can get back into USC not getting a bid.  How about the fact that the UCLA team that not only beat the 4 seed Kentucky is drawn up against, but also beat the Wildcats on a neutral court ended up in the play-in game that is going on tonight.  Oh – but it must be OK for the Bruins to have to win 3 games in 5 days after playing Thursday and Friday in their conference tournament….Not to mention have to travel to Dayton from Los Angeles before heading potentially to Dallas, Texas and then if lucky enough to survive the weekend, Boston.

You are a Hall of Fame coach – how about acting like one and just talk about how excited you are to play in the NCAA Championship.

 

That’s right – the Lunatic’s insane bracket that predicted the committee beat 4 of the 6 media bracketologists – including ESPN’s Joe Lunardi and CBS’s Jerry Palm.

Of course, my wife documented my craziness that led to what I think is my best performance ever in my weekend insanity to do in one weekend what the media spends the entire season doing.  This year, I actually printed out the team sheets that the NCAA committee uses, and started ranking them on the floor of my living room.

You might ask, why I didn’t do this at a table.  Well, if I did that, I would have to leave the room that had the ACC Championship and Pac 12 Championship games on.  So, my wife took a picture and put it on Facebook.  It was at the start, so it didn’t have the full blown bracket lying across the floor – but it did have my computer on the floor, with me kneeling over tons of sheets getting spread out as I started to evaluate the teams,

And now it is pretty obvious of why I am the Crazed Lunatic.  But the Crazed Lunatic’s crazy methods apparently for at least one year made him a better bracketologist than some of the biggest ones in the media.

Of course, we now know that this means the Lunatic’s picks will go down in flames – I used all of my success on the silly bracketology.

5 teams with 8-10 records in major conferences made the Tournament (Arizona State, Syracuse, Oklahoma, Texas and Alabama).  Only one in Alabama made a showing in their conference tournament that was worthy of saying that they might be better than their record indicated.

Somehow, Nebraska went 13-5 in the Big 10, yet the only win the committee felt was worthy enough was the Michigan victory.   Somehow USC went 12-6 in the Pac 12, yet none of their wins were worthy enough.  St. Mary’s went 28-5 and was nationally ranked in both the AP and Coaches Poll – but then the committee goes through their “resume” and say all they were able to do was beat Gonzaga once.  That is not enough wins against teams in the tournament (which is also unfair – they beat New Mexico State and CS Fullerton – who are both their conference’s representative in the tourney).  That is because teams like St. Mary’s that get 25+ victories each year don’t get games against the Syracuse’s and Oklahoma’s of the world.

I get that you don’t want teams to just schedule weak opponents and then say I have 20+ wins, I deserve to be in.  But by letting in 8-10 teams from the power conferences, you are kind of saying that is OK as long as your conference is a powerful one.  There were teams that won the games they were supposed to win – both from the major conferences and the mid-majors.  Why not reward the teams that won their games.

 

 

I do need to complain about Arizona State making the tournament.  I simply can not understand how you can pick a team tied for 8th in the conference with an 8-10 record (who also lost in the first round of the conference tournament to the other 8-10 team) – but you don’t take a team that finished 2nd in the conference who then also made it to the conference tournament final.  I am fine with you saying that USC doesn’t have enough of a resume, because their best victories by RPI are Middle Tennessee State and New Mexico State.

Sure, Arizona State has two of the best victories in college basketball – they were able to beat Xavier and Kansas.  I can also see someone saying Arizona State beat USC in the only game they played.  But they won by 2 points at home.  Home court advantage normally represents 4 points – so that outcome predicts that USC wins on at their home court or on a neutral court.

If it is only about who you beat, why isn’t St. John’s in the tournament.  They beat Villanova and Duke – so why does it matter they lost 17 games.  Is that too much.   Well then how about Oklahoma State.

• Arizona State had 5 victories against teams in the bracket (Xavier, Kansas, UCLA, Kansas State, and San Diego St.).   Oklahoma State has 8 (two against Kansas, Texas Tech, West Virginia, two against Oklahoma, Texas and Florida State).
• Arizona State finished 20-11 – 9 of those losses are to teams that didn’t make the tournament.  Oklahoma State finished 19-14, but only 2 of those losses are to teams that didn’t make the tournament.
• When in the conference tournament with one last chance to show they belong, Oklahoma State beat a tournament team in Oklahoma.  Arizona State lost by double digits to Colorado – a team not even on the tourney radar.

I get that it is impressive you beat Xavier and Kansas.  But it can’t simply be about beating 2 top teams.  You have to beat the teams you are supposed to beat.  Here is how Arizona State and USC did against their similar opponents.

• Quadrant 1 – USC (2-4), Arizona St (1-4)
• Quadrant 2 – USC (4-3), Arizona St (2-6)
• Quadrant 3 and 4 – USC (7-0), Arizona St (5-1)

USC had a better record at every level than Arizona State against their like opponents.  But USC finished over 30 spots in the RPI better than the Sun Devils.  They also had a better KenPom rating, a better BPI rating, and a better Sagarin rating.  That is probably because USC did better against like competition.  It is fine if you want to say USC isn’t good enough – but you simply can not say that Arizona State is if USC is not.

 

 

The brackets have been announced, and the website is ready to go.   Just remember to register first – because people change their information, I do not store logins from previous years.  Once you register, you can enter your picks!

The full rules are on the link to the side.  For those of you new to the site, the Stomp the Lunatic contest is a standard NCAA bracket contest – you can enter up to two brackets.  Each entry has the chance to win based on a standard scoring system (incremental points are awarded for each round) and an upset scoring system (points are awarded based on the seed that wins).

This year, thanks to my wonderful wife, Elizabeth, I have added a print button for the brackets – only available on the viewing pages.  From the viewing page, if you click the print button, it should print out your picks onto one page.  It is only from the viewing pages from the brackets (or eventually, the standings), because I did not want to take a chance that a bracket did not get submitted from the entry page.  Hopefully, it works well for everyone.

Since it is getting close to my kids’ bedtime, I will send out an email later to everyone with the full rules.  I will also update the final 5 games into the schedule file, create the cheat sheets page for those of us who don’t want to build a model to predict the games, and potentially even rant about the mistakes the Selection Committee made (we’ll see how late I want to stay up tonight).  When knowing that sleep deprivation is on the way for the Lunatic, I am not sure that I want to go into the week without sleep.

But who are we kidding – it is that sleep-deprived, delusional Lunatic that we love to stomp.  Good luck to everyone in STOMPING THE LUNATIC!!!!!

The last game before the selection show was the American Conference Final between Cincinnati and Houston.  With less than 10 second left in the game, Houston has the ball in a tie game, and misses a three point shot to take the lead.  And then things spiraled downhill quickly – on the rebound, Houston was called for going over the back.  In the true sense of the definition of the foul, he did go over the back – but there wasn’t anything that prevented the Cincinnati player from securing the rebound, and quite frankly, there was a lot worse of that violation that was not called during the game.

Because Cincinnati is in the bonus, that actually sends the Bearcats to the free throw line – where they hit one of two free throws to win the game.  Houston did get one more chance – but they turned it over.

So – the Selection Committee needs to thank that referee.  Because had the call not happened, the game was very likely going to overtime.  And then, there became the possibility that the final game of the season wouldn’t end before the Selection Show was supposed to happen.   While both teams were likely in the tournament, you can’t honestly start the selection show before the game ends – can you?  But thanks to an over the back call, we will not find out what happens in that nightmare scenario.    Considering they already had to drop a team from the bracket thanks to Davidson upsetting Rhode Island to win the Atlantic 10, having a delay would have made this a rough day for the committee.

My crazy bracketology is out – where I have Virginia, Villanova, Kansas and Xavier as our top 4 seeds, with St. Bonaventure, USC, Texas and Oklahoma being the last 4 teams to make the tournament.  Of course, that is just my crazy guess of what happened.  And to be fair (although neither team cares what the Lunatic thinks), if some of my judgment rules were in place, neither Oklahoma nor Texas would be in.  I don’t like the idea that teams who go under 500 in conference can get an at-large bid.  But I am trying to match what I think the committee will do.  And I think the Sooners and Longhorns will be given a bid based on their profiles.

We shall see in a few minutes.  And then, the games begin – it will be time to Stomp the Lunatic!!!!

Just a quick heads up for those anxious to get their hands on the schedules – just click on the link Schedule 2018.

Now on to poor bracketology!!!!!!!

Five remaining games exist in the college basketball regular season.   The winners of those five games don’t have to worry about if the Selection Committee will pick them – they will have earned their invitation to the dance.  That being said, a few of the teams playing are safely in the field – so it is really more to improve their seeding.

Here are your five games:

• Atlantic 10 – Rhode Island vs Davidson – regular season champs Rhode Island are probably safely in the field.  But Davidson certainly is not.  If the Wildcats can pull off the upset, someone’s bubble will be burst as Davidson will steal their bid.
• SEC – Tennessee vs Kentucky – thanks to Auburn’s mini-collapse at the end of the season, the Volunteers managed to tie for the regular season crown.  Could Tennessee sneak up all the way to a 2 seed if they also win the conference tournament?  Kentucky is certainly going to be a tough opponent – as they also look to improve their seed.
• American – Cincinnati vs Houston – the Bearcats might also be in the running for a 2 seed if they can double up their regular season championship with conference tourney title.  Houston is also a ranked team that surprised a few people by upsetting Wichita State.  That being said, this game is at 3:30 pm, which makes me believe the committee will have set up their bracket before this game is over.
• Ivy – Harvard vs Penn.   The Ivy league regular season co-champions will battle to get their conference’s auto-bid.
• Sun Belt – Georgia State vs Texas-Arlington.  Texas-Arlington managed to upset the Sun Belt’s regular season champion, Louisiana on Saturday to reach the finals – do they have another upset in them to get them to Big Dance.

In the meantime, I am working on getting the last couple of days of scores for the statisticians looking to fit their models, as well as my typical crazy version of Bracketology – where I find myself struggling between putting who I think the committee will put in vs. who I would put in.  The point of Bracketology is to predict who the committee selects, not who I would rank higher – which makes me sad as I consider putting in teams that go 8-11 in conference ahead of small mid-major conference titles, or major conference teams that go 13-5 in conference, but somehow only have 1 Quadrant 1 victory.

Enjoy the last 5 games of the season and enjoy the Selection Show tonight at 6 pm EST.  The tournament is almost here!!!!

 

14 conferences have their championship finals today and 5 more have their semi-finals.  No game from the regular season means more than this weekend’s games – win one game today (or two if you are one of the 5 conferences playing Sunday) and you are invited to the NCAA Championship.

At first, I didn’t like the conference tournaments.  I hated that small schools that go 17-1 in their regular season and then lose in a conference championship find themselves in the NIT.  OK – I still hate that.  It doesn’t matter if you have an RPI in the 30s and 25+ wins – none of them are against teams the committee values, and so your season’s dream of playing for the NCAA Championship is over.

But the conference tournaments do produce something that is great drama, and ultimately good for the game.  They are the ultimate play-in game.  Take the SWAC championship.  Texas Southern (14-19) and Ark-Pine Bluff (14-20) had awful non-conference seasons.  But they pulled it together once they got into conference to go 12-6 and tie for 2nd in the SWAC.  Now, one of those teams will be playing in the NCAA Touranment.  You can have a horrible December and it doesn’t end your season.  You still have a chance.

Take Alabama – who looked like they were locked into the tournament until they lost their last 5 regular season games (although to be fair, it looks like all 5 of those games were to tournament teams).  Now, thanks to the SEC Tournament, they have upset Texas A&M and regular-season co-champ Auburn to make the semi-finals.  Their NCAA resume is renewed, and if they can beat Kentucky today and the winner of the Tennessee / Arkansas game on Sunday, they don’t have to worry about the bubble.  You can have a horrible February and it doesn’t end your season.  You still have a chance.

Many of us, including myself, will complain about the teams that get snubbed – it isn’t March if the Lunatic isn’t ranting about something.  But at the end of the day, every team had the chance to take the decision out of the selection committee’s hands.  Sure, beating Virginia and Duke to win the ACC is harder than beating  the SWAC’s top two regular season teams, Grambling and Prairie View A&M.  But if you are in the ACC you also had plenty of chance to build your resume.

Congratulations to bubble teams like Alabama and Providence (who upset Xavier to make the Big East final against Villanova).  They are taking full opportunity of their great chance to remove their name from the bubble and earn their ticket to the dance.  Congratulations to teams like San Diego State (who just upset ranked Nevada in the Mountain West to make the conference final against New Mexico) – the Aztecs are going from not even noticed on the bubble to one game away from dancing.

It is going to be a great weekend of basketball as 19 conferences decide who their auto-bid will go to.  Enjoy the great drama of  Conference Championship Weekend!!!!  And hopefully for all of you, at 6 pm EST on Sunday, your team will be one of the teams announced as the 68 teams with a chance to win the National Championship!