The games have begun (and already have the underdogs giving the favorites a challenge).

Since the games have started, the time to enter is now over – all the brackets are locked.

At some point tonight when I get home from work, I will check to make sure everything looks right – but for you, it is also wise to simply go to the standings file and see if you can see your entry.

Good luck to everyone in Stomping the Lunatic!!!!

First, have to say that I loved watching Belmont play Temple last night.  While I feel bad for the Temple coach – who was retiring at the end of this season, I also feel great for Belmont’s coach Rick Byrd – who has coached at Belmont since 1986, won 712 games at Belmont, led them to 8 NCAA Tournaments, and finally has won his first ever NCAA Tournament game.  They are a talented team, Maryland is going to have their hands full in the Round of 64.

But so much to do.  I still need to finalize my picks.  I have to handicap all the Thursday games for my insane handicapping that will likely end up losing.  I definitely have to watch the Arizona State vs St. John’s game tonight.   While not sure that St. John’s, who has struggled down the stretch, is the perfect measuring stick, I am really not sure what to think about the Pac 12 teams since I simply haven’t seen them play a lot.  I would love to see how Arizona State does.

For all of you, don’t be crazy like the Lunatic!!!!  Don’t wait to the last minute to make your picks!!!!  Don’t miss out on the Stomp the Lunatic pool!!!!!!   We need lots of people to put the Lunatic in his proper place!!!!!!!

Good luck to everyone!!!!

Very exciting – while we don’t need to pick these games for the Lunatic pool (entries are not due until Thursday at noon), it still means that the NCAA Tournament is about to start.  So excited!!!!!

I will probably be a little silent on my blog tonight.  Tonight is going to be the night that I try to do my research / catch up on first round handicapping.  If this year is like any other year, that will go poorly, I won’t like the results of my research and I will simply pick teams by my gut at the end of Wednesday night.

Enjoy the Tuesday night play-in games!!!!!!

This is the day when you see all the articles about how well the Selection Committee did.  You can go on any sports media page, and they will tell you which teams got snubbed and why they deserved to be in the tournament.  They will tell you what the Committee got right and wrong.

Well, the Lunatic’s blog is no different – why would I not provide my insight into what mistakes that the Committee made and/or make comments about the media pundits.

And here is the first and most important comment of this post that is likely to get ridiculously long – the Selection Committee did a FANTASTIC job.  If you ever try to create a bracket yourself and do it well – you will notice right away how hard it is to seed these teams.  When you see pundits (or me) say things like Cincinnati should be a 6 seed instead of a 7 seed, that is the equivalent of saying that you believe Cincinnati is better than potentially only 1-2 teams than where the Committee places them – that is an awfully high bar to have.

That being said – here are my comments – both critcizing the committee and more importantly, my bracketology where it makes sense.

I love (to an extent) that the Committee put 3 ACC teams as #1 seeds (in fact, they put them as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd national seeds).  When I seeded my teams, I thought the top three teams were Duke, Virginia and UNC – but I figured there was no way the committee would put 3 teams from the same conference – and so I bumped UNC down to the 2 seed line.  I love the fact that if the committee felt that Duke, Virginia and UNC were the best three teams, they put them as the best three teams.  So I give them all the credit in the world for that decision.  My only dislike about this is that with all the media coverage, it is easy to get tunnel vision.  The ACC is always considered the best conference in college basketball – and they have deserved that praise.  But it takes a lot of talent to win conferences like the Big 10, SEC and Big 12.  And when the top teams only play a couple of other major conference teams, it sets a dangerous precedent when you give all 3 of the ACC top teams a protected #1 draw and force the other conference’s top teams to play against what technically should be a tougher draw.  In the end, I think the committee got the top 3 teams right – but it makes it seem like the only basketball they are watching happened on Tobacco Road.

Where they did get things wrong at the top of the bracket is with Michigan State.  The Spartans battled injuries all year (which also was part of the reason that they lost two games in a row in early February to Indiana and Illinois).  And yet, MSU was 14-3 against teams that were given a top 12 seed in the tournament.  To put that in comparison, Duke was 12-4, Virginia was 10-3, North Carolina was 9-5 and Gonzaga was 4-3.  You can make a very solid argument (especially when I hear that Gonzaga deserves credit because they are the only team that has beaten Duke at full-strength – if we are giving credit by removing 3 of Duke’s losses to injury – the two “bad” losses that MSU have to go away as well), that a team that battled injuries, still beat more tournament teams than all the other #1 contenders and won the 2nd best conference according to the rankings as well as that conference tournament, they probably deserve the 4th #1 seed.

But I get it – many had already given Gonzaga the #1 seed before their loss to St. Mary’s – and so it is hard to let the conference tournament take that away.  I can support that people still believe that Gonzaga is better than Michigan State.  But if you are going to put them on the 2 line – how do you put the Spartans in the East with Duke – the #1 overall seed in the tournament, and send the team that Spartans beat 3 times this season (Michigan) to the West regional to play against the 4th #1 seed in Gonzaga.  I heard that it was unfair to send Michigan State all the way to Anaheim.  So it is fair to give the #1 seed a much more difficult draw and Michigan State a much more difficult draw and still also fair to send another Michigan school all the way out to Anaheim.  This makes absolutely no sense – the Spartans should be out West with Gonzaga – regardless of which order you would put those teams.  And if you believe 100% in the seeding curve of the committee, the Spartans should be in the Midwest (the Big 10s natural region) against UNC…..  This is probably the biggest mistake that the committee made (of which, probably easy to forgive unless you are a Spartan fan).

Lets take the edge of the 3 seeds / 4 seeds in LSU, Purdue, Kansas and Florida State.  I think Florida State got the raw end of this deal.  Lets look at Quadrant 1 (since it is too hard for me to keep picking out the tourney teams – sleep is drifting in) – FSU is 8-5, LSU is 9-3, Purdue is 7-7 and Kansas is 11-8).  But unlike the others who had 2-3 games against teams ranked 4-8 by the Committee, the Seminoles had 5 games against Duke, Virginia and UNC – the top 3 seeds.  Remove those, and the Seminoles are suddenly 7-1 in Quadrant 1.  But if that is not enough to give you belief that they should be ahead, he is one more cherry-picked statistic.   Two of those Quadrant 1 wins for Florida State are on a neutral court against LSU and at home against Purdue.  It is just a couple teams difference – but I think Florida State should be ahead of Purdue and LSU.  That would have also solved the geography problem that I will address next.

During the Selection Committee show, one of the announcers mentioned some interesting bad geographies that they thought the committee tried to avoid.  One was Purdue and Villanova playing in Hartford, CT – giving Villanova a simulated home-field advantage, and then if Kansas and UNC make the Midwest Sweet 16 – they will play in Kansas City (which might as well be a home game for the Jayhawks).   At first, I thought this was a fair criticism.

But if you look deeper (and you give the Selection Committee the benefit that their seeding is absolutely correct), they had little choice with their bracket principles.  Lets take the bigger concern about the Midwest region first.  There are three #1 seeds from the ACC – so they take up the East, South and Midwest regionals (especially since Gonzaga naturally belongs out West).  The 3rd seed is the one made to travel the furthest to Kansas City.  Now the problem becomes the make up of the 4 seeds (two ACC schools and two schools from the state of Kansas).  You can put one of the ACC schools out West with Gonzaga to avoid having two ACC teams meet in the Sweet 16 – but at this point, you are stuck with either sticking UNC with an opponent they have already played or a school from Kansas that will have a home court advantage.  There was nothing they could do.  (Of course, if Florida State was a 3 seed instead of say Purdue, they could have sent the other ACC team VT out West, Purdue to the Midwest, and the geographic problem of home court would have been solved).

The Purdue / Villanova issue is also an unfair criticism.  There are only 8 sites – once again if you believe the seeding is right,   Each team in order is placed with a regional site based on geographic preference.  Purdue was the 12th seed which meant by the time they got slotted, the choices were Hartford, CT, Salt Lake City, UT or San Jose CA – so you either send Purdue and Villanova out west, or you send them to Connecticut.  They really didn’t have much of an option that worked out well geographically – not their fault (once again if you treat their seeds as correct).  If they aren’t, Connecticut might not even be available by the time Purdue is slotted – but then the Boilers probably don’t play Villanova.   EDITOR’S NOTE – as a Boilermaker fan, I am very happy with Purdue’s draw.   Villanova and Tennessee are tough teams (and of course so is Virginia) – but would you rather go East to play Duke, Michigan State and Maryland.  Or how about to the Midwest against UNC, Kentucky and Iowa State…  Purdue got a reasonable draw for a 3 seed.  Not saying that they will easily win their games – simply saying that I can not complain about who and where we play – it could be worse.

I think they need to stop playing Conference Tournament games on Sunday.  And if they are, the games need to end at least 3 hours before the announcement.  It feels like the American, Big 10 and SEC tournament games were ignored.  The selection committee chair said Michigan State leaped over Kentucky since they won the Big 10 tournament.  Yet, with as close as the 2 seeds are to each other in profiles, that win in combination with Tennessee’s blow-out loss to Auburn didn’t help the Spartans leap frog both SEC teams?  And what about Cincinnati still being a 7 seed after beating Houston.   But I will give you one last thought – leading to the MSU leap-frogged Kentucky comment.  That suggests the committee had MSU at 7 and Michigan at 8.  And about 1 1/2 hours from when the Selection Committee show would announce the teams, Michigan had a double digit lead over Michigan State.  It certainly seems like the committee felt Michigan would win the game, they should swap the positions, and thus put MSU (who would be an 8 seed in that scenario) with Duke (the 1 seed).  When MSU came back, can you imagine the headache of trying to switch the two schools with 30 minutes before the show – they didn’t have enough time.  Obviously, I was not in the room so I do not know this – but that to me is the only plausible reason that they would have given a much harder road to MSU – they didn’t think the Spartans would come back.

If you are still reading this rant – lets get to the bubble.  I got three teams wrong – picking NC State, TCU and Indiana instead of Temple, Belmont, and St. John’s.   But in this case, I am thrilled.  I actually said that my reasoning was the committee always seems to pick the major conference team with lots of Quadrant 1 wins over the mid-major like Temple, Memphis or Belmont.  I would rather see the team that hasn’t lost 15 games play the game – that is just not past history.  So, I am thrilled that they choose Temple and Belmont.  I will gladly be wrong on the bubble if it means mid-majors get a shot.

One more interesting point that shows how good of a job that the Committee did with the bubble.  Every year, there are discussions about which teams don’t deserve to be in the tournament and which teams got snubbed.  This year, I read a few of those articles from ESPN, CBS and USA Today – and all of them talk about the teams that got snubbed, but there was one really interesting omission.  There wasn’t any comments about what teams should have been not selected in order to make room for the snubbed team.  One article pointed out that St. John’s was the last team in so it should be the team – but that is a cop-out.  Normally, they pick 2 or 3 teams (not necessarily the last 2-3 teams) and complain.  That is a great sign the Committee got the teams right.

But that being said, lets talk about some complaints.

The NET score seemed to complicate things at times – I feel bad for North Carolina State and Clemson who both finished 9-9 in the toughest conference in college basketball – who earned three #1 seeds, and yet their #33 and #35 NET rankings were not enough to get them in – while a 7-11 team from the Big 12 and 8-10 teams from the Big 10 and Big East are getting in.  Clemson simply couldn’t beat the 11 best teams they played.  They went 18-2 against the rest, but 1-10 against the top teams did them in – but lets be fair, how many teams are going to have better records against Duke, Virginia, UNC, Florida State and Virginia Tech.  I can understand giving another team with more quality wins a shot – but it is tough when you have a higher rating.

As for NC State, it is clearly about Strength of Schedule.  Their AD did something that is completely wrong and wrote this long statement about how the committee was wrong and they deserved to be in  (if you are 9-9 in your conference and don’t get a bid, you simply thank the NIT for the invitation and play in their tournament – as an AD, you need to not complain like a fan – you were not wronged) – and mentioned that their SOS was 178th (implying that wasn’t that bad).  Considering they played in the ACC, that is horrible.   Their problem was that they had the 353rd non-conference SOS (and yes, there are only 353 teams in Division I basketball).  So, according to the NCAA numbers they had the worst non-conference schedule of any team.

So, to be fair to the committee, based on that number, I agree that they should not be let in.  The committee has the right to say – we understand they are ranked 33rd, but based on their SOS, we believe that ranking is inflated by them beating up on bad teams.  But if you are going to choose one number over the other, you have to look at both fairly.   North Carolina State had a road game against #5 seed Wisconsin, a home game against #5 seed Auburn, and what according to NET is a Quadrant 1 win on a neutral court against Penn State (to be fair, while they shouldn’t be Quadrant 1 – the Nittany Lions beat some good teams).  There are multiple small conference schools that don’t have a single game against a Quadrant 1 team – NC State played 3.  So how is it possible that they have the absolute worst non-conference schedule in college basketball.  The committee should have evaluated both numbers – and realized they are both off.  I am good if you want to lump them in with Clemson – their only wins against tourney teams would have been Auburn and Syracuse – but then we need to figure out how to clean these rankings up so they can account for this stuff instead of being insane by saying that a schedule playing Auburn and Wisconsin is the weakest in the country.  Also, be consistent – Iowa had a NET of 43, a non-conference SOS of 303 (also awful), and the only victories against tourney teams was Michigan, Iowa State and Oregon (only because they won the automatic bid).  How is that different from NC State and yet make the Hawkeyes a 10 seed……

That being said, what TCU’s coach said was ridiculous as well.  Jamie Dixon’s quote complaint was this – “You look at the NET, there are six teams that had a lower NETs than us. They created a tool and talked about it and then there are six teams there that are lower than us that are in,”  I get that he is upset – but NET is not the reason you didn’t make it – you were 7-11 in conference.  But regardless, to his logic, because of the NET rating, his team should have been in over the last 6 at-large teams that had worst ratings.  Of course, there is a fatal flaw to his logic.  If the committee had listened to his logic, the last 6 teams would have been NC State, Clemson, Texas, Furman, Memphis and Nebraska.  And  Lipscomb and Penn State would have also been ahead of them.  Under Dixon’s logic, TCU still didn’t make it in – they just would have been passed by 6 different teams.  Instead of complaining about stats, he should be happy heading to the NIT with his team (and this is one of the teams I thought would get one of the last bid).

The last thing that I will ramble about is conference games have to matter.  I get that you want to say nice things like the games in November and December matter – but so do the games in January and February.  And so, I simply can not understand St. John’s getting the last bid in the tournament.  Lets put this in perspective.  The Big East sent their 1st place team (Villanova), 2nd place team (Marquette), tied for 3rd place team (Seton Hall) and 7th place team (St. John’s).  We skipped over Creighton, Xavier and Georgetown – the other three teams tied with Seton Hall.  Georgetown had a worse NET ranking and split with St. John’s – so I am actually good with that.  Creighton had a NET ranking of 53 – but did get swept by St. John’s – so I can even potentially understand that.  Xavier had a NET ranking of 67, and beat St. John’s by double digits both times they played.  Xavier also played really well in the Big East tournament bowing out by 4 points to Villanova – while St. John’s got pummeled by Marquette on their home court.   From those results within conference (especially since the Big East plays a balanced schedule where everyone plays each other twice),  I would have to put Xavier ahead of St. John’s.  Sure, Xavier has less wins against tournament teams, but against the same exact schedule, Xavier won more games – including the head to head.  If you don’t think Xavier is tournament worthy because of its 15 losses, I support that – but you can’t put in St. John’s if the conference profile puts them behind.

Lets say you leapfrog them because of quality wins.  St. John’s beat Marquette twice, Villanova, Seton Hall, and VCU.   Indiana beat Michigan State twice, Marquette, Louisville, and Wisconsin, had a NET ranking 18 spots higher, and beat a Butler team that St. John’s only split against.  If you are going to put a team in based on potential because of number of tournament wins – you have to pick the team with better wins, a higher ranking and less losses in Quadrant 3 and 4 (while Indiana had more losses – they were to the top part of their schedule).    Personally, I would rather them just pick another mid-major.

OK – I have really ranted long enough.  I could have taken all of that time, and picked or handicapped teams.  I must be crazy!!!!

That’s right – the Lunatic takes many beatings in March.  He spends lots of time creating a bracketology page that doesn’t matter.  Then, he gets stomped with his bracket picks.  So, why not add more of a time-consuming process of handicapping all 67 games – normally ending with lots of incorrect picks.  Because if you think it is hard to pick the games straight-up, it is much harder to pick once you have to include the Vegas line-makers spread.

So, that gives more reason to do this silly exercise.  I have to be better than most compulsive gamblers (EDITOR’S NOTE – the response to that statement is obviously no).

I could build models that can perform better than the ones that make Las Vegas millions of dollars (EDITOR’S NOTE – that is laughable.  First of all, while I believe I am talented statistician, it is not realistic to believe that I can build a better model with less data and much less time.  Second, if the Vegas statisticians were not talented, the Sportsbooks would go under – they are really good at what they do to make millions of dollars for the casinos.  But more importantly – the Lunatic would rather spend his time ranting – he is not going to successfully build a model in two days that can beat Vegas so he will rely on his deep insight and gut – that is a recipe for disaster).

As I make my picks, I can give excellent one-liner statements that can give all of you some insight into the games (EDITORS NOTE – some insight is a loose term.  But it should at least be entertaining – and that in itself has to make it worth it).

I will add the typical Lunatic disclosure – this is for recreational purposes only.  And if you want any proof of why this should be recreational purposes – over my life-time, I have visited Las Vegas multiple times.   And I have never left a Vegas sportsbook with more money than I started with.

Enjoy the handicapping page – link is in the Handicapping section.

The Lunatic has really fallen asleep at the wheel this year.  First, he gets 3 teams wrong in his bracketology – which will deserve a tremendously long rant on its own.

Then, once I got the brackets loaded and rules sheet out, I looked briefly at a couple articles and fell asleep.  It is funny that as you get older, you start to understand your parents more.  I remember not understanding why my dad wanted to go to sleep so early when I was a teen.  I was young and wanted to stay up as late as I could.  Now, I find that I fall asleep on the couch watching whatever investigative crime show my wife turns on (some of them are crazy interesting – it does not matter, if the kids are finally asleep, my brain starts to shut down).

So, last night, after the high of doing my bracketology, the bigger high of getting to see Selection Sunday, the work of loading the brackets (and trying to find somewhere that validates the ranking of the 4 number one seeds to determine which regional finalists would play each other in the Final Four – I find that the TV show does a vague job of saying this, and it would be horrible if I entered the brackets in the wrong order), and then the low of missing 3 teams, I was exhausted.  And so I fell asleep.

Without creating the cheat sheets!!!!!   I can not believe that I forgot to create the cheat sheets!!!!  Some of us depend on this information.  Most of us don’t want to create a model to do all of this – and it can be helpful when comparing the teams to have a summary of information side by side.  So, I want to help as many of you as possible – and so I create the cheat sheets.  Even if they are a day late.

Just to show how much of a mess I am, I went into my code, created the sheets, made sure all the games were right on the HTML page, loaded them up to the Webpage, and made sure the link was correct.  And I happily see that the page is loaded.  And then I wince in pain – as the title says “2017 Stomp the Lunatic Cheat Sheet”.

It is not 2017 – it is 2019.  That being said, the information in the cheat sheet is for the 2019 tournament.   For now, so it is available, I will leave it with its bad title.  I need to help kids with homework – while I want to be a ranting Lunatic, kids always come first.   I will come back after bed time to rant some more – assuming I don’t continue to fall asleep at the wheel.

The Selection Committee has announced the 68 teams – and the NCAA Tournament is ready to begin!!!

Which means it is time – Time to Stomp the Lunatic!!!!

Just click the register link above and it will lead you to the entry forms – you can have up to two entries.

Our crazed blogger might be entertaining – he might even seem to have some good points – but at the end of the day, he is still crazy. It is important for us to put the Lunatic back into his rightful place. We must all stomp!!!!!!

Good luck to everyone in Stomping the Lunatic!!!

I need a little bit of time to get ready to send out the rules email and collect my thoughts on the bracket.  But for those of you who are itching to get started, the brackets are ready and the site is ready to take your picks.

Simply go to the register link at the top of the page, and it will create an account for you and send you to the homepage for you to enter your picks.

Good luck everyone!

I thought for sure that the Selection Committee would want to put Conference Champions into the #1 seeds – figured that the way teams are playing, Tennessee and Michigan State would be those teams.  So in my Bracketology listed in the links – I had moved them into the top line.  Then, Tennessee lost badly – so they fall to the 2 seed.  I thought the Selection Committee might be too afraid to have 3 ACC schools as 1 seeds – so I moved Gonzaga up to that spot.  Figured it was close enough between those two teams that the Committee would probably go with the WCC team (to be clear, I think UNC is better – but I am trying to guess what the committee would do…..)

Now, Michigan State had another player go down with an injury and are down 8 at half – and Houston is losing as well.  So, now I have to figure out what will happen with Cincinnati’s seed if they win.

Currently, I have Houston as the #2 seed – but that was under the assumption that the Wolverines would lose for the third time to the Spartans.

So, if Michigan wins (regardless of the American) – the top seeds are Duke, Virginia, UNC, and Gonzaga – with Michigan St, Tennessee, Kentucky and Michigan as the 2 seeds.

If Houston loses, Michigan is the last 2 seed – even if they lose to Michigan State.

Of course, that means Cincinnati wins – in that case, I am going to have them moving up a seed – which will knock Louisville down to a 7 seed.

As for my bubble – as much as I don’t like it, I think the committee is going to give the last 4 spots to teams who have demonstrated the ability of winning against top 50 teams, even if they have a lot of losses to go with them.  I had Oklahoma, Arizona State and TCU as 3 of the last 4 in – leaving me deciding between Indiana and Xavier.

Both teams have a large amount of losses – so I had to give the last spot to Indiana – they have more Quadrant 1 wins than most of the 9-12 seeds.  I have to admit – as a Boilermaker, I tried hard to convince myself this was not how this would go down.  Maybe the committee would reward Xavier’s close game to Villanova in the Big East tournament.  Maybe they would reward a mid-major like Temple, Memphis or Belmont for having a good record by beating the teams that they should beat.  But at the end of the day, I find the Selection Committee always leans towards the bigger schools.  And at the end of the day, if I had to pick between Indiana – and some of the other schools on the wrong side of the bubble (like Xavier, Clemson, St. John’s and Alabama), the committee will likely go with the Hoosiers.

That being said, this might be the best thing that I can do as a Boilermaker fan.  Everything I have put on the Bracketology page has been tough – built the bracket assuming Tennessee, Michigan State and Houston would win and that is not how things are going right now.  Maybe the Hoosiers would have a better chance of making the tourney if I pick someone else.   So, that just gives me more reason to pick Indiana as the last team in.   Go Lunatic Curse!!!!!!