So much to blog about – so little time. As I was cursing at my computer trying to figure out why one of my table had 357 entries and one had 356, I kind of tuned out the games. To my fairness, I expected the only game that would be close would be Texas A&M and Penn State. I was correct that Texas would end up with a big lead on Colgate and UCLA would have a big lead on UNC-Asheville. Was wrong about Houston vs Northern Kentucky.

The big news from that game is that Marcus Sasser re-injured his groin and had to leave the game early. His teammates rallied the Cougars to a victory, but if he can’t continue, that will be a huge blow to them returning to Houston for the Final 4.

I also feel horrible for Texas A&M. I don’t know what Buzz Williams did to have the committee hate him, but he had a rough week. The SEC runner-ups somehow ended up being a 7 seed, and then the committee put them up against a red hot Penn State, with a likely game against Texas if they advanced. Just brutal.

Well, Penn State continued with their red hot shooting and blew the Aggies right off the court. The Nittany Lions are certainly playing on house money right now, and since they are playing like they have nothing to lose, they look extremely dangerous. Of course, Texas has looked extremely dangerous all season – but for one night, the Nittany Lions are enjoying their time at the dance

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone!!!!   Hope today brings good luck to all of you!!!

These people needed no luck yesterday – they showed they are much better than the Lunatic at predicting the games.  But a special call-out needs to go to the Ams family.  They are rocking this tournament.

Our leader is Cooper Ams – who managed to get 15 of 16 games correct yesterday, with only missing the Princeton victory.  When you go perfect except for the 15 seed upset, that is pretty impressive picks.  Right behind him in a tie for 2nd place is Gabbi Ams with 14 games correct.  In a tie for 7th is Joey Ams at 13 games correct.  And Michelle Ams did a very respectable 12 games correct and is in a tie for 28th.

Tied with Gabbi in 2nd place is William Craft, Matt Reilly, Drew Bradley, and Will Caldwell.

And while I am not going to list out all the people in a tie for 7th, it is worth calling out that our defending champion, Edward Zhang, is one of the many with a great start.

The Lunatic is hanging around in a tie for 78th, with only 11 games right.  He is too shell-shocked from his computer network issues last night to be concerned about the stomping he is about to receive.

Good luck to everyone today!!!!

The sleep deprivation is real. When I was younger, I would happily do my handicapping while the 7 pm games were going and then blog throughout the games.

Now, I am sitting here struggling with my database and watching my network continue to crash. It seems to work fine on my phone where I can blog. But I need a computer to manage the database – and that doesn’t want to connect.

Still have 16 games to handicap after I fix my network and finalize the database. Glad there are four late games to keep me company. And that there weren’t any surprises in the early evening games. Duke and Texas jumped out to big leads. Auburn and Iowa had an interesting game where Auburn jumped out to a large lead and then Iowa would storm back. In the end, Auburn just got too far ahead. And Northwestern knocked out the last of the Mountain West at large teams as only the regular season champ San Diego State survived the first round.

Here’s hoping I can get my network back up. I am too tired to find another way to get the site finalized.

So, I got to enjoy Katie playing in her Powder Puff football game.  Since I was stuck in the parking lot, I tried to watch the end of the San Diego State vs Charleston game.  As I waited for the lot to clear, I knew was there was 50 seconds left, Charleston decided to let San Diego State walk up (horrible mistake), got them to get a horrible shot at the end of the shot clock (looking better), and then fouled the three pointer shooter (which should have probably been game).  But Charleston drove down the field and cut the lead again to 3 – as I am excited for a great ending.  And then my phone signal gave up.  Next thing I knew, the game was over and San Diego State had held on.

So, I thought – that kind of stinks but now I will pick up Charlie, and with the next game to end being Arizona vs Princeton, I should be fine.  And the Wildcats are up 8 – no big deal.  I did get the game on the March Madness app, and slowly, Princeton starts coming back.  I got to the high school and watched, and Arizona looked lifeless.  Princeton took one down, drove to the basket, missed, but no one blocked out, so a Princeton player skied in and dunked it.  And the lead continued to shrink.

Then, Charlie got in and we started heading home.  And I hear the announcer say that Princeton has taken the lead.  I thought – serves Arizona right.  The couple of times I got to see the game in the parking lot, Princeton was playing their hearts out, so I hope they pull this out.  And then at some point, I hear Arizona has the ball with 1 minute 37.  Then it dawned on me.  Not only did Princeton have the lead, but there is not much time left.  I had been driving and not paying attention to the clock.  Then, I hear that Princeton builds the lead to 3.  Then I hear Charlie say – oh my gosh that is an airball, the announcer say some one tried to save the ball, and Charlie say that’s off – oh my gosh, Princeton just won.  Then he said, well – they haven’t won but they won.

So, we pull into the driveway and I grab the phone.  There is three seconds left and it is a one-and-one.  The Princeton player hits the back of the rim, the ball bounces high in the air, and then finds the net.  The Tigers are up 4 points with 3 seconds to play.  He misses the second free throw, but it doesn’t matter.  Arizona lazily walked the ball up a couple feet and throw the ball towards the basket – knowing their season is over.

And #15 seed Princeton has advanced to the second round!!!!!!  I wish I could have seen more of it – but at least I got to listen to the finish.  And thanks to the Ivy League Champions, it took exactly 7 games to ensure that all 357 entries in our pool all had their perfect brackets ruined.  Everyone has lost at least one game.  Then again, should anyone be surprised.  Are we really supposed to believe a 15 seed is going to win?  We all should know better – it is March!!!!  Everyone has a chance to win once the ball is tipped.  And this afternoon, the better team was the Princeton Tigers!!!!

And it is the 13 seed Furman Paladins. They had a late three point lead until Virginia scored 7 straight points to make it 67-65. Then, Garrett Hien hit two free throws to bring Furman back to within two and then the drama.

Furman trapped Virginia’s Kihei Clark in the corner. Clark couldn’t get out of the trap or get a foul called and desperately threw a baseball pass up to the middle of the court. But it would not be a Virginia player there.

Instead the ball fell into the hands of Hien who quickly passed the ball up to Furman’s JP Pegues drilled a three pointer from deep with 3 seconds left. Virginia got the ball into Reece Beekman who put up a desperation three at the buzzer that hit the board, the front of the rim and fell harmlessly to the floor, and the celebration begun.

13 seed Furman has beaten 4 seed Virginia 68-67.

Meanwhile, Maryland managed to hang on for a 2 point victory against West Virginia as the Mountaineers missed a three at the buzzer. And Missouri is close with Utah State and Howard hung in their for 10-15 minutes before Kansas built up a 13 pt lead.

But the story is the Southern Conference champion winning their second ever NCAA Tournament game (and their first one since 1974). Cinderella has joined the dance, and she is accompanied by a Paladin.

Unofficially, we have 357 entries – that should make this a super fun contest!!!

I will do my final validations of the database tonight. The standings are also available so you can do a quick check to see if your entries don’t have any issues (other than any upsets that happen over the next few hours, of course). If there is a real issue like an entry being missing, please let me know as soon as possible.

Good luck to everyone in stomping the Lunatic!!!

The Lunatic might be in trouble. His simulator didn’t create results he liked, but more importantly, we already have 324 entries ready to stomp him into oblivion. And there is still an hour to join the fun – maybe we can break the pool’s record for number of entries this year!

Once the games start, I will lock down the pool. Tonight, I will try to validate the number of entries and create an email list for everyone who entered. I will also try to get a prize list out. Oh, and of course blog about the games, create my handicapping for Friday’s games and go to Katie’s Powder Puff football game at her middle school.

Add in Charlie’s soccer game on Friday and Katie’s rugby game on Saturday and the Lunatic will be insanely busy – so my apologies in advance if the prize list doesn’t get sent out tonight or the site doesn’t update as quickly as it historically does. The Lunatic will do his best!

But right now, my insanity is not anyone’s concern – that is already well documented. The ball is in your court. You have one hour before Maryland and West Virginia tip off at 12:10 pm EST. So only one hour to get your brackets filled out and enter your picks to Stomp the Lunatic!!!

So, in a desperate attempt to help me with my handicapping page, I quickly went back to my old try to beat Vegas days, and built the Lunatic simulator.

So, it is what you might think it is.  I quickly overfit models to predict what a team’s FG percentage, TPG percentage, FT percentage, turnover rate, FT rate, TPG / FG ratio, offensive rebounding rate, and estimated number of possessions based on playing their opponent (and vice versa).

Then, I throw those predictions into a simulator that uses random numbers and the predictions to simulate 1000 games between the two teams.

Currently, I am running it through the first round of the tournament to determine if I should use it for my “sane” picks (we all know that I will pick Purdue in my insane picks).  Also, waiting to see what happens in the last play-in game.

The reason I never got comfortable using the simulator in the past is I never was able to figure out how to adjust for a team that plays against weaker teams.  The tool tends to like smaller conferences more than I would like – for example, it says that Arizona State only has a 41% chance of beating Nevada – and my experience with the Mountain West is to not trust them in the tournament.  If the Sun Devils blow out Nevada, I might have to reconsider, but so far, it is doing well.  It would have missed on Mississippi State (who was a 52% favorite, but would have been correct when accounting for the spread (since it said take Pitt and the 2.5 points).  It was also right on everything else so far.

Seems like I could do something fun like take the underdog if it has a 45% chance or better of winning.  Then again, it is also taking a while – guess it takes a while for the computer to simulate 1000 games….

If it doesn’t finish, or looks too chalky, I will stick with what I have already put in.  I figured if I was going to play with creating a model, I should at least have a backup already in place for when the model doesn’t look good at 1:30 in the morning.

Editor note: Arizona State has jumped out to an 11-3 lead.  Maybe I should stick to just using it for judging the over/unders.

Texas A&M – Corpus Christi won their first ever NCAA Tournament game 75-71 when SE Missouri St’s three pointer with 2 seconds ended up short.

Pitt advanced today with a 60-59 victory over Mississippi State’s wide open three-pointer and their tip-in on the rebound both bounced off the rim and out.

Two games into the tournament, two games went down to the final shot. If this keeps up, it will be a wild tournament!!!

So super exciting – the first of 67 games to decide a National Champion as Texas A&M – Corpus Christi and SE Missouri State have tipped off.

In my perfect world, I will do some analysis, see if it matches what I said in the podcast, and if not, likely still select what I said in the podcast. Although I do need to think about the fact that only 5 schools meet the special statistical requirements (which will not stop me from taking Purdue). I had not gotten that far before the podcast (although I had done the champions advance in my picks).

And of course have to watch the play-in games to see if anyone impresses me. Very excited the Madness is here!