I know the Cavaliers go cold from time to time, but they did not hit a field goal in the last 10 minutes of the first half. And somehow, with only scoring 14 points, they are only down 13.

I have to say this is brutal. I am not sure if anyone knows the record drought, but we are currently at 18 straight misses including a wide open shot from the elbow.

The Wagner Seahawks built a 17 point lead and looked like they were easily heading to the first round. Then, Howard came storming back to cut the lead to 1 with a Bryce Harris layup for the Bison. The Seahawks got fouled and Julian Brown pushed the lead to 3 points with just 14 seconds.

Howard came down the court, and Jordan Hairston missed a three-pointer. But Howard’s Marcus Dockery got the rebound and kicked it back out to Hairston, who missed a second three pointer, but Dockery came down with the ball again, desperately headed out to the three point line and fired a third desperation three pointer at the buzzer. But it missed as well and Wagner survives.

Can the NEC do it two years in a row? Last year, we all remember (some of us more than others) that Fairleigh Dickinson won in the play-in game and then two days later became the 2nd 16 seed to win against a 1 seed by beating Purdue. It seems like a tall task but I have learned not to count anything out in March. Welcome to the tournament – the Wagner Seahawks are the first to win in Dayton!

We definitely have representation in the NCAA Tournament for Virginia – but those are going to get plenty of press.

So, for the local fans, we have three other Virginia schools playing in the NIT – Unfortunately, two of them play each other so we will be down to 2 by the end of the night.

Tonight at 9 pm on ESPN2, the Richmond Spiders (23-9) will travel to Blacksburg to play Virginia Tech (18-14)

Then, Wednesday at 9 pm on ESPN2, the VCU Rams (22-13) get their chance as they travel to Philadelphia for a battle with Villanova.

Obviously, living in Richmond, I am more rooting for the two local Atlantic-10 schools (it is always more fun when the smaller schools win). But if the Hokies win tonight, I will happily cheer for them as well – lets see if one of them can bring a NIT Championship back to Virginia!!!

In thinking about my picks, I thought it might help to have a cheat sheet of the one-bid conference champions – these are the teams that most of us including the Lunatic know very little about, but we will likely learn more about on Thursday and Friday in the first round games.

Obviously, for full details, you can check out the cheat sheet on the research page. But for those of who want something simpler, here is the Lunatic’s upset rankings.

I classified the teams into 4 groups.

– Teams that have beaten an at large team (High) – I might have also added Drake, NC State, and Oregon into the list – my sleep deprivation is already impacting my old mind.

– Teams that have beaten a top 100 NET team (Medium) – some teams have simply not played a tournament team this year, but they might have beat some NIT eligible teams.

– Teams with close losses to top 100 NET (Low) – lets face it, some of these teams only play a couple teams in this group – so were the games close or not.

– Teams where all games against the top 100 resulted in double digit losses (Surprise)

A few more caveats before we get started

– I will also identify teams that won a share of their regular season title (RS) as well as the tournament bid – there is something to be said for having the best record in your conference and then back it up in the tournament.

– This is only going to investigate based on the bubble team’s schedule – it takes two to tango as they say and sometimes upsets are just as much about the streakiness (or injury situation) of the favorite as it is about the underdog.

– It only looks at the top games. I sadly don’t have time to evaluate the entire schedule. Maybe a team got blown out by a 1 seed, played no one else of relevance and then blew out the other 30 teams on their schedule. As unfair as it is, I am only looking at what they did against tournament caliber (or close) teams.

– 33 of the last 38 champions were 1, 2, or 3 seeds. Only 2 were 4 seeds and none were 5 seeds. I mention this for a reason. It is tons of fun to be able to claim that you picked 15 seed Princeton last year and be excited as they run to the Sweet 16. But in order to do that, it means you have to knock off one of the 12 teams most likely to win the tournament. This post is not saying which 15 seed will win – just the one that has done the best against tournament level teams. So choose a 14, 15 or 16 at your own risk.

12 seeds

– UAB (High) – beat Florida Atlantic by 3 and Drake by 1 (also only lost by 1 to Clemson)

– Grand Canyon (High – RS) – beat San Diego State by 6 (also only loss by 7 to South Carolina)

– James Madison (High) – beat Michigan State by 2

– McNeese (Medium – RS) – beat VCU by 11

13 seeds

– Vermont (Medium – RS- beat other 13 seeds Yale by 1 and Charleston by 9 but lost to Virginia Tech by 22

– Yale (Medium) – beat Princeton by 6 and Cornell twice (but double digit losses to Kansas and Gonzaga)

– Charleston (Medium – RS) – beat St Joseph’s by 7 but double digit losses to FAU and Duquesne

– Samford (Surprise – RS) – Lost to Purdue by 53 and VCU by 10. But the Lunatic will note that you should watch the Kansas injury report – if both their top 2 scorers are out, this gets more interesting.

14 seeds

– Oakland (Medium – RS) – beat Xavier by 2 (and only lost to Drake by 8 and Illinois by 11 but also got crushed by Michigan State and Dayton)

– Akron (Medium) – beat Bradley by 15 and close losses to Utah St (3), UNLV (2) and St Bonaventure (1). I almost listed them first but I gave the edge to Oakland due to the Regular Season championship.

– Colgate (Low – RS) – lost to Syracuse by 4 with double digit losses to Arizona and Illinois

– Morehead St (Low – RS) – lost to Indiana by 1 with 30+ point losses to Purdue and Alabama

15 seeds

– Long Beach St (Medium) – beat USC by 5 and UC-Irvine by 4 (only tourney team was 12 point loss to San Diego State)

– Western Kentucky (Medium) – beat Louisiana Tech by 5. This probably should be low or surprise but the Conf USA champ sneaks in as the 99th NET team, and is the only team the Hilltoppers played (also lost by 6)

– South Dakota State (Low – RS) – lost to UCF by 3 and George Mason by 2

– Saint Peters (Low) – lost to Duquesne by 9 and Seton Hall by 11

16 seeds

– Stetson (Medium) – beat UCF by 3 (and lost to Cincinnati by 8) – really wish they didn’t draw UConn but also very glad they didn’t draw Purdue

– Longwood (Low) – lost to Dayton by 9 and St Bonaventure by 4

– Howard (Low) – lost to Cincinnati by 5 and Yale by 8

– Grambling (Surprise – RS) – lost to 6 tourney teams by double digits with best games being Drake by 12 and Washington State by 18. They were never close but have to give them credit for scheduling against the best.

– Wagner (Surprise) – lost to Seton Hall by 21

– Montana State (Surprise) – lost to Washington by 24

So there you go – if you are trying to learn more about the one-bid champions, that is your quick cheat sheet!!!!

Good luck to everyone with their picks.

As I mentioned before, my bracketology and handicapping pages were messed up when my WordPress sites crashed. And with all my focus last week on creating a bracket, I neglected figuring out how I would set up my handicapping page. And since my personal bracket got two teams wrong, it didn’t even do well for all that research.

Loyal readers – don’t fret. The Lunatic is here to handicap the games poorly – although I tend to be pretty accurate on the over/unders – maybe this will be the year where things switch and I get the games right and the totals wrong. Who knows?

But here is the problem – no one is going to believe a handicapping page when the picks come out after the games start. And I am still trying to figure out how to set up that page. So, under the chances that I can’t figure it out, the picks need to still happen – and so we can do that in the main blog for a little bit.

Normal disclaimers apply. This is just for fun. If you are thinking of using these for your own gambling, you probably should not. I have never walked out of a Vegas Sportsbook with more money than I came in with – so the only possible way these picks are successful is if money is not riding on it.

6:40 pm – 16 seed Howard (-3.5) vs 16 seed Wagner. O/U: 128.5

Neither team did particularly well as their top victories are in the 150+ of NET. But Howard had some competitive games against Cincinnati and Georgia Tech – so I think they are the slightly better team. That being said, Wagner plays at a very slow pace and add the pressure of the tournament could lead to a low scoring game.

Picks: Howard (30). Under (20)

9:10 pm – 10 seed Colorado State (-2.5) vs 10 seed Virginia O/U: 120.5

Virginia is one of those teams that I don’t think the metrics look favorably at. They had a few games where they lost big that effect their efficiency rankings. But they were the 3rd place team in the ACC. Its crazy to me that we could take the 3rd place team from the ACC and get 2.5 points against a Mountain West team that tied for 6th. The only thing that stops me from locking this is the Cavaliers amazing ability to go ice cold.

Picks: Virginia (20). Under (20)

Let the games begin!

Ken Pomeroy is one of the premier statisticians in the college basketball analytics world, and so it makes sense that people have research how his model has done over time.

My understanding is that every champion since his model came out in 2002 has had an offensive efficiency ranking in the top 40 and a defensive efficiency ranking in the top 25. So lets see who that narrows the field down to…..we will list their offensive and defensive ranking in parentheses.

– Houston (17, 2)

– Tennessee (29, 3)

– Auburn (10, 4)

– North Carolina (24, 6)

– Connecticut (1, 11)

– Arizona (8, 12)

– Marquette (21, 19)

– Purdue (4, 21)

– Creighton (12, 24)

Should probably not be a surprise that these are basically teams in the top 3 seeds.

If you are looking for any near misses.

On the defensive side, you have Duke (7, 26), Nebraska (36, 30) and Nevada (40, 36)

On the offensive side, you have New Mexico (41, 23) and St. Mary’s (45, 16).

And of course, the top efficiency margin teams to miss on this are 5th Iowa St (55, 1), 10th Illinois (3, 93), 13th Alabama (2, 112), 14th Baylor (6, 64) and 15th Gonzaga (9, 46)

The entry form has been set up and the bracket is now available on the site for you to enter your picks. Welcome to the 2024 Stomp the Lunatic contest!!!!

I have updated the research page with an Excel spreadsheet that has all the summaries of every game as well as the NET rankings. But for those of you looking not to do a ton of analysis, the ever popular cheat sheet is also available on the research page!

Reminder, you can not use your login from previous years. You must register to enter the 2024 contest. Also, I have been told that sometimes, if you don’t refresh the page, you can end up with an old set of links (I can’t seem to recreate that issue to try to fix it but I believe that it does happen. We will just chalk it up to the fact that I am not really a web designer.

If you have any questions about the pool, rules, where to send entry fees, please contact me at thomas@tehodgson.com

Good luck to everyone in STOMPING THE LUNATIC!!!!

We all know about Purdue’s history in March. I also was so disappointed about losing to Wisconsin that I completely forgot to congratulate Zach Edey on breaking the Purdue record for career points. He passed Rick Mount’s record of 2,323 points from 1967-1979. Currently, Edey has 2,339 career points – so congratulations on that achievement.

Of course, I am sure that if you ask Edey, there is only one prize that he is interested in – the NCAA National Championship. So that brings us to the nervousness of the Lunatic – as I created my imaginary bracket prediction, there is something that caught my eye as my Boilers likely will be a 1 seed.

One of the 6 teams I had as a 16 seed was none other than St. Peter’s. So the Lunatic is nervously hoping that after our well documented bad luck against schools from New Jersey, that we don’t find a re-match against the double digit seed that ended our Sweet 16 two years ago.

Please Selection Committee- be kind to my Boilers. Just 10 more minutes – the Lunatic is ready (well as ready as he is going to be).

I was really kind of disappointed with how the imaginary committee worked out. So here is based off mine.

1 – Connecticut, Houston, Purdue, UNC

2 – Iowa St, Tennessee, Arizona, Marquette

3 – Creighton, Auburn, Illinois, Baylor

4 – Kentucky, Duke, St. Marys, Kansas

5 – Gonzaga, Alabama, Wisconsin, BYU

6 – South Carolina, Texas Tech, San Diego St, Utah St

7 – Florida, Washington St, Nevada, Boise St

8 – Dayton, Texas, Nebraska, New Mexico

9 – Clemson, Colorado St, Michigan St, Colorado

10 – St. John’s, Northwestern, Pitt / TCU, FAU / Texas A&M

11 – Drake, NC State, Oregon, Grand Canyon

12 – James Madison, McNeese St, Duquesne, UAB

13 – Samford, Yale, Charleston, Vermont

14 – Akron, Oakland, Colgate, Morehead St

15 – Western Kentucky, Long Beach St, Stetson, Longwood

16 – South Dakota St, St. Peter’s, Montana St/Howard, Grambling/Wagner

FIRST FOUR OUT – Providence, Virginia, Seton Hall, Mississippi St

NEXT FOUR OUT – Kansas St, Villanova, Oklahoma, Indiana St

Well – I am relatively sure this will be a disaster. I spent so much time trying to create models that I really didn’t pay attention much to actual resumes until late last night and today. But I managed to come up with a crazy complex method to do this that will allow me to over-analyze how I did this for longer than I would like to admit.

All the models have flaws in them. I wish I had a longer amount of time to figure out how to make adjustments for this week. For example, a team like Arizona or Purdue might drop a couple spots in the polls for losing in their semi-finals – but I have to take what the polls said at the time. I already have fears about the process – since it as Houston as the #1 seed – despite my picking UConn. The models and unadjusted polls simply aren’t going to give the Huskies credit for winning the Big East tourney while the Cougars got destroyed by Iowa State.

I am still going to go forward with what I have – this is all my sillyness anyways – so who cares if I lose again to the media. I ended up with 12 voters – just like the committee. Then, I basically walked through the voting process.

I will eventually put a ton of information on the bracketology site about the voters and methods. But since it is 4:10 pm, I have to get a bracket out before the selection show. I am also going to include my specific vote in the list – so we can see if this is better than my normal process.

On the bracketology site – I will actually fill the regions / etc. – but for sake of time, I will simply list the seed lines.

1 – Houston (2), Connecticut – BIG EAST (1), Purdue (3), North Carolina (4)

2 – Iowa St – BIG 12 (5), Arizona (7), Tennessee (6), Creighton (9)

COMMENTS – I will be interested to see how the committee chooses between Marquette and Creighton – I chose the team that went to the finals, but the metrics like Creighton.

3 – Marquette (8), Auburn – SEC (10), Duke (14), Illinois (12)

COMMENTS – I am surprised the metrics liked Duke this much – I would suspect it will be Baylor or Kentucky….

4 – Baylor (12), Kentucky (13), Gonzaga (17), Alabama (18)

COMMENTS – This is one that I really don’t agree with my committee – if one of the WCC teams is ahead a seed line, it should be St. Mary’s.

5 – Kansas (16), St. Mary’s – WCC (15), BYU (20), South Carolina (21)

6 – Wisconsin (19), San Diego St (23), Utah St (24), Texas Tech (22)

COMMENTS – will be interested to see where the committee puts Wisconsin, especially if the beat Illinois for the Big 10 title. Also, very curious to see how they rank order the Mountain West.

7 – Florida (25), Nevada (27), Dayton (29), Washington St (26)

8 – Boise State (28), New Mexico – MT WEST (32), Nebraska (31), Colorado (36)

9 – Texas (30), Clemson (33), Michigan St (35), Florida Atlantic (41)

COMMENTS – The metrics really like FAU – I am not sure they are this safe, but I hope they are.

10 – St. John’s (37), Drake – MVC (44), Colorado St (34), Indiana St (51) / TCU (40)

COMMENTS – While I would love this, I would be surprised if Indiana State makes the tournament. But this is the biggest discrepancy between my picks and the imaginary committee. If I have counted correctly, we are also already at 34 at-large. That is just crazy.

11 – Missisippi St (47) / Pitt (39), James Madison (60), Grand Canyon (59), Oregon (54)

COMMENTS – It is crazy that we have started the automatic bids in the 11 seeds. I also think the committee is crazy to believe that either Grand Canyon or James Madison will be before NC State or Oregon.

12 – McNeese St (61), NC State (53), Duquesnes (62), Samford (64)

13 – Yale (65), UAB (63), Charleston (66), Vermont (67)

COMMENTS – I might have to put my own bracket out as well – I forgot that I ranked ordered teams that will miss the tournament ahead of these – so my numbers are going to go into the 80s instead of up to 68…..

14 – Akron (68), Oakland (69), Morehead St (71), Colgate (70)

15 – Western Kentucky (72), Long Beach St (74), Longwood (75), Stetson (73)

16 – South Dakota St (76), St Peter’s (78), Montana St (79) / Howard (80), Grambling (81) / Wagner (82),

FIRST FOUR OUT – Northwestern (38), Texas A&M (42), Wake Forest (52), Villanova (49), Cincinnati (57)

NEXT FOUR OUT – Oklahoma (50), Providence (43), Virginia (45), Utah (58)

Since it also doesn’t include my last outs – I will have a separate post with my original seeding.

But since it is already 5 pm, lets at least publish this post.