Stomp The Lunatic

There is so much to do, and so little time. And the world of college basketball just keeps giving me all kinds of things that I can write about.

I know that I need to be concentrating on getting my handicapping page started – the play-in games start tomorrow. Don’t worry – we don’t pick the play-in games for the Stomp the Lunatic contest so you have until Thursday to make your picks. But that doesn’t stop the Lunatic from trying to win imaginary money in his imaginary casino and showing off his amazing expertise on handicapping college basketball games.

At some point, I have to come up with my picks. That probably won’t happen until late Wednesday night as I watch the Miami OH vs SMU game.

There is so much to blog about. And of course, as I finished dinner and got ready to do all of this, the power went out taking out my internet. So, instead of starting at 8 pm, I am starting at 10 pm.

So, not sure what will win – a quick blog post, handicapping Tuesday’s games, exhaustion causing the Lunatic to desperately try to get some sleep before he no longer can. Who knows – not even the Lunatic…..

The NCAA website continues to try to stop me at every turn. They have not updated the NET rankings for the last 5 games. However, ESPN doesn’t care – they have the 5 box scores for today’s games. So, I have updated the box score data with the 5 games and just left the NET and WAB rankings as they were – to be honest, I can’t imagine they changed that drastically due to 5 games.

I also created the cheat sheet. With all the changes in the data, I think the offensive and defensive ratings are back to being their average points per game – they have not been adjusted based on pace of play (like we did last year and as you might see on other analytics websites that provide the ratings based on 100 possessions). At some point, I might go back and look at fixing it. But then again, lets be honest – whether it is points per game or points per 100 possessions, it still tells you a similar thing. And the adjusted values are based on how they did vs. how many points per game their opponent did. So, the adjusted margin numbers mean similar things – they are just not adjusted for pace.

Lets face it, we want to see the rantings of the Lunatic anyways. This lets me move on to my handicapping page. So, while all of you are concentrating on winning the actual pool, I will be doing a pointless exercise to predict against the spread for all 67 games.

As for my bracketology, I am pretty pleased that the only team that I got wrong was San Diego State over SMU. And to be fair to me, I was really probably concentrating more on the fact that my Boilers had taken a lead on Michigan and were trying desperately to hang on to it. I even mentioned the fact that I wasn’t sure what the committee would do about the injury to SMU’s BJ Edwards ankle – apparently, that was some type of foreshadowing as the last team I mentioned in the bracketology page would be the one team I missed. But apparently, the press all got it right – as it looks like many of them got 68 of 68 teams right this year.

At some point, I will do a final wrap-up on the bracketology as well as think about what I think the committee got wrong (which couldn’t be too much since the only team I missed on was the last team I entered into the field). But not tonight.

The Lunatic is tired but happy. The tournament has been released. The website is ready for you to enter your picks. The cheat sheet is on the research site for those of you who want to take a peak at it before you pick the games. The Lunatic’s bracketology that he created over half of while watching the Purdue game ended up relatively respectable for the amount of attention he put into it (since he had to spend so much time trying to figure out the basketball stats).

So, the Lunatic is going to get some sleep in a feeble attempt to not turn into a zombie by the time Thursday and Friday come along. We all know better that this is a lost cause. And lets face it – the Lunatic’s rantings are better when he is sleep deprived.

I hope that whatever team you were rooting for got a good seed or a decent matchup in the tournament. And I hope that all of you find some time this week to join us and make your picks – it should be an incredible NCAA men’s championship!!!! The brackets are released and ready for you to enter your picks. Good luck to everyone in Stomping the Lunatic!!!!

Well, I am horribly behind schedule. I had all these naive thoughts of coming up with this really cool stats-based website with all the information that the committee has at their fingertips. And then, I totally struggled amongst by biases vs. what the statistical information said.

Since it is running late, I am going to at least get the seeds out there – and then after all the dust has settled, I will clean up the bracketology site. But if I wait, then no one will know that these picks came out before the actual selection – which makes no sense.

1 – Duke, Arizona, Michigan, Florida

2 – Houston, UConn, Iowa State, Purdue

3 – Michigan State, Illinois, Virginia, St. John’s

4 – Gonzaga, Arkansas, Nebraska, Alabama

5 – Kansas, Vanderbilt, Wisconsin, Texas Tech

6 – Tennessee, North Carolina, Louisville, BYU

7 – St. Mary’s, Miami (FL), Kentucky, UCLA

8 – Villanova, Ohio State, Clemson, Georgia

9 – TCU, Texas A&M, Utah State, Iowa

10 – St. Louis, UCF, Missouri, Santa Clara

11 – VCU, South Florida, Texas/NC State, Miami(OH)/San Diego State

12 – McNeese, Akron, Northern Iowa, High Point

13 – Hawaii, Hofstra, California Baptist, North Dakota State

14 – Troy, Wright State, Penn, Kennesaw State

15 – Furman, Idaho, Tennessee State, UMBC

16 – Siena, Queens, LIU/Howard, Lehigh/Prairie View

First Four Out – Oklahoma, Indiana, Seton Hall, Auburn

Second Four Out – Cal, Stanford, SMU, New Mexico

I had several places where my biases might get me but I am going to go with it.

• I bumped Purdue up from a 3 seed to a 2 seed (at the expense of Michigan State) thanks to their huge 80-72 victory over #3 Michigan in the Big 10 tournament championship.
• The polls and the statistics suggest St. John’s should be further back – but I bumped them up to a 3 seed because of the fact that they won both the regular season championship as well as the huge 72-52 victory against #6 UConn in the Big East tournament championship.
• I moved Arkansas into the 4 seeds thanks to their victory in the SEC championship. I originally wanted to put Vanderbilt there because of their win against Florida, but I couldn’t put the Commodores over both Arkansas and Alabama who finished 2 games ahead in the standings.
• I am horrible at seeding the middle of the bracket – that will probably continue.
• I could not keep Miami (OH) out of the tournament because of a 4 point loss in the MAC tournament after a 31-0 regular season.

My last three teams came down to San Diego State, Oklahoma and Indiana.

• Indiana might have had the best season and they had no losses outside of Quad 1 or 2 teams.
• Oklahoma might have been the best of these teams in the last couple of weeks as they have been on a tear. But they also went 7-11 in the conference before having a great SEC conference tournament. The committee has tended to weigh the regular season more than a great conference tournament.
• That left me with San Diego State – they did have one bad loss at Colorado State (Quad 3), but they also finished 2nd in the Mountain West and backed that up by getting to the conference tournament final. The Mountain West tends to get more teams, and so I thought having a 2nd team made the most sense over a struggling power conference team.
• I feel the Big East gets a bad break. Seton Hall is a competitive team. But their only Quad 1 victory was against NC State – and they had 4 losses against Creighton, Butler and two to DePaul. It isn’t the worst thing to lose a couple unexpected road games in your conference – but then you have to beat one of the top teams and the Pirates did not do that.
• Auburn had the best NET / WAB rankings of all these teams, but I could not put a 17-16 team in the tournament. The committee has never done that before, and so if I am predicting what they will do, I have to predict they stay consistent to the principle.
• I was not sure what to do with SMU – they have an injury to one of their star players, and he might be able to recover and be back next week for the tournament. But they lost 5 of their last 6 games and their statistics fell to the point that they would no longer be in the running based on those numbers. Since I don’t have a way to recalculate the NET based on injuries – I can’t tell where they would fall.

I am so excited that Purdue has won the Big 10 championship over Michigan. I am so excited that the tournament field is going to be announced in 10 minutes. I am so excited!!!!

The Lunatic is so excited – the tournament is literally around the corner. And his Boilers are giving him hope that they can still achieve some of their goals of the season as they have made it to the Big 10 Championship final against Michigan. There would certainly be no harm in losing to the Wolverines, who will be one of the top 4 seeds of the tournament as only Wisconsin and Duke have lost to them. But it would certainly be a statement that they have come back from their losing streak to end the regular season.

Bubble teams should thank Arkansas for ending the reign of terror in Nashville being caused by Ole Miss, despite needing overtime to do it. The Rebels certainly are not making the at-large field at 15-20, but they were an overtime period away from playing Vanderbilt for the SEC title today.

Bubble teams should be afraid of Dayton, as the Flyers knocked off St. Louis in one of the most exciting games of the day. Is VCU’s at-large bid secure based on making it to the Atlantic 10 final, or do they need to beat the Flyers to keep their spot in the field. This is one of those places where I think the Sunday championships are detrimental. I know for a fact that the committee creates alternative brackets based on the results of the 5 games today. But this is one of those games where you simply think – it would be so easy to list the winner of the VCU / Dayton game as the first automatic qualifier as a 12 seed. I trust the committee has done the right thing – and theoretically, that means that if Dayton upsets the Rams today, the Atlantic 10 could be seeing 3 teams in the tournament.

What to do about the final #1 seed? Florida seemed to have a strangehold on it until Vanderbilt dismantled them. It doesn’t seem right that UConn claims the last spot when they didn’t get either the Big East regular season or tournament championship – as St. John’s took them down convincingly last night at Madison Square Garden. Houston might have made the best argument for it – but they couldn’t complete their comeback against #3 Arizona. I am going to give the nod to the Gators, but I am interested to see what the Committee does.

If you believe in karma (and the Lunatic believes in lots of superstitious things but especially karma), the final game of the night might have been one of those examples. The WAC tournament opened with some drama of threatening to remove its regular season champions Utah Valley over exit fees that the school was refusing to pay and had not put into escrow while the court case was being decided.

Well, Utah Valley did comply and put the money is escrow and were allowed to play in the tournament. And it looked like they were going to win the automatic bid last night as they held a 59-52 lead with just 3 minutes to play as Jackson Holcombe got fouled while making a layup and hit the free throw to complete the three-point play. But California Baptist’s Dominique Daniels Jr would hit three 3 pointers including one with 17 seconds left to cap off an 11-2 run to take the lead 63-61. The Wolverines would get one more chance, as Trevan Leonhardt almost ran the pick and roll play with Isaac Davis to perfection as the Lancers converged on Leonhardt and could only watch as Leonhardt’s lob pass went up to the outstretched hands to Davis above the rim. And then Davis missed the dunk and the clock hit zero sending California Baptist to the dance.

The Lunatic managed to complete 4 of his 5 goals. He certainly watched some good basketball, his Boilers won, he got the data converted, and got to spend some time with Charlie, Katie and Elizabeth as we had a wonderful dinner out with one of our good friends, Anna. I even had managed to spend some time collecting information from the Websites that I can’t scrape with Python (such as the Kenpom, KPI and BPI rankings) to help with my Bracketology. And then my old body tired out once we got home from dinner – I did at least get to watch the ending of the Duke / Virginia game. The Cavaliers really gave the Blue Devils a battle as they held Cameron Boozer in check, but Isaiah Evans scored 20 including a big three-pointer to give them a 3 point lead with about 5 minutes left, and Cayden Boozer added 16 including a layup with about 2 minutes left to keep the Blue Devils ahead. And then Duke’s defense held off any late rallies from the Cavaliers to lock in their spot as the number 1 team in the country.

So, I have a ridiculous amount of work to do today on bracketology. I don’t even know how I am going to answer the bubble questions. But it still was a very nice day for the Lunatic.

With 5 championships all that is remaining in the schedule, lets look at what we have.

We start at Noon on ESPN2 as the Ivy League decides their bid with regular season champion Yale (24-5) plays Penn (17-11). Yale has decent NET numbers but without a Quad 1 win, they need to claim the Ivy’s automatic bid.

At 1 pm on ESPN, #17 Arkansas plays #22 Vanderbilt at what will feel like a home game for the Commodores in the SEC Championship in Nashville, TN. Both teams are close to each other in rankings, so this might be the difference between which team is a 4 seed and which one is a 5 seed.

At 1 pm on CBS, the Atlantic 10 tips off with the most bracket-influencing game of the day as VCU will play Dayton in Pittsburgh. With many of the bubble teams losing early, it was believed that VCU would hold on to its at large bid if it reached the final. But that was because it was believed they would be playing regular season champion St. Louis – can their resume withstand a loss to Dayton?

At 3:15 pm on ESPN, the American Conference has regular season champion South Florida trying to defend their championship against 2nd place Wichita State. South Florida has a NET ranking of 45 so it will be interesting to see what the selection committee does with the Bulls if they can’t claim the automatic bid from the conference.

And finally, at 3:30 pm on CBS, my 18th ranked Boilers will play the 3rd ranked Michigan Wolverines and try to become only the second team in the Big 10 to beat the mighty Wolverines. Seeding for these teams will probably be set regardless of the outcome, but it should be a fantastic game to watch.

And of course, at 6 pm on CBS, the Selection Committee will announce the 68 teams for the NCAA men’s basketball championship. And then, it will be time to Stomp the Lunatic!!!!

So, as a Purdue fan, it only makes sense that I was watching the Big 10 semi-final while working on my bracketology. And it reminded me of the Arizona vs. Iowa State game. One of the favorites is tied with the clock running down between Wisconsin and Michigan and a star player ends the game.

Under a minute to play with the game tied, Elliot Cadeau hits a three-pointer to give the Wolverines the lead. But the Badgers were going nowhere – they marched right down the court, got the ball to Nick Boyd, and he promptly ties the game back up with 30 seconds to play. The Badgers are playing pretty solid defense, and it suddenly looks like Michigan might not even get a shot off. And then Cadeau finds Yaxel Lendeborg deep behind the three-point line, and the Michigan star drains the three-pointer to give Michigan the win.

With 20-30 minutes in between games, I looked to see if something else was on, and I ran across the Atlantic 10 semi-final between St. Louis and Dayton. And if you thought the Big 10 game was exciting, this game was just completely wild.

Dayton finds themselves down 3 points with about 30 seconds left when Keonte Jones drives to the basket and gets fouled. Jones would hit both free throws to cut St. Louis’ led to one. Dayton sets up their press, and the Billikens can’t get the ball in-bounds before getting a five second violation to turn it over.

The Flyers get the ball into Javon Bennett who drives to what looks like it will be a layup, but St. Louis comes from behind and blocks the shot off the backboard. In the ensuing scramble for the ball, Jones picks it up and passes it out to Jacob Conner, who drills a deep three-pointer to give the Flyers a 2 point lead with just 11 seconds left.

Amari McCottry rushes the ball up the court for the Billikens and finds Robbie Avila at the top of the key, who drills a three-pointer with a little around 4 seconds left to give the lead back to the Atlantic 10 regular season champions.

Dayton doesn’t call time-out – instead they quickly in-bound the ball to Jordan Derkack, who wildly drives the lane and throws up a prayer of a lay-up, which looked more like he was hoping to draw a foul. The referees would not be bailing him out – instead, it was center Amael L’Etang who tips the wild layup attempt that never hit the rim towards the rim, and it goes in with 0.4 seconds left in the game.

Dayton got lucky as the bench erupted including a player who went to hug L’Etang on the court – which could have been called as a technical foul since the game was not over. But the referees calmed everyone down and gave St. Louis a timeout to plan their last ditch prayer. But Quentin Jones’ three-quarter court shot would only graze the backboard, and the Dayton Flyer upset the regular season champs of the Atlantic 10.

And so the bubble likely shrinks by a team, or at a minimum, St. Louis falls onto the bubble. I think the Billikens are probably still in but you just never know what the committee will do. Meanwhile, the local VCU Rams, who are also on the bubble now have to feel like they are the favorites if they can win their semi-final against St. Joseph’s.

If you went to Hollywood and asked them to make up a fairy-tale ending, I am pretty sure no one comes up with that finish. So, bubble teams get more nervous as it looks like the Atlantic 10 will get at least 2 teams.

I should thank my wonderful wife Elizabeth for reminding me – since I could have forgotten with all the championship games happening today. But it is Pi Day!!!! So, go have your favorite type of pie (whether it be pizza, dessert, or simply a mathematical constant) to celebrate the second best mathematical constant date according to the Lunatic. Since Elizabeth and I by good fortune were married on Mole Day, that will always be my favorite day.

The long awaited box scores / schedule / net rankings Excel file has finally been loaded to the website. If you go to the Research link on the menu, you will see that the 2026 Schedule File is now available. The typical disclaimer is there. My process checks to see that the records (by site and by quad) match what is on the NCAA NET Rankings page.

For those of you who wonder why I do this each year, here is the brief story. Each year, we get several people who have demonstrated the power of statistics by building models in order to predict the games – some with tons of success. Bill Kahn had been near the top of the standings multiple years by building Bradley-Terry models. And our 2006 champion, David Shaddick, won by using a model he created with this data for a stats training course at work for analysts. At the end of the day, good statistical techniques can be used to do a great job of forecasting the game – even if it doesn’t capture all the strange possibilities that can happen.

I will apologize in advance. Since I had to change to using the ESPN data and I have so many other things to do before Selection Sunday, there are format differences in variable names and team names from past years. Hopefully, that will not mess up the modelers too much, but you will have to do some extra research into the data.

But considering how behind I am, it seemed like such an appropriate way of celebrating Pi Day – by providing everyone the gift of data!!!!

As always, if you notice any issues with the data, please let me know!!! Enjoy the data!!!

And the nightmare situation for the selection committee has hit. With 50 seconds left, Miami(OH) tied their game with Massachusetts at 81 when Peter Suder hit a step-back jumper. But the Minutemen would take the lead back as they got the ball down low into Daniel Hankins-Sanford , who strongly muscled his way in to a lay-up with 29 seconds left.

The Redhawks had been in so many close games this season that you figured they would pull it out. They got the ball to Luke Skaljac at the top of the key when the defender trying to cut off the pass slipped. So Skaljac changed his mind to drive to the hoop and took a dribble back to take a three-pointer. But before he could shoot it, the defender recovered and so Skaljac decided to pass the ball instead. The indecision cost him as the pass was intercepted by Marcus Banks Jr.

Banks then calmly over the next 20 seconds hit the 4 biggest free throws of his life and UMass handed Miami (OH) their first loss of the season.

So, does a team that went 31-0 in the regular season, with a NET ranking of 54th, no wins against Quad 1 teams, and just lost to 204th ranked UMass still get an at-large bid. Personally, I think they have to be in the tournament – the regular season has to mean something. Any team that goes 31-0 clearly has the talent to win a game in the tournament.

But I am not the person handing out tickets to the dance. The Selection Committee is the one who has to make that decision – and it will be hotly debated in the media and in their conference room about should a team be rewarded for winning all their games if they do it against no teams that would play in the tournament. I don’t envy either the Selection Committee or the Miami (OH) team and fans.

The MAC has stolen a bid from the bubble. The big question is whether they have stolen it from a struggling power conference team or from their regular season champion.

As always, the bubble has created some unexpected results. With a bid on the line, teams like Texas and Indiana lost to teams with losing records and thus, nothing to lose. There were also some great games like UCF’s overtime victory over Cincinnati. And of course, congratulations to McNeese, Lehigh and Idaho for winning their conference tournaments to book their tickets to the dance!

While I haven’t fully checked, today is going to be a great day of basketball. 15 of the top 25 teams will be playing today, many of them for the first time. So, if you are a bubble team and made it this far, you now get your chance to make your impression. Instead of playing in a game where it would be considered a bad loss, you now are likely playing a team that might catch the committee’s attention if you win.

But you still need to win!!!!

I was going to pick a game from each time range but I just can’t. Look at the choices to make just from the noon games.

• In the ACC, we get #10 Virginia playing NC State – as Virginia looks to see if they can sneak into the conversation for a 2 seed while NC State tries to continue to strengthen their resume and move off the bubble – they are probably safe but a victory over Virginia probably seals the deal.
• In the Big 10, Iowa and Ohio State play in a game that both teams would like to have since it would be a win over a fellow bubble team. Once again, both are probably safe. That might be a better game to pick since it is two bubble teams instead of one.
• In the SEC, we have Kentucky and Missouri – the Tigers need this win more than the Wildcats thanks to their weaker NET ranking, but both are high quality teams that can make a run – that certainly must be the best game of the timezone.
• In the Big 12, we have #7 Iowa State vs #16 Texas Tech – so now we have two games between teams that both might be protected top 4 seeds in the tournament – that should be an incredible game!!! Why watch two bubble teams play when we could watch a game that could easily be a preview of an Elite 8 regional final.

There is so much to choose from today. You can’t go wrong. Whether you want to follow a small conference bid stealer, such as the days kick-off at 11 am where undefeated Miami(OH) tries to protect their spot by beating Massachusetts in the MAC or you want to follow any of the fantastic games in the power conferences, Thursday has you covered.

Enjoy the games!!!