Tom, Thank you so much. What another wonderful wonderful few weeks you have given us. I have learned, well, actually, relearned, a terribly important lesson. All models are wrong. And, while some models are useful, not all are. I managed to build one of the useless ones this year. Every approach I am thinking about how to do better keeps leading me to having to learn some subject matter content. Argh. I don’t understand the game, don’t watch, and don’t enjoy watching. Also, don’t play it. I think I maybe have taken the pure numerological aspect of this work about as far as it can go. Thank you for taking me the edge. Next year I’ll need to read your musings more seriously. Congratulations to the real, and the pool, winners. Thanks too to your family for letting you give all of us so much of your time.
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2.55 year old wins upset pool
Thanks for a great first march madness picking experience everyone!!! I want to let everyone know that if you want to win the upset pool next year it helps to do the following: 1. Pick winners by mascots. 2. Actually pick upsets!!!! – The people who finished right below me had teams like Ohio State and Kansas and Connecticut in the final games. I had Temple and Louisville – I like birds!!! I’ll leave you with my mom’s favorite math quote: ‘If you think dogs can’t count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them’
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Congratulations to the Stomp the Lunatic winners!
And now the time we all have been waiting for. It seems the perfect ending to this year’s tournament. We have not one winner – we have two!
Not only did Patrick Booth and Rebecca Shipp tie with 1050 pts, but they also both appear to have the same tie-breaker of 142 pts. And since I did not plan like in past years for this crazy scenario, it seems as the only fair thing to do is declare co-champions.
In the upset pool, Logan Horgan hung on to win the Upset Pool with 273.
And congrats also go out to Joshua Lacks for winning the Second Chance Pool with 680.
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Congratulations to the UConn Huskies
Butler was looking to go down in history – but not in this way. The 53 points scored by the Huskies was the lowest I ever remember – thanks to the fact that Butler shooting just 18 percent from the field being the worst shooting performance in history. The Huskies had been winning games in the tournament with their stiffling defense and tonight was not any different. The Huskies had a most improbable March – winning 5 games in 5 days to win the Big East, and parlaying that success into 6 more victories. Congratulations to the Connecticut Huskies – the 2011 National Champions!!!
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It will be the Huskies
Kentucky put up a valiant fight, but in the end there were just too many missed 3 pointers by the Wildcats – and the Connecticut Huskies did just enough to hold on to make it to the championship game. Give the Huskies a lot of credit for building the big lead in the first half and then holding off the Wildcats charges. So it will be the Big East Tournament Champions against the Horizon Conference Champions!
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This is now officially your team!
The battle of Cinderellas is over with and sadly for Richmond, the magical run of the VCU Rams is over with. There just was no answer for Shelvin Mack, and everytime VCU came back, Butler would put in another dagger. And so for a second year in a row, the Horizon Conference Champion – the Butler Bulldogs – will get to play for the National Championship. Congratulations to Butler for such an amazing achievement – and thanks to VCU for reminding us all about what the NCAA tournament is all about. It has been such a memorable tournament – and Butler and VCU are two of the biggest reasons why.
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Mid-majors everywhere – UNITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Could it be a sign of things to come. Regardless – congratulations go out to the Wichita State Shockers for winning the NIT. After being considered one of the top mid-majors all season – no one complained when the Shockers didn’t make the NCAA Tournament despite a 14-4 record in the Missouri Valley. Apparently, their biggest crime was not winning enough big games – although their losses by 4 to Connecticut and 1 to VCU don’t look as bad in hind-sight.
Tonight, Wichita State upset Alabama to take the NIT – after also beating Nebraska, Virginia Tech, College of Charleston, and Washington State. Even if it is the NIT, that is a pretty solid group of teams – once again, as much as I don’t like it, maybe expansion wasn’t that crazy of an idea.
OK – to be fair, I guess I should congratulate Santa Clara for winning the CIT. However, there was not a single major conference school in that tournament – so it doesn’t seem fair to say – Look at the mid-majors win the CIT – since it was kind of guaranteed.
That being said if Creighton beats Oregon at home on Friday night, the mid-majors will be 3 for 3….
Anyways, hopefully it will be a sign of things to come – and eitherButleror VCU will continue to help the mid-majors claim the championships.
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continued…
continued… Ferget it–where’s my oiji-board? (Tom, next year give me a character counter so I know when I’ve run off the end in my self-pity)
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Not a stationary process
A fascinating tournament. OK, my picks are totally blown. But beyond that. I have built a Bradley-Terry class model that gives the probability of each team beating every other that fits the regular season as well as possible. Given this belief structure (a set of 604 parameters) I can simulate hundreds of thousands of tournaments. This tournament (or one even more extreme) has like a 1 in 500 probability. (There are different ways to measure weirdness, but they are all similar). I’ve been doing this modeling for like 10 years now. So, a multiple comparison correction gets me to like 1 in 50 decadal probability. Makes me think teams either do, or are starting to, play differently in the tournament than in the regular season. You basketball hotshots out there–do underdogs play a higher variance game–like more 3-point attempts or such in this single elimination structure? Shees, am I going to actually have to learn something about basketball to build a sensible model? Fe
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Just hafta steal this….
Loved Piet’s comment on FB VCU Rams won the game doo dah, doo dah. Jayhawk fans go home in shame, Oh the doo dah day.
