I spaced out this morning and never blogged that I did fix my internet, fix the website and load the Handicapping page there. It doesn’t have a lot of true insight, but you have who I am rooting for.
I got home just in time to see the tip-off of the Alabama State vs. St. Francis game – so excited the tournament has begun!!!!!
I will probably blog all night about meaningless stories, while I watch the two games tonight – so much fun!!!!
I am sure when it is not midnight I will dig into the data of the selection process. But I have to call out the embarrassing way that West Virginia governor Patrick Morrisey ranted today about West Virginia being left out of the tournament.
Having a governor of the state ranting about college athletics, in front of a podium with a banner saying National Corrupt Athletic Association, and saying the selection reeks of corruption, it was a miscarriage of justice, and asked his attorney general to investigate what shady things happened to pick UNC over West Virginia.
I get it – the head of the committee is also the North Carolina Athletic Director. I also get being upset about the fact that the Mountaineers being the first team left out. But the governor should have better things to do than moan about how a team that went 10-10 in their conference deserves to be in a basketball tournament. And quite honestly, what happens to the tournament if the West Virginia, Indiana, Ohio and Idaho attorney generals all sue because their bubble team didn’t get in.
Maybe if they don’t like the possibility of backroom deals happening (because obviously that would never happen in government affairs), we can simply let the KenPom model pick the teams. Oh wait, that won’t work for the governor because the model says that North Carolina is better than West Virginia and so was 16 other at large teams. Instead of being the first team out, they would have been the 6th team out.
But what I thought was telling was from my handicapping work. The current Vegas line was North Carolina to beat San Diego State by 5 points. So, while that certainly doesn’t break any ties between the Tar Heels and the Mountaineers, it suggests that the best predictive sports models in the world thought UNC was better than San Diego St, so if anyone stole West Virginia’s spot in the tournament, it is the Aztecs from the Mountain West. Or maybe the Vegas models know about the corruption and realize tomorrow’s game is already been fixed.
Oh and as for the business side of things, since the commissioner talked about how college sports has become a business (which of course it is). West Virginia turned down invitations to both the NIT and the inaugural Crown tournament – the one that FOX made an exclusive deal with the Big 12, Big East and Big 10 which would generate money for the conferences. I don’t know that you get to complain about corruption and money and then not honor the deal your conference made with Fox Sports to play in their tournament.
I get being upset. But if we are going to get into lawsuits over who goes to the tournament, then you have to look both ways. Are we going to allow the Big 12 to sue West Virginia for not following through with what the conference agreed with Fox. All because we are upset that a team that was never going to win the national championship didn’t get to play one or two games in it.
And as for earning a spot in the championship, UC-Irvine went 28-6 this season and is not in the tournament. Central Connecticut went 25-7 and won their conference by 2 games, and they were left out. How about Utah Valley who went 25-8 or Chattanooga who went 24-9 who also both won their conference by 2 games. Colorado went 10-10 in their conference while Utah Valley went 15-1 in theirs. You can claim what you want that the Big 12 is better (which it clearly is) but what stops the Utah governor for suing – a team from that state basically didn’t lose in their conference and was left out.
At the end of the day, 31 teams earn their way into the tournament (which West Virginia failed to do). Then, 37 teams get invited based on a committee – they can choose whoever they want for whatever reason they want. It is fine not to like it, but it is still how the process works. If you don’t like it, don’t lose 13 games and finish in a tie for 7th in your conference.
First of all, Happy St. Patrick’s Day to everyone – hope you all are having a great holiday!
As for me, I got done handicapping the four play-in games so that I could start the Handicapping page before the first two play-in games start. I went to load the page to my site and got a message that I have no internet access. Charlie is probably taking all the bandwidth playing video games.
Considering I spent most of the evening trying to set up the codes I used last year, it is now almost midnight and so I will simply try to load the files in the morning.
In case I still have problems, the Lunatic likes the over in both games, and has Alabama St covering against St Francis and North Carolina covering against San Diego State. But I am sure I will get the page up tomorrow morning.
Well – I have so much that I should do. Everything has taken me longer than I remember it, and so the idea of handicapping the 4 play-in games and 32 first rounds games scares me. There are some fascinating stories out there that need to be discussed – such as the media criticizing the committee for selecting North Carolina, and the ridiculous fact that the West Virginia governor wants to investigate the NCAA for corruption for leaving out the Mountaineers. Not to mention I need to make my picks. So, I will spend my time trying to help all of you stomp me. Because that makes sense.
Ken Pomeroy is one of the premier statisticians in the college basketball analytics world, and so it makes sense that people have researched 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. Last year, UConn was 1 in offense and 11 in defense, so it certainly held true. So lets see who that narrows the field down to…..we will list their offensive and defensive ranking in parentheses.
That had a bunch of teams I was not expecting – so a little different from last year when all the teams that qualified were Top 3 seeds.
It is also interesting the teams that missed either the offensive or defensive cut by 10.
Finally, the top 10 defensive teams with bad offenses (well, bad enough to miss the above lists):
And of course, we can’t leave out the top 10 offensive teams with bad defenses:
So, in a short blog, if history repeats itself, we have managed to reduce the field that can win the NCAA Championship from 68 to 12 without playing a game. Of course, championships are not won on paper, they are won on the court. Hopefully, this short blog can help you with your picks!
Well, it took me a little longer than I hoped, but the Schedule has been updated for the final 5 games (and the final released NET rankings). I also added the cheat sheet for 2025 – so go ahead and check out the research page.
One heads up about the cheat sheet. With some of the changes to the NCAA website when I pull the schedules, I used it as an excuse to update the offensive and defensive ratings to be based on 100 possessions (similar to what you would see on some of the other analytics websites). What I didn’t think about is that would then break my codes to create the cheat sheet. Rather than trying to unravel what I had done, I decided to simply report in the cheat sheet the metrics that were already calculated.
So when you see metrics like offensive rating, defensive rating, or adjusted margin, please realize those are based on 100 possessions. I also changed the schedule splitter to be by Quad instead of their exact ratings (those still list out the actual margin of the game – no adjustments). It still should provide some pretty basic pieces of information if you are looking to make some quick decisions. You will still be able to see what teams had beaten which opponents. It just is formatted slightly differently. But figured that was better than needing to spend all of tomorrow night trying to figure it out.
Lets face it, we want ranting 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 all 67 games.
As for my bracketology, I am pretty pleased. It looks like I only got 1 team wrong (I picked Indiana instead of Texas). That is actually better than what Joe Lunardi (who missed 2) from ESPN or Jerry Palm (who missed 3) from CBS did. I was basing off the information on the Bracket Matrix website, so not sure if that is 100% accurate or up to date. That being said, I will probably lose to them with my seeding, where I made a few major mistakes that I am still scratching my head about.
The one that has got me so confused is Louisville as an 8 seed. The Cardinals entered this week as the 13th ranked team in the AP poll, made it all the way to the conference championship, including beating Clemson, who ended up as a 5 seed. I might have to revisit that at some point, but for now, I am simply happy that my bracket got 67 of 68 teams right, and the only team that I got wrong was because I refused to believe the committee would really put 14 of the 16 SEC schools into the tournament. If that was my only real mistake, I can feel good about that.
As always, I am going down to the very end. I am not really happy with my bubble. And so I decided to do what I felt better about based on how teams played towards the end. I will probably regret that choice when I see the actual bracket come out.
A quick note since the Memphis / UAB game is close. UAB would steal a bid – my last team in was Indiana, so if the Blazers win, they would kick the Hoosiers out and move Drake up to an 11 seed so that they could be placed as a 12 seed.
An editor’s note: After Michigan’s win, I reassessed the Big 10 rankings. Remember, going in Maryland was ranked 11th, Wisconsin was 18th and Michigan was 22nd. I assumed Wisconsin would get a boost from a 5 seed to a 3 seed with a Big 10 championship. But with Michigan winning, I moved back to the original order of the polls. I did debate about moving Michigan up one more line to the 4 seed, but I didn’t see #10 Clemson, #13 Louisville, or #14 Texas A&M being kicked out to make room for them. I also debated if Wisconsin would fall back to 5, but I struggled with moving the Badgers that many spots due to a close loss. At the end of the day, I am hedging my bet. Last year, no team moved more than 1 seed line from their poll ranking – and so, it makes more sense to move Wisconsin up 2 spots (18 to 16) and Michigan up 5 spots on the S-curve (22 to 17 which still leaves the Wolverines as a 5 seed).
Also, I am thrilled that Memphis won the American, and so I did not have to shrink the bubble.
FIRST 4 OUT – West Virginia, Boise State, Texas, SMU
SECOND 4 OUT – Ohio St, UC Irvine, Villanova, George Mason
I know that a lot of the bracketologists don’t like teams like North Carolina and Xavier. But at some point, if we are going to give teams like Oklahoma credit for their losses because of how hard their schedule is, than the same has to go for North Carolina and Xavier.
Lets look at the Tar Heels. North Carolina went 22-13 and 15-8 in the ACC (thanks to the tourney games). Oklahoma went 20-13 and 7-13 in the SEC. You could mention that Oklahoma went 7-11 in Quad 1 games while UNC went 1-12 in Quad 1 games. And that is fair. But every Quad 1 game is not the same.
Both teams played Auburn (UNC lost by 13 instead of 28). Both teams played Florida (UNC lost by 6 instead of 22). Both teams played Alabama (UNC lost by 15 instead of 28). Oklahoma gets the edge on their 5 pt victory over Louisville (UNC lost by 13). Oklahoma also has some nice wins over Arizona, Missouri and Michigan (UNC only has UCLA). Oklahoma has 5 wins against bubble teams (but you look deeper at that and you realize that all 5 of those victories are against teams with losing records in the SEC). Sadly for the Lunatic, he let most of those teams with losing records in because that is what the committee will likely do.
The teams that gave me the biggest struggle was Xavier, Indiana and West Virginia. I picked Xavier because I felt going 13-7 in the Big East was simply better than going 10-10 in either the Big 10 or Big 12. The last memory I have of Xavier is them losing by 2 points in an exciting game against Marquette after they entered the Big East tournament on a 7 game winning streak (including a win over Creighton). My last memory of West Virginia was them losing by 7 in the Big 12 tournament to last place Colorado and their last two games against tourney teams they lost by 20.
That memory ended up being the difference between Indiana and West Virginia for the last spot. Both teams are 19-13. Indiana lost twice recently to Oregon, but both games were closer than 20 point blow-outs. And they also have the relatively recent victories over Purdue and Michigan State. With the teams resumes looking so close, I felt that the Hoosiers were simply played better.
I will probably be wrong – the committee will probably choose West Virginia and Texas just to spite me. The tournament selection show is only 30 minutes away. So exciting!!!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year!!!! As I write this, we are about 8 hours away from knowing the 68 teams that will be playing for the 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship!!!!
There are 5 last championship games to play – here is what is at stake (and where to watch).
So, now, the Lunatic begins his panicked tradition of trying to create a predicted bracket over the next 7 hours. I tried to come up with a cool statistical measure yesterday to help me rank the teams, and while I still will probably use it, it really didn’t give me what I wanted. Basically, I built my own Wins Above Bubble metric – where I built a model that predicts the margin of any team playing (this typically gave a spread of within a point or two of the Vegas spread – which isn’t bad for one day of work).
Then, I figured out for each game what was the 46th best margin of victory in that matchup, with the idea being that this would be a good idea of how a bubble team would perform in the game. Then, I calculated the difference between the actual outcome of the game compared to that bubble prediction to determine how the team did. I thought this would be a nice way to rank a team’s victories (on the lines that while a team like Purdue might get more credit for beating Alabama than Michigan, the 27 point victory against Michigan might have been a better performance than the 9 point victory over Alabama).
To my chagrin, despite Purdue’s victory over Alabama, that method said Purdue’s 3 best victories were their 36 point victory over Nebraska, their 27 point victory over Michigan, and their 35 point victory over Marshall. It was close to what I was trying to do, but I still didn’t have a good way of separating beating a good team, or losing close to a great team from crushing a team that isn’t a tournament caliber team.
So, why would this year be any different. The Lunatic spends a lot of time coming up with a mathematical way to better predict the bracket. The Lunatic applies his method to come up with an answer. The Lunatic realizes that the committee will not act in that way, because no human being would make that decision (no one would count Purdue’s victory over Marshall as a better win than their wins over Alabama, Ole Miss, Maryland, UCLA or Oregon). The Lunatic panics since he only has 7 hours to come up with a bracket and no clue how to rank any of the teams.
Its a fun exercise in craziness. No one cares who the Lunatic thinks the committee will select (because honestly, I try to think who the committee will take over who I want to see – otherwise, the choices would be so much easier). It takes a ridiculous amount of time to create. And the Lunatic typically does horribly at it. And yet, while it makes the Lunatic stressed out every Selection Sunday, it does end up making him happy at the end of the day.
So with that, the Lunatic will return to his statistics and bracketology. He will also watch 6 hours of basketball. And that will make the Lunatic very happy. Hope you all enjoy the games as well!!!!
Selection Sunday is here – and that means it is time to STOMP THE LUNATIC!!!!
Well, not the teams – the Big 12 plays some great basketball. I was looking forward to seeing how Houston did as some of the other top teams like Auburn, Michigan State and Maryland were upset.
I made it about a minute before I had to change the channel. The Big 12 court is one of the most atrocious things I have ever seen. Whoever thought it was a good idea to interweave all those X and I so the Big 12 logo was printed over and over again was such a bad decision. I was getting a headache just watching for a short amount of time.
So I guess I will be watching the Mountain West or Big East games. I will keep an eye on the Big 12 score but I just don’t know that I can watch for long periods of time. I know the Big 12 was loving the publicity as people have been talking about the court design. But I don’t think it is what they really want for lots of people to tune in for a minute to see what the chatter is about, look at it and say – yep that is awful – and then turn off the game like I just did.
Hope the Big 12 championship is a blowout – then I won’t feel bad about watching one of the other games.
What a wild finish in the Big 10 semi-finals. Michigan’s Tre Donaldson had hit a three-pointer with 28 seconds to give the Wolverines the lead. But then they looked like they were going to implode.
First, Julian Reese hit a layup to cut the lead to 1 point. Then, after getting fouled, Danny Wolf missed his free throw and the Terrapins got the rebound, crossed half court and called time out with 7 second to play. Then, as Derik Queen tried to get free to drive the lane, Rubin Jones fouled him outside the three-point line giving the Terrapins a chance to take the lead from the line.
Queen hit both free throws and the Terrapins were 5 seconds away from the finals. I wish I knew who the announcer of the game was because he made an amazing statement. As the second free throw went in, he said something on the lines of “Tre Donaldson is passing the ball in, Maryland can not let them give him back the ball.”
Sure enough, Michigan immediately kicked the ball back to Donaldson and he looked like he was shot out of a cannon as he drove down the court, through the lane, to the basket, and made a pretty layup with 0.4 seconds left in the game to give the Wolverines the victory.
So, Michigan will play Wisconsin for the Big 10 title on Sunday. As for the SEC, Florida looked like they might have just locked down the last 1 seed as they beat Alabama 104-82. And any fan of a bubble team rejoiced as Memphis held on to beat Tulane in the American semi-finals 78-77.
Three big games getting ready to kick-off, as the Big 12, Big East and Mountain West Championship games are about to start!!! So much more great basketball to watch!!!!
They are good problems for the Lunatic, and considering that he is crazy, all of this makes sense – because these are not the actions of someone sane.
I was watching the Tennessee / Auburn game when realizing that Wisconsin was winning in a close game with a minute left – so I switched over to the Big 10 semifinal just to see it in commercial. So, then I put the SEC game on my computer and realized the VCU game was also close.
So, here I am – Big 10 game on the TV, SEC game on my computer sitting on my lap, and VCU game streaming on my phone in my hands as I switch my view from TV to laptop to phone.
I have to thank VCU for holding on to their victory with relatively little drama. Because every time I looked at my laptop, I was watching as 2-3 players were picking themselves up off the court. I am fine with a little bit of physical basketball, but from watching the Tennessee vs. Auburn game, I think it is getting out of hand when players from both teams can be lying on the ground on multiple plays with no fouls being called on either play.
With 14 seconds down 3, the Spartans drive the ball to the basket and kick it out to Tre Holloman for a tying three-pointer at the top of the key. But the Badgers’ Carter Gilmore steps out to block the shot. The Spartans are forced to foul John Tonje, and Tonje surprisingly missed both FTs keeping the door open. But as Jeremy Fears crosses half court and tries to throw up a deep three pointer, Tonje reaches in and strips the ball to preserve the Wisconsin upset 77-74 over Michigan State.
I flip the TV back to ESPN for the finish of the SEC game, as Chad Baker-Mazara gets a layup to cut Tennessee’s lead to 3 points (they were up 12 with 6 minutes to play when I started looking at what was happening in the other games and realized how close the other two games were). Auburn got a defensive stop and then had a weird sequence.
Johni Broome got the ball into the paint but missed the layup, he tried to tip back in his missed shot, but missed again, and as he tried to tip it again, Felix Okpara slapped the ball out but was called for what looked like a questionable foul. Then, Broome missed the free-throw, but after a scrum the ball rolled out-of-bounds. And of course, after a review, it ends up being Tennessee’s ball. But Broome then forces a held ball on Zeigler in the corner to give Auburn the ball back. But that would not work out as Baker-Mazara missed a three-pointer from the wing, and after multiple people go up for the ball it looks like it will be Auburn ball.
Until we once again go to the replay – which correctly shows the ball went off Broome last – so it is now Tennessee’s ball. They can’t get the ball in-bounds so they have to call a time out. Then, out of desperation, they just wing the ball to half court, and Jahmai Mashack was able to outjump everyone for the ball and then get fouled. Mashack hit his two free throws, Miles Kelly missed a desperation three-pointer, and Tennessee had upset the SEC regular-season champs.
It would be unfair to not mention that Bryant and Norfolk State won their conference tournaments. It is a little sad that I was trying to watch three basketball games at the same time. It must be March.
The Crazed Lunatic is a crazy college basketball fan, especially for his Purdue Boilermakers!!!! Boiler Up!!!!
Every March, his passion comes out to rant and rave about one of the best sporting events in the world, the NCAA Basketball Tournament. While many of you will Stomp the Lunatic with your picks in our fun bracket picking game, this will not diminish the Lunatic’s crazed attempt at blogging about the tournament that he loves. Whether it will be trying to predict who will be in the tournament during Championship Week or his insane attempt to handicap all 67 games against the Vegas spreads, you can count on the Lunatic’s sleep-deprived rantings throughout the month of March.
If you notice any problems with the website or have any questions about the Stomp the Lunatic contest, please reach out by email at thomas@tehodgson.com
