Stomp The Lunatic

At the risk of being sued by the West Virginia Attorney General and Governor, I will give an honest assessment between North Carolina and West Virginia. Normally, I like to do these types of comparisons as blind cases (and typically in criticism of the committee), but since everyone knows the Lunatic Selection Committee is a corrupt organization, we will give transparency to our decision process without hiding the names.

The Lunatic is a little bit disappointed that he doesn’t get a $68,000 bonus for the Tar Heels making the dance, but maybe that helps him not get sued if he comes to the same conclusion that the National Corrupt Athletic Association came to.

Warning – we will get into their entire schedules – I need to be transparent here. This will get long.

In a side note before we get started, this story keeps on giving, as the West Virginia head coach Darien DeVries has just been named the new head coach for Indiana. Sources say that DeVries has signed a six year deal, which is probably wise since the Hoosiers don’t tend to keep their coaches that long before turning on them. Then again, DeVries only coached 1 year at the Mountaineers before looking for greener pastures – so this is probably a match made in heaven. I will have to save my thoughts on that for next week. The actual games need to start to take the priority of the Lunatic’s time.

Records

• North Carolina (22-13, 13-7 in ACC, tied for 4th)
• West Virginia (19-13, 10-10 in Big 12, tied for 7th)

Advantage: North Carolina – you can argue the Big 12 is better than the ACC, but both are power conferences, and the Tar Heels finished in the top 4 while West Virginia finished in the middle of the pack.

Conference Tournament

• North Carolina – beat Notre Dame by 20 and Wake Forest by 9 before losing in the semi-finals by 3 points to Duke (who was missing Cooper Flagg).
• West Virginia – lost by 7 to Colorado in the 2nd round

Advantage: North Carolina – Colorado was 14-19 and was 3-17 in the Big 12 before upsetting TCU in the first round and the Mountaineers in the second. You can argue weakness, but the victory over a much better Wake Forest team easily gives the advantage to the Tar Heels

Predictive Statistics

The committee uses 7 statistics, so lets look at them. Since I am a corrupt selection committee, I will add my two bracketology models that I built ridiculously fast in a day to try to predict the bracket

STATISTIC	RANKING	ADVANTAGE
NET	-UNC (36) -WV (51)	UNC
WAB	-UNC (42) -WV (43)	UNC (but really a tie)
KenPom	– UNC (33) – WV (53)	UNC
Torvik	– WV (34) – UNC (36)	WV (but almost a tie)
BPI	– UNC (25) – WV (51)	UNC
Strength of Record	– UNC (38) – WV (42)	UNC
KPI	– WV (48) – UNC (52)	WV
Lunatic predict record	– UNC (32) – WV (45)	UNC
Lunatic predict margin	– UNC (28) – WV (47)	UNC

Advantage: North Carolina – even without my two models, the Tar Heels win based on predictive statistics (especially the NET, which since that is the NCAA’s model, it probably carries the most weight).

Schedule

This gets really subjective. At the top, I am going to put games against the same team. I don’t always get lucky enough that they played both at home or on the road – so I will use my model predictions (home team has +3 over neutral court over +3 on road). The rest I will order by their schedule ranking – which might require me to make an assessment. Because UNC played three more games, their weakest three games will be excluded (an 18 pt victory vs Hawaii, a 19 pt victory vs Miami and a 52 pt victory over 16 seed American). That seems to be unfair to the Tar Heels, but we know I am corrupt.

I am also going to mark the 8 games that WV played with Tucker DeVries

UNC	WV	Advantage
@ 20 Kansas (L 3)	@ 20 Kansas (W 1)	WV
@ 24 Louisville (L 13)	vs 24 Louisville (L 9)*	WV*
@ 61 Pitt (L 8)	@ 61 Pitt (L 24)*	UNC*
vs 1 Duke (L 3)	@3 Houston (L 16)	UNC
@ 1 Duke (L 17)	3 Houston (L 14)	UNC (based on 6 pts for home court)
1 Duke (L 13)	@7 Tex Tech (L 22)	UNC
vs 2 Auburn (L 13)	9 Iowa St (W 7)	WV
vs 4 Florida (L 6)	vs 8 Gonzaga (W 8)*	WV*
6 Alabama (L 15)	vs 12 Arizona (W 7)*	WV*
vs 11 Mich St (L 3)	#12 Arizona (L 19)	UNC
@ 22 Clemson (L 20)	#25 BYU (L 4)	WV
vs 27 UCLA (W 2)	@25 BYU (L 21)	UNC
46 SMU (W 15)	@ 30 Baylor (L 3)	UNC
61 Pitt (W 1)	@ 50 Cincy ( W 13)	WV
vs 67 Dayton (W 2)	50 Cincy (W 3)	WV
vs 69 Wake Forest (W 9)	71 UCF (W 7)	UNC
@ 69 Wake Forest (L 1)	@ 73 Utah (W 2)	WV
81 Stanford (L 1)	73 Utah (W 11)	WV
@ 90 FSU (W 11)	73 Ariz St (L 8)	UNC
vs 103 ND (W 20)	@ 75 Kan St (L 13)	UNC
@ 103 ND (W 1)	78 TCU (W 18)	WV
109 GT (W 3)	@78 TCU (L 5)	UNC (but close because TCU is a better team)
110 Virginia (W 15)	@86 Col (W 8)	WV (based on home court and Col being rated better)
125 Cal (W 26)	vs 86 Col (L 7)	UNC
132 NC State (W 24)	88 Georgetown (W 13)*	UNC*
@ 132 NC State (W 2)	95 Okla St (W 19)	WV
@ 133 Syracuse (W 6)	139 Robert Morris (W 28)*	WV (but I feel weird about saying Syracuse is close to Robert Morris)*
@ 167 VT (W 32)	221 Massachusetts (W 6)*	UNC*
184 Elon (W 14)	252 Iona (W 43)*	WV*
202 BC (W 6)	277 Bethune-Cookman (W 23)	UNC (based on BC being a better team)
214 La Salle (W 26)	319 NC Central (W 34)	UNC (based on LaSalle being a better team)
222 Campbell (W 16)	336 Mercyhurst (W 21)	UNC (based on Campbell being a better team)

Advantage: North Carolina – I have UNC 17-15, and if I remove the 8 games DeVries played, I have UNC 14-10. I am sure that people could disagree with my ranking. We could also rank the schedule based on game performance and make it more complicated, but I don’t have time for that.

Quad 1 Record

• West Virginia (6-10 – Adjusted Margin 2.858)
• North Carolina (1-12 – Adjusted Margin 5.523)

Advantage: West Virginia – but it is not as clear. Winning games has to matter which is why I give this to WV. But if you look at adjusted margin, UNC actually did better. It should be mentioned, UNC played 5 of those games on neutral courts and only 2 (Duke and Alabama) at home. You can claim that they got 13 chances and only one once. But 6 of those games were on the road (where those teams don’t lose), and 4 were neutral court games against the 3 #1 seeds and one of the #2 seeds. If you take away the top 2 seeds is 1-5. Two of WVs Quad 1 wins were road games against teams that did not make the tournament and 2 were on the neutral court when DeVries was playing. The metric looks bad for UNC, but when you dive into it, the answer isn’t as clear.

Quad 2 Record

• North Carolina (8-0 – Adjusted Margin 11.385)
• West Virginia (4-3 – Adjusted Margin 1.650)

Advantage: North Carolina – I don’t think we need to dive into the 3 losses WV had and the 10 point difference in adjusted margin.

Quad 3 Record

• West Virginia (4-0 – Adjusted Margin 29.879)
• North Carolina (7-1 – Adjusted Margin 23.593)

Advantage: West Virginia – But once again I almost gave this to UNC. Remember the one loss is to Stanford – it is crazy to me that a 20-13 ACC school is only a Quad 3 win. Still the adjusted margin favors WV, so I will give it to them.

Quad 4 Record

• North Carolina (6-0 – Adjusted Margin 26.113)
• West Virginia (5-0 – Adjusted Margin 32.498)

Advantage: Neither – I am not going to give UNC the advantage for winning one more game. And I am not going to give WV the advantage for adjusted margin, especially since Boston College and Miami from the ACC count as Quad 4 games.

Last 10 games

• North Carolina (8-2) with both losses being to Duke
• West Virginia (5-5) with one loss being to Colorado

Advantage: North Carolina – yes, West Virginia lost to more ranked teams during that time, but they also lost to Colorado and their losses to BYU and Texas Tech were 20 point blowouts.

Lunatic’s Final Decision – North Carolina. The conference record, conference tournament, predictive stats, and last 10 games all favor taking the Tar Heels. The only thing that favors West Virginia is the Quad 1 record, but when you look at the entire schedule and account for games teams got blown out, it does appear UNC did better. That, of course, is very subjective, but I think it still leans towards the Tar Heels.

Of course, as I type this, the Tar Heels have taken a 29 point lead over San Diego State. There is no doubt in my mind that North Carolina belonged in the field – that is why my bracketology included them over the Mountaineers. We could debate if West Virginia should have been in over other teams. Personally speaking, I always think the committee over-ranks the Mountain West, but if the Lunatic had his way, he would rather see 3 teams make it as at-large teams from the Mountain West over the 8th place team from the Big 12 (or the 14th place team in the SEC). That can be a debate for another time that the Lunatic is feeling corrupt.

We can only hope that the first game of the tournament is a sign of things to come.

Tied with about 2 minutes, Amari Knox drove the lane and threw up a ridiculous shot as he tried to draw a foul that went high in the air and somehow went into the basket to give Alabama State a 2 point lead. Then, Micah Octave stole the ball and came back to dunk the ball to give the Hornets a 4 point lead.

But St. Francis would not give up – Juan Cranford Jr and Chris Moncrief hit two three pointers (while TJ Madlock hit a layup for the Hornets) to tie the game with 40 seconds.

Alabama State held the ball to the end of the shot clock but Knox missed his layup, and in a frenzy for the loose ball, Madlock got the rebound and got tackled for a foul. TJ missed the free throw and the Red Flash stormed up the court, but the ball got hit around midcourt, was picked up by Cranford Jr, who also lost control of the ball as it rolled out setting the stage.

With 3 seconds left, Micah Simpson throw a baseball pass the length of the court, gets touched by multiple players trying to get the ball and falls into the hands of Amari Knox under the basket all alone. Knox calmly goes up and hits the layup with a second left to give Alabama State their first ever NCAA Tournament victory.

It is why I love March – you could get the best hollywood writers, and they probably couldn’t come up with a crazier finish to the game. Congratulations to the Hornets who will hopefully get a little tome tonight to celebrate tonight before heading to Lexington to have to play Auburn.

What to write about while the two 16 seeds play. I could actually make my picks – that would be productive. So obviously we can’t do that. Lets do the upset analysis.

So, if you are really looking to pick an upset, you should be analyzing matchups, health, etc. Lets face it, everything Purdue will get upset because they have been downright awful the last few weeks. Some will select Iowa State because of the news that Keshon Gilbert will miss the tournament with an injury. A great strategy is to actually pick a top seed that is ripe for an upset and going with it. With all I have to still do, I can’t analyze matchups. It is certainly a strategy, but there is lots to blog about.

Some will go crazy with the 9-11 seeds. Lets face it, 9 seeds recently have won more games that 8 seeds – it almost isn’t an upset any more. 10 and 11 seeds tend to be the “Last In”, and often, a couple of them end up determined to prove all the critics wrong and the selection committee correct by winning their game. I could end up blogging for hours about all of these teams, so we will skip that as well.

So, lets talk about the honest piece. Most of us – and in many cases, myself included, don’t know anything about the Akron’s and Omaha’s of the world. But we can use a reasonable assumption to learn more. If a team has not played a close game against a tournament team, they probably aren’t going to magically beat teams like Michigan State and St. John’s. In fact, even if I list a team, you should probably not pick a 14, 15, or 16 seed. But if you are feeling crazy, here is a list of teams to look into.

• HOT – This is a team who has beat a tournament at-large team (top 11 seeds)
• WARM – This is a team who has beat a top 100 NET team or at least had a single digit loss to a top 11 seed.
• COLD – This means no one from the seed line meets the requirement and so the Lunatic has to guess at who might be a reasonable choice.

16 seeds

• Norfolk State (WARM) – For a 16 seed, they beat High Point, came close to Stanford, and only lost by 15 to Tennessee. Not bad for a 16 seed.

15 seeds

• Wofford (COLD) – They had the best performance on the Lunatic models as well as the best win of the group (a 3 pt road victory at St. Louis)

14 seeds

• Troy (WARM) – It barely qualifies, but they have two victories against Sun Belt regular-season co-champion Arkansas State

13 seeds

• Yale (WARM) – They beat fellow 13 seed Akron, and also only lost to Purdue by 8 points
• Grand Canyon (WARM) – They beat Stanford by 7 points, and also only lost to Georgia by 5 points.
• High Point (WARM) – They beat the 2nd place team from the American, North Texas by 5 points at home.

12 seeds

• Colorado State (HOT) – The Mt West champ probably shouldn’t be a part of this, but they are a 12 seed – they have 2 wins against Utah State and a win against San Diego St (not to mention the 3 wins against Boise St that got them in the tournament)
• UC San Diego (HOT) – They also have a victory against Utah State. They also have a couple wins over UC-Irvine and a close loss to San Diego St.
• Liberty (WARM) – They have a win against fellow 12 seed McNeese St (by 4) and a 2 point win over Kansas St.
• McNeese St (WARM) – They have close losses to Alabama (8) and Mississippi St (3) and a victory against North Texas.

So, there you go, lots of interesting 12 seeds. The 13 seeds also demonstrated they likely could be in a competitive game. Then, things get bleak. Of course, some 14, 15 or 16 team comes out of nowhere to be Cinderella, but the statistics don’t really point out who will be wearing that glass slipper.

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.

• 1 – Duke (3, 4)
• 1 – Florida (1, 10)
• 1 – Houston (10, 2)
• 1 – Auburn (2, 12)
• 2 – Tennessee (18, 3)
• 2 – Michigan State (27, 5)
• 3 – Iowa State (20, 9)
• 4 – Maryland (28, 6)
• 5 – Clemson (24, 16)
• 8 – Louisville (29, 21)
• 7 – UCLA (35, 17)
• 6 – Ole Miss (31, 25)

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.

• 4 – Texas A&M (44, 7)
• 7 – Kansas (48, 11)
• 5 – Michigan (47, 14)-
• 11 – VCU (41, 23)
• 3 – Wisconsin (13, 27)
• 7 – Marquette (32, 28)
• 8 – Gonzaga (9, 29)
• 5 – Oregon (39, 31)
• 2 – Alabama (4, 32)
• 4 – Arizona (12, 33)

Finally, the top 10 defensive teams with bad offenses (well, bad enough to miss the above lists):

• 2 – St. John’s (65, 1)
• 7 – St. Mary’s (56, 8)

And of course, we can’t leave out the top 10 offensive teams with bad defenses:

• 6 – Missouri (5, 73)
• 3 – Texas Tech (6, 37)
• 4 – Purdue (7, 63)
• 3 – Kentucky (8, 57)

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.

• 1 – Duke, Houston, Auburn, Florida
• 2 – St. John’s, Tennessee, Alabama, Michigan St
• 3 – Texas Tech, Iowa St, Kentucky, Maryland
• 4 – Louisville, Clemson, Texas A&M, Wisconsin
• 5 – Michigan, Arizona, BYU, Purdue
• 6 – Illinois, Oregon, Missouri, Memphis
• 7 – St. Mary’s, Marquette, Ole Miss, UCLA
• 8 – Creighton, Gonzaga, Kansas, Connecticut
• 9 – Baylor, Georgia, Mississippi St, New Mexico
• 10 – Utah St, Arkansas, Vanderbilt, North Carolina
• 11 (PLAY-IN) – Oklahoma, San Diego St, Xavier, Indiana
• 11 – VCU, Colorado St
• 12 – Drake, UC-San Diego, McNeese St, Liberty
• 13 – Yale, High Point, Akron, Grand Canyon
• 14 – Lipscomb, Troy, UNC-Wilmington, Montana
• 15 – Wofford, Robert Morris, Bryant, Omaha
• 16 – Norfolk St, SIU-Edwardsville
• 16 (PLAY-IN) – American, Mt St Mary’s, Alabama St, Saint Francis PA

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).

• Ivy League – Noon on ESPN2/ESPN+ – Yale (21-7) vs Cornell (18-10) – While Yale’s NET ranking at 72 is respectable, lets face the reality. For these two teams, if they want to be playing in the NCAA Tournament, they have to win today in Providence. Yale is the Ivy regular season champ and swept the regular season against Cornell, but the last game was a 4 point game.
• SEC – 1 pm on ESPN – #4 Florida (29-4) vs #8 Tennessee (27-6) – This is the premier matchup of the day, as the winner of this game might get the final #1 seed. I am nervous of saying this will be the best game of the day for this reason. When the Gators played the Vols at home, they won by 30. When the Vols played the Gators at home, they won by 20. So, they split their series with neither game being close. It is unclear to me if a win today can give Tennessee the ability to jump over Florida and St. John’s for the final 1 seed, but if it turns into a blowout in Nashville like the other two games, it is certainly a possibility.
• Atlantic 10 – 1 pm on CBS – VCU (27-6) vs George Mason (26-7) – If you are a fan of a bubble team, this is the game that is going to make you twitchy. The two teams are the co-champions of the Atlantic 10, with the Rams winning by 16 here in Richmond in their only meeting. However, with the Atlantic 10 tournament being in Washington, D.C., the Patriots will have the home court advantage today. The Rams currently have a NET ranking of 31, but if you look closer at their resume, they don’t have that huge victory that you are hoping to see from a team outside the 5 power conferences. Unlike some, it is not that they shied away from the power conferences – the problem is they crushed Boston College, beat Miami and lost to Seton Hall in overtime. It was a bad break that the power conference teams on their schedule didn’t end up being tournament-caliber teams. If VCU wins, the bubble teams will all be relieved and the Rams will be relieved for taking the decision out of the committee’s hands. If George Mason wins, VCU will join the bubble teams with an extremely nervous 3 hour wait to learn their fate.
• The American – 3 pm on ESPN / ESPN+ – #16 Memphis (28-5) vs UAB (22-11) – The Tigers survived a little bit of a scare against Tulane on Saturday, but the American’s regular-season conference champions did just enough to advance to the final in Fort Worth. This game is a little bit different from the Atlantic 10. It still should make bubble teams ridiculously nervous (and huge fans of the Tigers) because if the Blazers pull the upset, it clearly will steal a bid. I can’t see the Tigers being ranked 16th in the polls and not make the tournament, even though their NET ranking of 50 suggests that they might not be as safe as one believes. The Tigers did sweep the Blazers during the regular season, including a 7 point win a couple weeks ago at UAB.
• Big 10 – 3:30 pm on CBS/Paramount+ – #18 Wisconsin (26-8) vs #22 Michigan (24-9) – The final game of the season in Indianapolis does not have the stakes that some of the other games have, as the Badgers and Wolverines are both clearly in the field of 68. But it should still be a great game, as both teams are playing great right now as the Badgers upset regular season champion on Saturday by 3, and the Wolverines upset Maryland on Saturday on a buzzer beating layup. When these teams played in December, the Wolverines travelled to Madison and beat the Badgers by 3. So, while the committee probably will have already decided what seeds the Badgers and Wolverines have (maybe even before the game tips-off), the game should still have plenty of excitement and when the game is over, we will be only 15-30 minutes away from the tournament selection show!!!!

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!!!!