Stomp The Lunatic

It is that time of year. No – it is not March yet. It is time for the Lunatic to setup and test all the webpages to make sure they are pointing to the 2024 tables. While I should be safe, please do not register for the 2024 contest – everything is in a test state and the 2024 tables will be cleared out once all the testing is completed.

You might not be able to register for the tournament this weekend – but you can certainly enjoy some college basketball. We have 4 top ten matchups this weekend.

• Saturday, Feb 3rd at 4 pm (ESPN) – #4 Houston travels to #8 Kansas as the Cougars try to show they can win the Big 12 in their first season with the very tough task of winning at the home of the Jayhawks, the defending Big 12 champions.
• Saturday, Feb 3rd at 6:30 pm (ESPN) – #7 Duke heads just down the road to Chapel Hill to play #3 North Carolina as one of the best rivalries in college basketball settles who will control the ACC.
• Saturday, Feb 3rd at 8:30 pm (ESPN) – #5 Tennessee visits their northern neighbors to play #10 Kentucky in a major matchup for the SEC title lead.
• Sunday, Feb 4th at 1 pm (CBS) – #2 Purdue heads to #6 Wisconsin as my Boilers have a huge road game in a battle of the best two teams in the Big 10.

I will let people know when the Lunatic is no longer lurking in the shadows trying to setup his site, and is ready to begin his annual sleep deprivation project. March is only a month away. The Madness is coming, and the Lunatic will be ready (to be stomped).

Well – why should I expect anything else from 2023? Apparently, my old version of WP crashed taking my website down with it.

I think I have managed to salvage as much of the blog as I could. I will have to continue to play with the site to try to get it back to a reasonable appearance with all the old links.

But it has been a long evening. So, for now, I am going to be happy with this. Expect more changes in the upcoming months.

Congratulations to William E Craft!  Assuming the Lunatic has done his research correctly, Bill’s Fever Dream became only the 3rd ever bracket to win both the Standard and Upset pools in the same year.  Bill isn’t the only person who is owed some congratulations – we had just enough people who were confident enough to pick the Huskies and jump into the top of the standings for one of the Stomp the Lunatic prizes.

Also have to congratulate the four people who made the best of the second chance, as Kathleen Godwin, Patti Carini, Jeff Carpenter and Rich Napolitano all scored 560 points to tie for the second chance pool top prize!!!!

Here are all our prize winners:

STANDARD POOL

• 1) William E. Craft – 1000 pts
• 2) Patti Carini – 920 pts
• 3) HH – 850 pts
• 4th tie) Brent Hassell, Kristian Schmidt, and Rick Flynn – 830 pts
• 7th tie) Steve Glass and John Woodburn – 820 pts
• 9) Laura Carini – 780 pts
• 10) Cooper Ams – 770 pts
• LAST) Sonny and Laura Hummel – 250 pts

UPSET POOL

• 1) William E. Craft – 302 pts
• 2) Brent Hassell – 269 pts
• 3) Patti Carini – 266 pts
• 4) Cooper Ams (Entry #2) – 262 pts
• 5) Cooper Ams (Entry #1) – 249 pts

SECOND CHANCE POOL

• Tie 1) Kathleen Godwin – 560 pts
• Tie 1) Patti Carini – 560 pts
• Tie 1) Jeff Carpenter – 560 pts
• Tie 1) Rich Napolitano – 560 pts

As for the Lunatic, he was left stomped for the entire tournament as he ended up with only 470 points in a tie for 125th.  If we include the tie-breaker (which isn’t used for prizes, but can certainly be used to stomp the Lunatic), 133 of you managed to Stomp the Lunatic! That is a thorough stomping – well done by everyone.  I am sure that it will take a while to get over the sting of his Boilers becoming only the 2nd team in history to lose to a 16 seed and then watch helplessly as the 9 seed goes and runs through the region.  But I am also sure that 11 months will be enough time for the Lunatic to lick his wounds, lose his sanity, and return for another year of sleep deprivation and a soul-crushing stomping.

Congratulations again to all of our winners.  But a special congratulations to Bill Craft for an amazing set of picks to not only win the standard pool but also the upset pool.  And of course, congratulations to the 2023 National Champions – the Connecticut Huskies!!!!

The Aztecs tried to make it interesting.  Lamont Butler made a steal and a layup, and then Keshad Johnson got fouled in the lane and hit two free throws to cut the lead to 5 points with a little over 5 minutes to play.  But as the Huskies did throughout the game, everytime the Aztecs tried to make a run, Connecticut had an answer.

The Huskies would finish the game on a 16-4 run.  UConn’s Jordan Hawkins drilled a three pointer from the top of the key.  Tristen Newton was fouled and hit two free throws, and then drove the lane for an impressive layup.  Adama Sanogo got fouled in the lane and hit both free throws, and suddenly, the lead was back to 14 points with 2 minutes to play.  UConn would coast from there to a 76-59 victory.

It was an amazing season for San Diego State – it is rare when a team from a smaller conference like the Mountain West gets as far as the Aztecs did.  But in the end, the Huskies were just too much – they managed to win all 6 of their NCAA tournament games by double digits.  It was a truly dominating tournament by the Huskies.

Congratulations to Connecticut on winning their 5th ever national championship!!!!

San Diego State started the game off hot with two three pointers to take a 10-6 lead.  And then, the Connecticut Huskies took the game over.

There was a stretch of 10 entire minutes where San Diego State did not make a field goal.  The Huskies had a pretty balanced attack as Tristen Newton scored 9, and Jordan Hawkins and Adama Sanogo both added 7.  And after that hot start, Connecticut went on a 30-10 run.

Fortunately, San Diego State’s Keshad Johnson and Darrion Trammell scored the last two baskets of the half to cut the lead to 12.

We can’t crown the Huskies just yet – remember last year Kansas came back from down big to win.  Remember that San Diego State was down 13 to Florida Atlantic, 8 to Creighton, 9 to Alabama, and 7 to Charleston during the tournament.  They even came back from being 11 down to Utah State in the Mountain West Tournament championship game.

Do the Aztecs have any more magic left in their season to pull one more comeback?  Or will the Huskies continue to beat everyone in the tournament by double digits?  Only 20 minutes of basketball left in the season to decide a champion!!!!!

The game is ready to tip off!!!!  Will Connecticut continue to play unstoppable offense and shutdown defense to roll to a national championship.  Or will San Diego State be able to win one for the non-power conferences and upset the dominant Huskies with their incredible defense.

Should be a great game!!!!!  Let’s go!!!!

The final handicapping blog has been posted.  The Lunatic figures he wants to see San Diego State win, and that in itself probably bodes poorly for them.  Add in it that Connecticut is 4-0 in title games, no 5 seed has won the tournament, and the last non-power conference team to win depending on your opinion of what was a power conference was either UNLV in 1990 or when UConn had switched for a short amount of time to the American to win their title in 2014 under their conference’s alignment.  And the ball from the Lunatic’s HORSE battle sided with UConn.

So, I have the UConn Huskies to cover the 7.5 in a low-scoring affair under 132.5 points.  That will probably be wrong, just like I was on both Final Four games.  At this point, it is clear the Lunatic is struggling between his analytic expertise, his sleep deprivation, and his amazing capability to jinx teams.  So, who knows what will happen.

Regardless, it should be great.  This will likely have to be my last post until game time.  It is late, and with Katie’s rugby practice tomorrow, and some of the administrative tasks such as validating the standings are correct in front of me, I will probably be pretty busy until the game starts.  But the Lunatic will definitely be excited to watch at 9:20 pm tomorrow when the Connecticut Huskies and San Diego Aztecs will tip-off to determine the men’s 2023 national championship!!!!  Enjoy the championship game!!!!

Well – I wanted to come up with something very analytical, but I am running out of time, so I am going to punt a little.  I came up with something that I liked how it ranked the teams, but then I don’t have a good way to combine them – so as the grader, I will combine them the way I want to.

Basically, I started each game at an 80 – then I had a complicated method that moved the team’s grade based on how they did according to the Vegas spread of the game, and then modified further based on if they won, if they were supposed to win, how much of a difference existed with the seeds, etc.  I also then modified the starting point for further rounds – because I felt that a team that got to the Elite 8 shouldn’t end up with a bad grade because they got blown out (such as Gonzaga vs. Connecticut).

So, the single bid conferences, for better or worse, got the grade of their team.  For the multi-bid conferences, the Lunatic got a little creative based on other information such as how many teams did better than expected.

A+ – Northeast (Fairleigh Dickinson), Ivy (Princeton), Conference USA (Florida Atlantic) – These three teams were the main Cinderella stories of the tournament (along with San Diego State…)

A – Big East (Connecticut – A+, Creighton – A, Xavier – B, Marquette – C, Providence – C).  This conference ended up doing +3 compared to their seed, with UConn and Creighton performing well, and Marquette under-performing.  With UConn in the Final, they get the best grade from the power conferences

A – Southern (Furman) – their victory over Virginia got them a high grade.

A- – ACC (Miami – A+, Pitt – A-, Duke – A-, NC State – C, Virginia – D-).  They had the most teams with As, including Miami’s unexpected Final Four, but have to ding them a little for Virginia’s first round loss.

B+ – WCC (Gonzaga – B+, St. Mary’s – B-).  Both teams won a game in the tournament, and Gonzaga got to the Elite 8.

B+ – Sun Belt (Louisiana), Atlantic Sun (Kennesaw State), Horizon (Northern Kentucky), Southland (Texas A&M – Corpus Christi) – none of these teams pulled the upset, but they certainly outperformed based on the Vegas line.

B+ – Mountain West (San Diego State – A+, Boise State – C-, Utah State – D, Nevada – F).  I bumped them up because of San Diego State’s amazing run.  The other 3 teams all lost, but their seed suggested that is how they should have performed.  But they can’t get an A with the other teams doing so poorly against the spread.

B – SEC (Arkansas – A-, Missouri – B, Alabama – B, Auburn – B-, Tennessee – B-, Kentucky – C+, Mississippi State – C, Texas A&M – F).  Arkansas and Auburn outperformed their seed, but Alabama shockingly lost in the Sweet 16, so along with A&M’s loss, they finished -1 below their seed expectations.  Which sadly was still better than the others.  It is a little weird saying that a conference with 8 teams not getting any to the Elite 8 is better than the others – but to be fair, only Alabama was supposed to get that far and they did better than Purdue or Kansas did.

B- – Southland (Texas A&M – Corpus Christi), WAC (Grand Canyon)

C+ – OVC (SE Missouri State) – Vegas line almost picked their game exactly to what happened.  Nothing to be ashamed of

C – Big 12 (Kansas State – A-, Texas – B+, TCU – C+, Baylor – C+, Kansas – C, West Virginia – C, Iowa State – F). So much was expected out of the Big 12, they were supposed to be the best conference in college basketball.  They had 4 of the top 12 teams in the seeds.  And yet, none made it to the Final Four.  Kansas State getting to the Elite 8 was the only team to be above expectations, but Baylor and Kansas losing in the 2nd round killed their grade.  I debated whether they should be above or below the Big 10 because at least Texas and Kansas State made it to the Elite 8, but both finished -4 to seed, and so I eventually settled that they did equally bad.

C – Big 10 (Penn State – A, Michigan State – A, Northwestern – B+, Maryland – C+, Indiana – C+, Illinois – D+, Iowa – D, Purdue – F).  They had two teams outperform their seeds in Michigan State and Penn State, and Northwestern almost upset UCLA.  But having a 1 seed lose really hurts your seed expectations.

C – Colonial (Charleston), Big Sky (Montana State), MEAC (Howard), Missouri Valley (Drake)

C- – America East (Vermont), MAC (Kent State), Patriot (Colgate), Atlantic 10 (VCU), Big West (UC-Santa Barbara)

C- – American (Houston – B-, Memphis – C-).  I almost pushed them down to a D+ despite both their grades being a C-.  This is because they both performed below seed expectations.  But since they stayed close to what the Vegas lines expected, I decided I can’t rank them below Memphis’ C- grade.

D+ – Pac 10 (Arizona State – A, UCLA – B+, USC – C-, Arizona – F).  You might think this is unfair.  But they are the only power conference to have none of their teams to better than expected.  When you have Arizona supposed to make it to the Elite 8 and get upset in the first round, and then no one make up for it to finish -4 below expectations, it gets a low grade.

D – Big South (UNC-Asheville)

D- – MAAC (Iona), Oral Roberts (Summit) – To be fair to Oral Roberts, I think Vegas over-estimated their chances against Duke, but we have to stick to the process.

F – SWAC (Texas Southern) – getting blown out in the First Four game cursed them to the bottom.

 

The referees might not have been the best, but with the way the game has gone, it probably wouldn’t have mattered.  LSU dominated this game.

I think I heard them say that LSU has scored the most points in women’s championship game history as they won 102-85.  The leading scorer of the game was Jasmine Carson from the bench.  She went 5-6 from three point range on her way of scoring 22 points.  Just to put into perspective how crazy this was, Carson had scored 11 points in LSU’s other 5 tournament games!

LSU shot 64.7% from three point range, Alexis Morris scored 21 points going 8-14 from the field (with 15 in the fourth quarter), and Ladazhia Williams scored 20 points going 9-16 from the field.  Every time, Iowa would put a run, Morris or Williams would have an answer.

I will mention that Charlie said how trashy LSU’s Angel Reese was in trash talking Caitlin Clark doing the you can’t see me sign and then pointing to her finger about hers will have a ring.  I told him the truth – I don’t support what Reese did, but Caitlin Clark’s hand gesture towards the South Carolina guard saying that she isn’t even going to guard her because she can’t shoot was just as disrespectful.  I wish that trash talking wasn’t part of the game – why not win the game with class.  But I guess if you are going to dish it out, you have to expect people are going to be happy to return it when you lose.

LSU coach Kim Mulkey was already considered one of the best coaches in women’s college basketball, but what she has done at LSU is impressive.  Two years ago, she took over a LSU program that just went 9-13.  In her first year, LSU went 26-6 and lost in the 2nd round of the tournament.  And this year, the Tigers have gone 34-2 and are the NCAA National Champions.  If Wikipedia is correct, Mulkey is 692-112 between Baylor and LSU, and has won 4 national titles – becoming one of the few coaches who have won titles at multiple schools.

Congratulations to the LSU Tigers on their first ever NCAA women’s basketball championship!!!