Stomp The Lunatic

So, overtime was a lot of battling back and forth for the lead. But with about 1:40 to play, JT Toppin drove the lane and hit a close jumper to give the Red Raiders a 3 point lead. But after a timeout, Arkansas found Trevon Brazile all alone at the top of the key for a three pointer to tie it for the Razorbacks.

Texas Tech went right back to their All-American and JT Toppin delivered with another drive into the lane. But DJ Wagner would once again tie the game with a layup of his own. Back and forth. Back and forth. Only 34 seconds left.

Texas Tech winds the clock down and gets the ball to Darrion Williams, the hero who tied the game. And Williams drove to the hoop and made the layup to put the Red Raiders up 2 points. Arkansas’ last ditch fadeaway shot to try to tie the game came up short and Texas Tech survives and advances. All 4 favorites continued the trend of the chalk winning, but it sure ended with a fantastic game.

As for the pool, Debbe Evans and Scott Grimes still hold a 10 point lead over Ashley Peterson, and a 20 point lead over Amy Lacks and both of Andrea Zimmerman’s picks.

In the Upset Pool, Ashley Peterson holds an 18 point lead over Scott Grimes and a 28 point lead over Debbe Evans.

In the Second Chance Pool, we have 50 people who picked all 4 favorites and thus are tied for the lead at 160 points. For all of our sanity, I will simply congratulate everyone instead of trying to type everyone’s name.

Four more exciting games on Friday.

• Big 10 champ Michigan State vs 6 seed Ole Miss
• SEC rivals Tennessee and Kentucky play for a third time
• SEC champ Auburn plays Big 10 tournament champ Michigan
• And of course, Big 12 champion Houston takes on Purdue.

BOILER UP!!!

Of course it happens on the last game of the night. While Duke was busy holding off Arizona, in a region where the four teams combined averaged 98.5 points, the drama was all happening in San Francisco.

Arkansas was up 16 points, and up 10 points with 4 minutes to play, but Texas Tech has made a furious charge. Christian Anderson hit three three-pointers to cut the lead to 3 and Darrion Williams hit a three pointer with 10 seconds to tie the game. Arkansas’ DJ Wagner missed his drive and fadeaway jumper and we will play more basketball!!!!

The BYU Cougars scored 88 points tonight. On any given night, you would expect to be either winning or in a one-possession game with a total like that.

The BYU Cougars lost tonight by 25 points!!!!!!!

Alabama shot 25-51 from three-point range as they unloaded for 113 points. What makes that even crazier is their leader Mark Sears, who had 34 points off 10 three-pointers (one off the individual record) sat for the last 4 minutes since the game was so wrapped up.

The 25 three pointers made is a tournament record. The 51 three pointers shot is a tournament record. The Crimson Tide coasted their way to a huge victory.

If the Tide shoot like that, they will be the 2025 national champions. That was one of the most dominating performances I have seen. Sure, they might face some tougher defenses later in the tournament – but BYU is a really good team, and the Crimson Tide scored 113 points while resting some of their starters over the last 4 minutes.

Meanwhile, the Florida Gators are up 17 points on Maryland with 2 minutes to play. So, the Sweet 16 has been very sweet for the SEC.

So excited that the Sweet 16 has begun – and starting off with Alabama vs BYU which could be a first team to 100 game. Lots of scoring – lots of fun!!!

Congratulations go out to Illinois State as they beat Cleveland State by 11 down in Daytona Beach to win the championship game of the CBI Tournament.

Also, while we are at it, we should also congratulate Loyola-Chicago who beat Kent State by 10 and UC-Irvine who beat UAB in overtime to join Chattanooga and North Texas in the NIT semi-finals next week in Indianapolis.

Have to also mention that North Texas couldn’t host their game against Oklahoma State because their was a staff appreciation event being hosted in their arena. I can’t even imagine how something like that happens. There isn’t another place or time they can move the staff event?

Oh well – must get some sleep. The Sweet 16 is almost here!!!

So – now that I have picked based on my heart instead of my logic or my statistics, it only makes sense to know what the model would have done (and you can see why I didn’t use it).

In the first round, I will also show you how my very basic model that predicts the margin does compared to the Vegas lines (which I also might have tended to ignore on my handicapping – maybe that is why I do great on the over/unders and horrible on the spreads).

SWEET 16 – model predicts all 8 favorites

• Auburn (-8.5) over Arizona – model predicts Auburn by 8.8
• Michigan State (-3.5) over Ole Miss – model predicts Michigan State by 3.8
• Florida (-6.5) over Maryland – model predicts Florida by 3.9
• Texas Tech (-5.5) over Arkansas – model predicts Texas Texas by 6.3
• Duke (-9) over Arizona – model predicts Duke by 7.4
• Alabama (-5.5) over BYU – model predicts Alabama by 5.9
• Houston (-8) over Purdue – model predicts Houston by 8.7
• Tennessee (-4.5) over Kentucky – model predicts Tennessee by 3

ELITE 8 – all the favorites win

• Auburn beats Michigan State by 6.5
• Florida beats Texas Tech by 4.2
• Duke beats Alabama by 4.8
• Houston beats Tennessee by 3.7

FINAL 4

• Auburn beats Florida by 1.5
• Duke beats Houston by 2.3

CHAMPIONSHIP

• Duke beats Auburn by 1.6

I just can’t pick the favorites all the way through. I am sure there is some creative way to pick some upsets based on lines that are close (such as picking Ole Miss, Maryland and Kentucky based on the model thinking the line is with 4 points) – but what is the right value – is it 2 points, 3 points, 4 points, whatever gives me 4 upsets, etc.

So, for those of you looking for some statistical help in the future rounds, my simple model is within a point of 5 of the 8 games, so it gives a decent guide. Of course, we don’t play the games on paper……

Anyways, enjoy the statistics and of course, the games, and good luck with your picks.

It is a tradition here at the Stomp the Lunatic blog, including a sad year when I was so sleep-deprived that I accidentally copied an old version. But since it is already 9:15 pm on the Wednesday before the Sweet 16, it is time.

Here are the top 10 reasons to do the Second Chance Pool!!!!!

• 10) Your chances for a perfect bracket disappeared after the first game when Creighton upset Louisville, and so you want a second chance to achieve perfection.
• 9) After laughing at the media pundits who picked a Final 4 of all #1 seeds, you are starting to realize that might be a really good choice in a year where the chalk keeps winning
• 8) You were so excited about the SEC semi-finals that you decided the Final 4 should be a repeat of it – just with the teams switched up as Florida would have to first play Auburn and Tennessee would have to play Alabama.
• 7) After all the favorites winning in the first two rounds, you know that March will strike back this weekend with massive chaos leading to #6 Ole Miss, #10 Arkansas, #6 BYU and #4 Purdue upsetting the favorites to head to San Antonio.
• 6) Because no one does a Pop Culture Jeopardy Pool – and then you realize why after binging the entire series of 40 shows at once.
• 5) Realizing that 18 of the 20 last national champions have had blue in their logos, you are sure that Michigan, Florida, Duke and Kentucky are guaranteed to play each other for the title.
• 4) You are losing to your daughter who has picked teams based on schools her family members went to and what mascot she likes the best, and so you want a chance to redeem yourself.
• 3) Knowing that Ole Miss, Tennessee, Duke and Maryland are the only 4 schools with both their men’s and women’s teams making the Sweet 16, it seems like fate that you could pick those 4 schools to the Final Four.
• 2) It is another – and more importantly, it is the last chance in 2025 to Stomp the Lunatic!!!
• 1) It is absolutely FREE!!!!

That’s right – your entry fee already covers your Second Chance Pool entry – and so there is absolutely no good reason not to do the Second Chance Pool. You even have all Thursday afternoon to do them since the games don’t start until 7:09 pm EST. And with the Lunatic going with his heart of picking three Big 10 schools to join Duke in the Final Four, it should be incredibly easy this year to thoroughly stomp him.

Everyone deserves a second chance – but you still have to take that second chance to win! Good luck to everyone in Stomping the Lunatic (a second time)!

And uses it in order to tell a different story. I struggled with how I should make my picks. Should I go with my heart? Should I go with my statistical model? Should I use the KenPom philosophy (basically take a more sophisticated statistical model)? Should I go with the team closest to where the game was being played? There were so many silly ways to pick the teams, and I wanted to avoid going simply with the teams I think will win, where I would end up with 4 #1 seeds advancing to the Final Four.

Then, I saw a story about how much the transfer window is changing the game. It had a graphic that showed the school that each of the 5 starters started at for each team in the Sweet 16. Here are the numbers:

• Auburn – 1
• Michigan – 0 (although ironically, they had 2 from Texas Tech and 1 from their opponent Auburn)
• Ole Miss – 1
• Michigan State -4
• Florida – 1
• Maryland – 2
• Texas Tech – 1 (yes, that is right that Michigan has more of its freshman than they did)
• Arkansas – 1 (not surprising that Calapari had to reload through the transfer portal)
• Duke – 4
• Arizona – 0 (is it a shock that one of the schools in the FBI recruiting scandal has moved to living off the transfer window)
• BYU – 3 (impressive since they lost their coach to Kentucky)
• Alabama – 1
• Houston – 3
• Purdue – 5 (go Boilers!!!)
• Kentucky – 0 (not surprising since they lost their coach to Arkansas)
• Tennessee – 2

Of all 16 teams, the only one that had all 5 of their starters be players they recruited from high school was my Boilermakers. I have always known that Matt Painter was an incredible coach, and always did a great job of developing players, but it surprised me that of all these teams, only Painter has recruited (and maybe more importantly, kept) his star players.

It makes me sad that only 5 of the 16 schools recruited at least 3 of their starters. But it proved the original author’s point that teams are now building through the transfer portal.

Since that makes me sad, and it would make me so very happy if this outcome happened, I decided that I would pick my teams for my second chance bracket based on who has developed its talent from the start. If there was a tie, I would pick who I want to see win.

In the South, Auburn sneaks past Michigan, and Michigan State beats Ole Miss, with the Spartans advancing to the Final Four.

In the West, Maryland upsets Florida (with only 2 starters), Texas Tech takes out Arkansas (with a tie, I go back to who I want – which will not be the remaining 8-10 SEC team). And then Maryland advances (with the smallest number).

In the East, Duke takes out Arizona and BYU (who beat Alabama) to go to San Antonio.

And of course, in the Midwest, Purdue beats Houston (despite Houston having 3 starters) and Tennessee gets their revenge against Kentucky – who swept the Volunteers in the regular season (because it is hard to beat a well-coached team three times in a season). And then my Boilers advance.

In the Final 4, my Boilers will upset both Duke and Michigan State to win the NCAA Championship to end the 25 year drought for the Big 10 (although I guess Maryland won in 2002 when they were still part of the ACC).

Here is the picture of my picks.

I know that this is a crazy pick. But this would make me so happy, and as I say in my handicapping page, when in doubt, never bet against the team you want to see win. So Go Boilers!!!!!

Good luck to everyone in beating the Lunatic for a second time.

In honor of the NIT’s quarterfinals starting tonight, it seems appropriate to talk about the complete mess that has been the NIT.

So many forces are trying to destroy this famous tournament – it is hard to believe that in 1970, Marquette turned down a bid in the NCAA tournament to play in the NIT. Into the early-1950s, the NIT was actually considered a more prestigious tournament to play. Now, it is an after-thought that continues to get watered down.

It is bad enough that teams are allowed to turn down the NIT bid. The following teams turned down a bid to the NIT

• Florida State
• LSU
• Nevada
• Northwestern
• Pittsburgh
• Providence
• South Carolina
• UNLV

Teams that turned down the NIT and the Crown Tournament – I know Indiana, WV, and Ohio State were contractually obligated to turn down the NIT once turning down the Crown – not sure about the other schools.

• Indiana
• West Virginia
• Ohio State
• Rutgers
• Kansas State
• Penn State
• Wake Forest
• TCU

The NIT also lost the following teams to the Crown Tournament when spots opened thanks to teams dropping out

• Boise State
• Butler
• Georgetown
• Villanova

So, basically, we have gone from the NIT being the 32 best teams that did not make the NCAA Tournament from also losing 20 of the top remaining teams.

It is amazing that in its inaugural season, thanks to offering 500,000 in NIL to the top 4 teams. Thanks to what appears to be a better incentive to the players as well as the contractual arrangements for the Big East, Big 10 and Big 12 with FOX, the brand new tournament starting next Monday ended up with more power conference teams than the NIT.

Here is the full field of the Crown Tournament

• Big 12 – Arizona State, Cincinnati, Colorado, UCF, Utah
• Big 10 – Nebraska, USC
• Big East – Butler, DePaul, Georgetown, Villanova
• Mt West – Boise State,
• Atlantic 10 – George Washington
• WCC – Oregon State, Washington State
• American – Tulane

The Power Conference schools that accepted a bid to the NIT

• ACC – SMU, Stanford, Georgia Tech
• Big 12 – Oklahoma State

What is worse about this – in 2024, the NIT changed their selection rules to guarantee selections from the power conferences as well as ensuring they would host a game in the first round. It used to be that if you won your regular season conference championship, you were guaranteed a spot in the NIT if you lost in the conference tournament – but because the power conferences wanted more of the money, they got the rules changed. Of course, then teams started declining the bids. Basically, the power conferences wanted the money from the NIT, but the power conference teams didn’t want to waste their time to play in it.

This created a ridiculous chaotic tournament that led to more disaster. Because remember there is also the CBI and CIT. Well, there was a CIT – there was supposed to be a CIT tournament this year, but no scheduled games happened. So you have to assume that they could not get enough interest to play.

With so many teams dropping out, they started talking to their alternates – one of those was one of the regular season champions from the Sun Belt, South Alabama, who no longer had an automatic bid to guarantee spots to the conferences that all declined invitations to the NIT.

But they also had earlier invited UC Riverside – who had already committed to the CBI. When UC Riverside made the decision to cancel their CBI commitment and play in the NIT, it took the last spot that South Alabama thought they had and already had told their players they were accepted. So, the NIT had to come back and take away the invitation to South Alabama.

The Sun Belt said in a statement, “As the top remaining at-large team not selected to the original field, South Alabama was prematurely contacted by the NIT on Sunday as a potential replacement team to fill out the 32 team bracket. With all 32 teams accepting their NIT invitations, this opportunity did not materialize. We regret the emotional impact this chain of events had on South Alabama’s student-athletes and want to congratulate Sun Belt Coach of the Year Richie Riley and his team on a historic season, including a Sun Belt regular-season co-championship.”

That was nice of the Sun Belt to try to say, but it isn’t true. South Alabama wasn’t the top remaining team – they were the 21st. What’s worse is that they wanted to play in it, but because of the complaining from conferences whose teams constantly decline the bid, the rules were changed to take away their automatic bid. In 2023, it would not have been a question – South Alabama as the 1 seed in the Sun Belt tournament would have been guaranteed a spot.

What used to be a prestigious tournament is now a joke. With the Crown poaching schools from them, and them poaching schools from the CBI and CIT, and everyone making tournament invitations at the same time, Sunday night turned into a ridiculous mess where a team thought they were invited to play and then found out as they started to celebrate that their season was now officially over. And then one of the tournaments just gave up trying to put up an event.

What is worse is that this is supposed to be a multi-billion dollar business. If this article that I am reading is correct, men’s basketball teams starting this year will receive 24% of the media rights deal for March Madness – roughly $8.8 billion over 8 years. And that is just the NCAA Tournament. I am sure ESPN is paying media rights to host the NIT, and I know that FOX is spending some money to be able to show some basketball next week with the Crown Tournament.

I guess ESPN and FOX don’t care as long as they have games to televise. But it seems ridiculous that one business would make an agreement to have their organizations participate, and then have 16 of their organizations decline and not participate.

It shouldn’t be this hard. This is a business. It should be this simple.

• The contracts dictate who gets to choose first. It is fine if the Big 10 wants to go to the Crown and the ACC wants to go to the NIT, but there should be some type of order.
• Once the guaranteed teams get in, the tournaments get to pick in order who they want. I would give the NIT the first pick, then the Crown, then the CBI, then the CIT.
• Any regular-season conference champion is guaranteed a spot in one of the tournaments. It is ridiculous that South Alabama won their conference, wanted to play in the NIT and eventually did not get to play.
• There is no choice – the schools are contractually obligated to play if they are invited.
• If you decline, you will automatically not be allowed to play in the following 2 post-seasons (including the NCAA Tournament).

People say you can’t make the players play in a tournament if they don’t want to. And I fully 100% disagree. I was sympathetic when the players were only getting their scholarships – while I felt that not being $40K in debt was a pretty nice payment, I understand that the university was getting millions for their efforts.

But I have no more sympathy in the age of NIL. These athletes are being paid. While it is all speculated, it is believed that Mackenzie Mgbako, and Oumar Ballo both made $1 million in NIL deals for Indiana. Not only are they being paid to play basketball, they are being paid extremely well to play basketball. So, you can not tell me that they have the right after taking that money to decide playing in the NIT or Crown Tournament isn’t worth their time.

Everyone keeps reminding me that college basketball is a business. I don’t know of any business that makes contracts and then allows their employees to not meet those contracts. They might be disappointed to not playing in the NCAA Tournament, but if someone is paying the university to play a few more games through an already negotiated contract, they are obligated to play.

Remember the Crown tournament is offering $300K to the winner – if that is split evenly across the team, it probably means each player is going to get $25K for playing 4 basketball games. It is such a bad look for the schools that turned down a bid to the Crown tournament to say that money isn’t worth playing.

As I rant, with about 15 seconds in a tie game, Chattanooga’s Honor Huff passed the ball to Trey Bonham in the corner who drills a three-pointer to lead Chattanooga (26-9) to a 67-65 victory over Bradley (28-8) as the Braves’ desperation full court shot off a missed free throw hits the backboard and drops to the ground. North Texas (26-8) are playing Oklahoma State (17-17) in the late game (the only power conference team left). Tomorrow, Kent State (24-11) plays Loyola-Chicago (24-11) and UC-Irvine (30-6) plays UAB (24-12).

Anyways, nothing is likely to happen. At some point, with 350+ teams in Division I, you have to figure that the 4 tournaments can find 64 teams to participate. Thus, no one will care. I just think it is a shame. I loved the NIT – it was an opportunity to watch some really good basketball teams play. The 8 teams that are playing in the quarterfinals won 70.8% of their games this year – that is pretty good. But everything leading up to this has been kind of a mess this year – and that is disappointing. Since that is more likely to continue than be fixed.

It is really tough to mess up Selection Sunday. The NCAA selection process makes sure they can not. The process is a series of votes from the committee where they first pick their top remaining teams to see who they will rank next, and then each person votes on those teams. It avoids a situation like what the Lunatic would want where he loves the mid-major teams and so he would rank them all better if he could. But in the committee room, all 12 of them have to do that – one person’s vote can certainly give a team a chance but the others have to agree.

If anything, I have to thank the committee. They gave my Boilermakers a 4 seed (ranked 14th on their curve) and then sent them to the Indianapolis regional. I could not have asked for more. If the Lunatic thinks about this, he realizes how wrong this is. They ranked us ahead of Maryland and Michigan thanks to our non-conference schedule, which was generous based on our February swoon.

I love the fact that they learned a little from last year. Watching the Big East and ACC get so few teams seemed unfair – and it looked like it could have happened again. But the committee basically said that they were going to take two 13-7 teams from the power conferences before looking at the 10-10 teams from the Big 10 and Big 12.

My only real criticism is that they took 14 SEC schools. They could have left out Oklahoma and Texas (the two teams that went 6-12 in the SEC) and included West Virginia and Indiana (the 10-10 teams from the Big 10 and Big 12). Or maybe even they consider SMU or Villanova.

You could try to make the argument that with 7 teams in the Sweet 16, the SEC deserved 14 teams. But that simply isn’t true. 5 of those teams were top 3 seeds – they were supposed to advance. Just because a league has 5 of the best 12 schools in the country doesn’t mean that we have to invite the entire conference to play in the tournament.

The only thing that actually made this possible was the fact that the bid stealers never showed up. Teams like VCU, Memphis, Drake and UC San Diego all won their conference tournaments. And the power conferences were won by ranked teams. This let the committee go deeper than they normally do.

But to be fair, the SEC got 14 teams in based on the statistics that the committee was using. It raises a question of whether those statistics are the correct ones to use, but it was still accurate based on those numbers.

The NET looks at performance and margin of victory – which is a change from the old RPI. But it is important to realize that the change played a role in 14 teams making it. The RPI for Oklahoma was 61st, Arkansas was 65th, and Texas was 88th. That is correct, if we were still using RPI, Texas would have been the team with the worst ever RPI to get an at-large bid. Or more realistically, the committee would have picked someone else.

I do like to look at the teams that we didn’t match on my bracketology. Remember that is not necessarily my ranking – but where I thought the committee would rank them. But that method can’t help but have some of my bias in it.

Teams I missed by more than 1 seed.

• Louisville (Lunatic – 4, NCAA – 8) – everyone called this out and everyone missed this. With Creighton beating them, you could believe that they were not worthy of a better bid. But would the Cardinals have beat a team like UC-San Diego if they got placed as a 5 seed like they probably should have been.
• Oklahoma (Lunatic – 11, NCAA – 9) – and the Sooners lost to Connecticut (also a little unfair since maybe the Huskies should have been better than an 8 seed).

Teams that I thought were 1 seed better than the committee (went 8-5, committee expectations said they should have been 4-6)

• Maryland – they dominated Grand Canyon and then escaped against Colorado State.
• Clemson – whoops, I totally got that one wrong.
• BYU – OK – I redeemed myself. The Cougars look really good getting to the Sweet 16.
• Creighton – They went and beat Louisville, the team I thought was also mis-seeded.
• New Mexico – They had a big upset over Marquette and played well against Michigan State.
• North Carolina – About where they should have been. They won the play-in game only to lose to Ole Miss. I consider this says I was right, they were probably better than being in the play-in game, but not better enough to be considered a favorite in a 1st round game.
• Colorado State – Was 1 shot away from being the only 12 seed this year to make the Sweet 16.

Teams the Committee Seeded Better (They went 9-6, Lunatic seed expectations would be 10-7):

• Wisconsin – They probably wish that they had been a 4 seed and didn’t draw BYU.
• Purdue – They made the Sweet 16 against High Point and McNeese
• Arizona – They made the Sweet 16 against Akron and Oregon
• Memphis – They got upset by Colorado State
• Oregon – They did what was expected – beat Liberty but lost to Arizona
• Ole Miss – They made the Sweet 16 impressively against Iowa State.
• Kansas – They got upset by Arkansas.
• Mississippi State – They got upset by Baylor
• Drake – They had a nice victory over Missouri before losing to Texas Tech.

So, not sure what to make about that. Basically the teams that I thought were better than what they seeded then won more than what their seed expectation is. And the teams that I thought should have been seeded worse still did a little better than my seed expectations would have them. Although that is a mixed result.

While Purdue, Arizona and Ole Miss made the Sweet 16 when they were not expected, Memphis, Kansas and Wisconsin lost before they were supposed to.

I guess that is a long and complicated way of coming to the conclusion that the Selection Committee got it right. The teams they put in the top 8 basically won their games. We could argue if they got the last 4-5 teams right, but truthfully, those teams wouldn’t have likely won either. So, I have to say, the selection committee did pretty good.