Stomp The Lunatic

But after #15 Oral Roberts beat Ohio State, and #12 Oregon State beat Tennessee, #13 Liberty has jumped out to a 6 point lead against Oklahoma State.

I am suddenly feeling extremely nervous about my Boilermakers playing #13 seed North Texas.

Oral Roberts tied the game in regulation to send it to overtime. And then Oral Roberts just became the 9th ever 15 seed to knock off a 2 seed.

Purdue’s home court, Mackey Court, is apparently a graveyard for the Big 10 schools. First, Michigan State last night and now Ohio State.

I just wish this game had happened later today so I could have truly blogged on it. That being said, it was still fun to watch the last 2-3 minutes and see Oral Roberts pull off the upset – even if it destroys my Big 10 heavy picks.

Congratulations to Cinderella – Oral Roberts somehow managed to wind the clock back. It is not midnight yet.

A lot was made out of the fact that Michigan State had beaten 3 teams that were in the top 5 at the time of the victory (Illinois, Michigan and Ohio State). There were also many that questioned whether UCLA should have been one of the teams in the field.

And that is what likely makes the UCLA Bruins dangerous!!!!! Michigan State had another one of their inconsistency streaks – where they jumped out to a double digit lead, and then let the Bruins come back to tie the game in regulation, before losing in overtime.

So we had a close game between Texas Southern and Mt. St. Mary’s, a come from behind win by Drake by 1 point when Wichita State missed their buzzer-beating 3 pointer, Norfolk State winning by 1 point when Appalachian State’s last two shots in the final 5 seconds missed, and UCLA coming back to win in overtime.

March is back!!!!! AND IT IS MADNESS!!!!!! Hope the entire tournament is like this!!! It should be fun!

I have been really struggling with this. Might partially be because it is late. Might partially because I don’t like certain matchups. But at some point, you just have to make the picks – even if you don’t think you have picked enough upsets.

I really like Gonzaga, Illinois and Alabama to make the Final 4. In my sane picks, I have Baylor joining them – with Illinois beating Gonzaga in the championship.

In my insane picks, I have to support my Boilermakers. I actually think this is one of the best draws that they have received. While North Texas is certainly no push-over, they are still a 13 seed. The classic smaller conference champion who can beat anyone on any given night, but theoretically, you evaluate the 4 seed’s draw based on the later rounds. Villanova is dealing with injuries. The 1 seed Baylor is going to be tough (as would any of them), but if Baylor has a weakness, it would be in the paint – which is Purdue’s strength. And the #2 seed is Ohio State – a team they have beaten this season (although the games are always close). It probably doesn’t happen – but how could I live with myself without picking them.

Since it is late, I figured this year, I would simply post the link to the printout of my picks.

Click on this line to see my sane picks

Click on this line to see my insane picks

Considering I don’t have a lot of confidence (could simply be that I am tired, could be that I am watching UCLA come back against Michigan State), it should be relatively easy this year to Stomp the Lunatic! Good luck to everyone!!!!!

EDITOR’S NOTE – In light of the ankle injury to UCLA’s Johnny Juzang at the end of the Michigan State / UCLA game last night, I decided to switch my pick from what would have been UCLA to BYU. It might be a mistake – Lunatic curse for second guessing himself and going away from the tendency of one first four team winning their next game, especially if Juzang is able to play. But I thought this was a coin-flip game against a really good BYU team to begin with – I don’t feel good that the Bruins can pull off the upset without their leading scorer. And we all don’t get the luxury of waiting and finding out if he is going to be able to play…. So, I will pick BYU instead – I can already hear Chris Peterson screaming “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” loudly at this news that the Lunatic is now backing his Cougars.

What a finish. Drake up 4 with time running down steals the ball, just to lose it again as they try to fast break down the court. And the Wichita State player who came down with the ball drills a three-pointer to set up the finish with 8 seconds.

Wichita State fouls with 5.3 seconds left, Drake’s guard misses the FT, and Wichita State charges down the field, puts up a three pointer, and watches it fall short off the front of the rim.

Wichita State was up double digits midway through the second-half. But Drake went on a run just in time to take the game.

I LOVE MARCH!!!!!!

I went down for a second to get some Diet Coke and saw Elizabeth and Katie sitting on the couch. So I said, “I am going to be nice to you tonight – since the games are starting.”

And before I could finish, Katie said, “Oh no! We are going to have to watch football!”

I am truly heartbroken at this failure. Of course, then I convinced Katie to come upstairs with me to fill out her bracket – so I will keep hope that I can fix this failure.

Editor’s note: Katie wanted me to mention that she was doing better – because we had multiple conversations this week about sports. She was very sweet that she intentionally asked me questions about sports since I was watching a game.

Also, Charlie was then picking on Katie for making the blog, and so I reminded him that he will likely make the blog when Katie’s picks that she did quickly and probably doesn’t even remember will do better than the ones he agonized about.

Multiple failures I guess for myself – but I can always feel success that I have a wonderful wife and two great kids.

Texas Southern and Mt. St. Mary’s have begun!!!! The Madness is HERE!!!!! Can’t believe how excited that I am about a game between Texas Southern and Mt. St. Mary’s!!!!

You still have about 18-19 hours to make your picks!!!!! Don’t miss your chance to Stomp the Lunatic!!!! Watch the first four games tonight – make your picks – and get ready for tomorrow as the excitement ramps up to the Round of 64!!!!

I should be concentrating on coming up with a bracket. And despite knowing who I would like to predict as the overall winner, I am not as comfortable about the rest of the games.

So, why not lose time by predicting the actual games against the spreads.

That’s right – the Lunatic has begun his handicapping page. The link to my current Thursday’s picks are available under 2021 Handicapping. If I magically in the next 19 hours come up with a better way to evaluate the games, I might change my handicapping. But have to make sure that I have at least something before the games.

Enjoy the horrible handicapping and ramblings of a Lunatic.

Apparently, trying to seed over half the field between 4pm EST and 5 pm EST was not the most effective way to do bracketology.

I got 66 of 68 teams – missing on UCLA and Drake. And all the media bracketologist – and the majority of those posting brackets on the Bracket Matrix did a better job of seeding teams than I did.

I was all prepared to write a long rant about how I don’t understand how the ACC was seeded. For example, lets take a look at Virginia Tech and Clemson.

If you look at the AP Poll going into Champ Week, Virginia Tech was ranked 22nd in the AP Poll and 21st in the Coaches Poll. Meanwhile Clemson was 29th in the AP rankings and 30th in the Coaches. So, while the polls are certainly not the Selection Committee, most of them AP writers and Coaches who rank the teams thought Virginia Tech was the better team last week. In the ACC tournament, VT was the 3 seed and lost to 6 seed North Carolina by 8. Meanwhile, Clemson lost the day before by 3 to 13 seed Miami FL. So if many felt VT was better than Clemson, and while both lost in the tournament, Clemson’s loss was clearly worse. So, how did Clemson end up a 7 seed and Virginia Tech end up a 10 seed. For that matter, how did the Selection Committee find 18 teams to push over the Hokies.

I was then going to go into ranting about Louisville being in over Syracuse.

So, I thought that I could use my Bradley-Terry model to prove my point. Apparently, that was a mistake. But it means I have to give the NCAA Selection Committee so much more credit. Because the ACC makes no absolutely sense. I am going to provide you the top 8 teams, and lets look at the following: the conference standings, the conf tournament, the seeds from the Selection Committee (the only ranking that matters), my bracketology seed, and a rank ordering of the teams based on my Bradley-Terry model predictions.

TEAM	STANDINGS	TOURNEY	NCAA	LUNATIC	MODEL
Florida St	2 (11-4) #15	Lost Champ	4	4	3
Virginia	1 (13-4) #16	Forfeit Semis	4	4	1
Clemson	5 (10-6) #29	Lost 2nd Rd	7	9	2
North Carolina	6 (10-6) NR	Lost Semis	8	9	5
Georgia Tech	4 (11-6) NR	WON	9	7	4
Virginia Tech	3 (9-4) #22	Lost Quarters	10	6	6
Syracuse	8 (9-7) NR	Lost Quarters	11	11	8
Louisville	7 (8-5) NR	Lost 2nd Rd	OUT	10	7

I figured that for the most part the conference standings would stand. Most of the conference tournament didn’t give me any reason to not keep those rankings. Georgia Tech won the tournament, but was unranked. UNC and Clemson had the same conference record, and UNC made it to the semis. Couldn’t move Syracuse over Louisville because the Orange beat NC State and the Cardinals lost to Duke.

The committee saw much differently. I focused on Clemson’s losses instead of their impressive early victories against Alabama, Purdue, and Florida State. I focused on Virginia Tech’s record and AP ranking, but they don’t have quite the victories that Clemson has (though Virginia, Villanova and Clemson isn’t bad).

The Bradley-Terry model pushed Clemson over Florida State and Virginia Tech fell behind both Georgia Tech and UNC. Its clearly a mess. Games getting cancelled made it hard to compare a 9-4 team to a 10-6 team. Conference schedules aren’t balanced to begin with – but add into games getting cancelled including ACC tournament games, and it gets crazy complicated.

Guess this was my rant saying that I think my logic for my rankings made sense, but the analytics that favor pushing Virginia Tech all the way down to below UNC and GT also suggested Louisville was better than Syracuse. But if you look at those two teams closer, it is still hard to distinguish – especially since both the games between Louisville and Syracuse got cancelled due to Covid.

At the end, I have to give the credit to the Selection Committee, because there are so many ways to compare these teams, and many of them lead to different rankings. You have to give them a lot of respect for ranking a season that had so many cancellations, so few non-conference games, and many teams with only 1 or 2 top wins that still have the better records and deserve to be in the tournament.

It is four hours past the deadline for the NCAA to use one of the replacement teams, and ESPN and CBS have nothing on their site saying that someone would be unable to play.

According to CBS Sports, “the NCAA announced Tuesday that five positive COVID-19 cases have been identified out of 2,300 tests conducted so far this week ahead of the NCAA Tournament. Those tested so far include members of team’s traveling parties — not just players and coaches — as well as officials from the NCAA. The positive case count of five is up from zero positives that had been identified as of Monday.”

So, looks like you can safely pick your brackets – will let you know if I read anything different – but really would have expected the news would have happened by now.