Stomp The Lunatic

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.

Well, I am still relatively new to modeling on Python – but I figure why not practice. I have all this great basketball data.

I remember from past tournaments that Bill Kahn would tell me about the Bradley-Terry models that he created. And he always did very well in the pool. So, I definitely don’t have the experience that Bill has with building these models, it was at least an opportunity to learn a little about Python.

So, I figure I have an extra day thanks to the unusual this schedule – lets see what I get. And it is really possible that I made some mistakes. But I also don’t think I can use the model. First of all, it predicted Winthrop would beat both Villanova and Purdue. I can live with the first upset but I can’t pick the second one against my Boilers. Second, it created a prediction that I suspect won’t happen.

That is because its prediction for the Final 4 are all 4 of the #1 seeds. March Madness is anything but predictable – so while I have no doubt that Gonzaga, Baylor, Illinois and Michigan are the top 4 teams in the country based on the regular season, I don’t think all 4 of them will survive the regionals. One of the top seeds always goes down. It is inevitable.

If you are wondering, it finishes with Gonzaga having a 65.7% chance of beating Baylor.

I doubt that there will be a replacement team that makes it into the tournament. It looks like Virginia will go to the final possible moment to make a decision and Kansas will be able travel without three players. I was going to even to write about why I chose Louisville over Syracuse – although in researching that, I am starting to understand the logic of the Selection Committee – it was not an easy decision.

So, it is probably a mute issue. But today, Louisville rejected the #1 seed into the NIT.

The replacement team order was Louisville, Colorado State, St. Louis, and Ole Miss.

Coach Mack said it nicely – his quote when asked was “(The NIT is) a great tournament. It’s a class tournament. Maybe we would have felt a little differently had we been able to play in front of our fans and play in the Yum. But to go to Dallas, sit in hotel rooms spaced apart with seven or eight healthy players – it just wasn’t for this group,” Mack said.

Louisville went through two different Covid pauses – so I suspect that there is some honesty in this statement. But lets face it, part of it is that they don’t care about the NIT.

The NCAA should have come back and said the following: We respect Louisville’s decision to end their season to protect the health of their players. So now the 1st replacement team is Colorado State, and as the 4th top seed in the NIT, Memphis, is now the final replacement team.

It is likely not going to matter – but if you are not willing to play in the NIT, you should not be allowed to play in the NCAA as a replacement team. It is not acceptable to me that the health is the reason not to play in the NIT, but if the NCAA calls, health is no longer important – we will be there. It is that simple – if you are going to play in the postseason, you play where the NCAA asks you to play.

I am not sure that I am going to go into a detailed rambling on the Selection Committee – that might have to come another day. But all in all, I am pretty happy.

And part of that is because of the teams that I missed on. As I picked my bracket this afternoon, and nervously started realizing that I was running out of time because I couldn’t choose between the final teams, one of the decisions I agonized on was between UCLA and Mississippi. I actually at first had UCLA in the field. And then I thought to myself – that isn’t what the collection committee does. They normally like teams that have beaten more top 50-60 teams. So, at the last minute, I changed my answer to Mississippi and moved on to seeding the rest of the field. At some point, I might have to break down those profiles, but not this second.

The other team I missed on was Drake. Drake is the classic team that goes 24-4 in a mid-major conference, loses in their conference final to an equally talented team (in this case, #8 seed Loyola-Chicago), and then gets excluded from the tournament because they don’t have enough wins against tournament level teams. Drake went 1-2 against Loyola-Chicago. And then played no other teams in the at-large / bubble consideration. They did go 5-0 against Indiana State and Missouri State – which happened to be Tier 2 wins. They also had 2 losses against tier 3 teams (on the road at Valparaiso and Bradley).

Lets face it, history says that team doesn’t make it. Instead of the 24-4 team that won against almost everyone they faced, the 15-11 team from Big 10 or ACC gets in instead.

To be honest, I was worried about Wichita State and Utah State as well – I could have seen all those spots going to middle of the road teams from the top 6 conferences.

I will happily be wrong on my bracketology when an incredibly good mid-major team gets invited instead of the major conference team I picked. It might have made me wrong, but I do think that it is better for college basketball.

The 5 championship games that were played today have been updated to the 2021 Schedule file for the statistician / data scientists / analysts out there who want the complete data to do their analysis on.

But lets face it – many of us are going to go to the major media sites like ESPN or CBS Sports, read all the information the pundits have to say about the games, and then pick emotionally based on our favorite teams.

It is totally OK if you don’t have countless hours to look over box score after box score, or don’t have cool programs set up to build models to predict the games, the Lunatic still has your back.

The 2021 Cheat Sheet is available – it takes the teams side by side and summarizes records, NET and RPI rankings, scoring statistics, and looks at each team’s schedule. So, you don’t have to build a model – you basically have a one page per game overview to help you make a decision.

Just realize that on some of the statistics (such as Offense Rating or Adj Scoring Margin), that my code calculates that from the data I have collected. Those statistics are not official NCAA statistics – they are my calculation of the metric.

Enjoy the cheat sheet!

The brackets are up – I will send out an email reminder later tonight.

At this point, you are welcome to register and join the tournament – the entry form is ready to go!!!!!!!

So, do you research, make your picks and get ready to Stomp the Lunatic!!!!!

The Lunatic’s insane bracketology is posted. I am really not sure what the committee will do. My final 4 into the tournament were Syracuse, Utah State, Wichita State, and Mississippi. That left UCLA, Duke, Saint Louis and Colorado State as the first four out, and Memphis, Drake, Boise State, and North Carolina State as the next four out.

I ended up going with what everyone expects as the top seeds – Gonzaga, Baylor, Illinois and Michigan. I really wanted to move Illinois past Baylor if they win today – but considering Baylor beat the Illini earlier in the season and had a better profile coming in, I just can’t do it. The same thing goes for Alabama and Michigan. Michigan also struggled down the stretch – and Alabama won the SEC tournament against a really difficult conference. But once again, there was too much of a gap coming into Championship Week.

I am wildly curious what the committee does. There were so many places where teams only had 1-2 victories against other teams in the field, and with teams not playing each other, it was really hard to rank. I also made some decisions at the end that were more who I wanted to see make it (really nervous about my Wichita State pick as well as Mississippi). That probably means I will be wrong on some other team (sorry Utah State and Syracuse – you are the next likely candidates…..)

30 minutes until the Selection Show – going to enjoy the rest of the Big 10 championship and get ready for the madness to begin!!!! Feel free to check out the bracketology link to see the full bracket.

I am so disappointed. I figured I would listen to the Pac 12 game while I rank teams. Unfortunately for me, Bill Walton is one of the announcers.

At one point, when Oregon State got a defensive rebound on a missed shot, Walton screamed that the Beavers need to get a defensive rebound – they will never win the game without getting a defensive rebound. Of course, Oregon State was up 5 and had just got the defensive rebound…..All his partner, Dave Pasch, could say, was “Bill – they did just that – they got the rebound.”

Pasch mentioned that Oregon State needs to win the game to make it into the tournament – which Walton starts screaming “That is an incorrect statement! And then starts screaming “D! D! D! D! D! Defense!” – Oregon State’s NET ranking is 101. They are not even on the board of teams being considered. But somehow this idiot thinks that Oregon State is in. And how shouting D like a lunatic helps his argument is beyond me.

Every 3 or 4 minutes Walton mentions the “Conference of Champions”. Maybe mentioning a conference nickname once or twice – but he sounds ridiculous by using the term as often as he does.

He continues to berate his partner – instead of letting his partner do his job and call the game. Every time Pasch mentions that Oregon State continues to try to pull the upset to punch their ticket to the dance, Walton says “I am going to punch you if you keep saying that”

Walton just said that Oregon State was better and more deserving of the tournament than UCLA when ESPN displayed the possible Pac 12 teams in the tournament and complained why all these Big 10 teams keep getting ranked when they beat each other. Are we really comparing Ohio State, Iowa and Purdue to Oregon State and UCLA?

I felt bad for Dave Pasch – he keeps trying to get the broadcast back on track and Walton keeps saying bizarre things.

Well – regardless, congratulations to the Oregon State Beavers, who just upset Colorado by 2 points to earn the Pac 12 automatic bid.

I had thought that this isn’t going to be that hard after looking at the conferences, there were probably some mid-major schools that would get left out as always, but the teams at least made sense.

But Georgetown is destroying Creighton (lead 73-46) with less than a minute to play, and so in a very short period, there will be one last spot in the tournament (since Creighton will now need an at-large bid).

And there are still more threats. Oregon State plays Colorado tonight for the Pac 12 championship, and Cincinnati will be playing Houston tomorrow for the American championship.

My imaginary job as a bracketologist, just got tougher. And I still really haven’t analyzed anything – really enjoyed watching the Big 10 games earlier today and the games in the American conference also had close finishes – really feel bad for Wichita State and Memphis – Wichita State’s last second shot literally rattled around the basket before going out, while Memphis fell a couple points short of Houston for a second time in just a couple weeks. They both might sadly be on the outside-looking in side of the bubble (although I hope I am wrong). We’ll see in under 24 hours if they are in my picks. Of course, that is just the ramblings of the Lunatic – it only matters if the Selection Committee calls their name Sunday afternoon at 6 pm EST.

My wife is probably glad I am set up in my office. Analysis on my computer with the ACC championship on my iPad. That probably bodes poorly for my bracketology – might just keep watching the games….. Sadly, it is also Daylight Saving Time tonight, so I lose another hour of sleep. Preparing for a long (or short) night – at least I will have the ACC and Pac 12 championships to enjoy.

Ohio State loves the drama – they appear to like to get up double digits and then see if they can survive. Down 8 with 2 minutes to play, Michigan got the ball down to the Hunter Dickinson in the post, who missed his first layup but put it back in to cut the lead to 6. Then, Dickinson stole the ball in the backcourt and drove to the basket to cut the lead to 4.

Ohio State took the clock down to a minute but EJ Liddell turned it over on the driver. Michigan sets up their offense, and some great ball movement got Chaundee Brown open for a three-pointer to cut the lead to 1. Then, Michigan’s Mike Smith played great defense on CJ Walker who turned the ball over when he barely stepped out on the line under the basket.

So with 29 seconds left, Mike Smith dribbles the ball up the court, and stops around half-court. One of the announcers goes and says, “Juwaan is going for the win here”, as they continue to drain the clock. It was pretty clear this possession was going to end the game.

And after using great offense and ball movement to cut the double digit lead, the play that gets called out ends up being Mike Smith draining the clock to 5 seconds, little movement by anyone on the Wolverines, and everyone watching as Smith settles for a contested fade-away three-pointer that misses.

You have a full 30 seconds, you don’t run your offense, you decide to do stupid isolation NBA basketball, and jack up a three with a player in your face. Juwaan Howard deserves a lot of credit for leading the Wolverines to a great season so far – but he didn’t play for the win today. Not to take anything away from the Buckeyes who played hard for the victory, but Michigan’s end-game strategy certainly made it easier for them to hold on for the win.