{"id":3281,"date":"2025-03-27T00:43:41","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T00:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=3281"},"modified":"2025-03-27T00:43:41","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T00:43:41","slug":"the-lunatic-reveals-his-second-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=3281","title":{"rendered":"The Lunatic Reveals His Second Chance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>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.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Auburn &#8211; 1<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Michigan &#8211; 0 (although ironically, they had 2 from Texas Tech and 1 from their opponent Auburn)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ole Miss &#8211; 1<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Michigan State -4<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Florida &#8211; 1<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Maryland &#8211; 2<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Texas Tech &#8211; 1 (yes, that is right that Michigan has more of its freshman than they did)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Arkansas &#8211; 1 (not surprising that Calapari had to reload through the transfer portal)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Duke &#8211; 4<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Arizona &#8211; 0 (is it a shock that one of the schools in the FBI recruiting scandal has moved to living off the transfer window)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>BYU &#8211; 3 (impressive since they lost their coach to Kentucky)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Alabama &#8211; 1<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Houston &#8211; 3<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Purdue &#8211; 5 (go Boilers!!!)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Kentucky &#8211; 0 (not surprising since they lost their coach to Arkansas)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Tennessee &#8211; 2<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It makes me sad that only 5 of the 16 schools recruited at least 3 of their starters.  But it proved the original author&#8217;s point that teams are now building through the transfer portal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the South, Auburn sneaks past Michigan, and Michigan State beats Ole Miss, with the Spartans advancing to the Final Four.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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 &#8211; which will not be the remaining 8-10 SEC team).  And then Maryland advances (with the smallest number).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the East, Duke takes out Arizona and BYU (who beat Alabama) to go to San Antonio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And of course, in the Midwest, Purdue beats Houston (despite Houston having 3 starters) and Tennessee gets their revenge against Kentucky &#8211; 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here is the picture of my picks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"218\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-2-1024x218.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3282\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-2-1024x218.png 1024w, http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-2-300x64.png 300w, http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-2-768x164.png 768w, http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-2-1536x327.png 1536w, http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/image-2.png 1869w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>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!!!!!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Good luck to everyone in beating the Lunatic for a second time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3283,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3281\/revisions\/3283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}