{"id":843,"date":"2016-03-15T04:59:18","date_gmt":"2016-03-15T04:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=843"},"modified":"2016-03-15T04:59:18","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T04:59:18","slug":"let-the-handicapping-begin-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=843","title":{"rendered":"Let the Handicapping Begin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With the Tuesday games, I have to start handicapping the teams before I am really ready.\u00a0 But since when have we really gone to the Handicapping page expecting wise and sage opinions from the Lunatic.\u00a0\u00a0 Sleep deprived quick decisions and insane commentary made off of gut instincts is what everyone should be looking for &#8211; and those expectations are something the Lunatic can easily meet.<\/p>\n<p>The first four games are picked for right now.\u00a0 Who knows &#8211; maybe I will change my mind by the time the games start tomorrow.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You can go there to see my insane guesses, to see what the Vegas oddsmakers think about the game (probably more insightful), or simply to see when your favorite team is playing &#8211; since it also has the times of the games.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, I know that I can&#8217;t let go of the fact that I think the bracket has been seeded poorly.\u00a0\u00a0 At some point, I will probably rant more about this &#8211; still not sure how Texas A&amp;M is a 3 seed, Kentucky &#8211; the team that was co-champs with the Aggies and then beat the Aggies in the conference championship &#8211; is a 4 seed, and my Boilermakers &#8211; who are ranked 10th in the final Coaches Poll and 12 in the AP Poll &#8211; are a 5 seed.\u00a0\u00a0 But since we are talking about Handicapping, I thought this was interesting.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>None of the 8 seeds are currently favored to win over the 9 seed<\/li>\n<li>VCU &#8211; a 10 seed &#8211; is a 4.5 point favorite over the 7 seed Oregon St<\/li>\n<li>Gonzaga &#8211; an 11 seed &#8211; is a 1.5 point favorite over the 6 seed Seton Hall<\/li>\n<li>The 3 Big 10 teams that drew 5 seeds are larger favorites in their games than\u00a02 of the 4 #4 seeds (so Vegas thinks that half\u00a0the games the Committee thinks are the better 4 seeds against worst 13 seeds will be closer than the 5-12 games)<\/li>\n<li>#3 seed West Virginia also has a lower line (which is probably more a statement that 29-5 Stephen F Austin shouldn&#8217;t be a 14 seed).\u00a0\u00a0 But #3 Utah&#8217;s line against Fresno St is also only 9 (which puts it lower than Maryland and Indiana and even with Purdue&#8217;s line).\u00a0 So Vegas thinks even half of the 3-14 games will be closer than three of the 5-12s.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I will end my evening with this.\u00a0\u00a0 While I don&#8217;t really like Coach John Calipari from Kentucky, he said some things that I thought really were spot on accurate in a fun rant about how they could be seeded behind the team they just beat for the SEC Championship<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He mentioned that you still have to play the games &#8211; you can&#8217;t count on someone else later in the bracket will be there.\u00a0 You play who you play and you need to win those games.<\/li>\n<li>He questioned what was the point of playing the Sunday games.\u00a0 The way the bracket was released, it appears that the seeding was decided before the SEC and Big 10 Championships.\u00a0\u00a0 He believes playing the championships on Sunday hurts the SEC teams\u00a0because it puts it to close to the deadline of the bracket.\u00a0 From looking at what happened to Kentucky and Michigan State, I think he was right.<\/li>\n<li>He had another interesting statement which I think is true.\u00a0\u00a0 He mentioned that the poor seeding doesn&#8217;t hurt the team that was misplaced.\u00a0 If they are really a better team then where they are seeded, they are going to win the game.\u00a0 It actually hurts the team that they play.\u00a0 And the Vegas odds show that.\u00a0 The 12 seeds are supposed to be the best of the small conference champions.\u00a0 So the Vegas lines are suggesting that either the committee got all the 12 and 13 seeds wrong, or more likely, the 12 seeds should never have expected to see Purdue or Indiana in their path.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Those small conference champs might pull those upsets.\u00a0\u00a0 Chattanooga went 29-5 and Little Rock went 29-4 for a good reason.\u00a0\u00a0 As Calapari said, you have to play the games.\u00a0\u00a0 And that probably is the best part of the tournament.\u00a0 Once Thursday comes, everyone stops worrying about the decisions of the committee and everything gets decided on the court.\u00a0\u00a0 You have to win 6 games (or 7 for the 4 play-ins) to win the championship against what should be close to the best 68 teams in the country, whether you are seeded right or not.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the Tuesday games, I have to start handicapping the teams before I am really ready.\u00a0 But since when have we really gone to the Handicapping page expecting wise and sage opinions from the Lunatic.\u00a0\u00a0 Sleep deprived quick decisions and insane commentary made off of gut instincts is what everyone should be looking for &#8211; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog2016"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843","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=843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":844,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions\/844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}