NCAA Tournament Bracket

[Retro62]

My “head bracket” Final Four-UConn over Baylor, Marquette over Purdue, UConn over Marquette 74-68. Illinois in the Elite 8.

My “Heart”bracket-Illinois over St. Mary’s, Creighton over Houston, Illinois over Creighton 98-89 (had to pick a score for the tiebreaker in that bracket).

I have Illinois over Creighton in the final as well.

 

[Bigtex]

I have Illinois over Creighton in the final as well.

For me it is sooo hard not to take Houston to the F4. Not knowing if Kolek is healthy and don't trust Kentucky.
Purdue has a relatively easy path to E8. Can't take barnes/Tennessee so by default - Creighton is against Purdue.
The west is a mess. North Carolina, St Mary's, Arizona, Baylor, and even New Mexico. Coin Flip for E8 and F4
and the east is the beast. Heart and head say Illinois to E8, Uconn over Auburn (don't trust them).

 

[cs04]

I've filled out a few brackets now, the one I added to the Loyalty group is the "revenge tour" version with victories over Auburn, UNC, and Houston for the natty.

 

[Illinifrank67]

I have Illinois over Creighton in the final as well.

As much as it pains me (did grad school at Creighton) I’ve got Akron upsetting them. If Groce was good at one thing it was getting guys up to play one game. He just couldn’t do it over the course of a season.

If you’re right though (and I hope you are!) I’m going to have a very emotional final.

 

[OrangeBlue98]

I’m so sorry that my inner 13 year old just resurfaced, but how did we all miss the greatest possible “Beavis and Butthead” matchup of all time that the committee didn’t make happen?

Morehead State vs Longwood

(I’m ashamed of myself, but we all have those moments sometimes…..)

 

[theNewGuy]

I got Illinois, Tennessee, Grand Canyon, Colorado, and Samford in my auction draft.

Very fun way to do a bracket challenge with ~ 8 people

 

[ever]

My issue with creating a system of selecting teams solely by efficiency metrics is that it leaves the system open to manipulation by teams (you can always try to perfect it, but there will always be holes, open to exploitation)

Fair enough. I agree that there's a non-zero chance of an occasional outlier when using computers alone, but that's most likely to be due to absences by star players. A committee could be in place just to handle these kinds of things and otherwise stay out of the way.

I also don't see much room for intentional manipulation- the MasseyComposite isn't noticeably biased towards teams with harder/easier schedules. This year, it would have selected St John's and Indiana St instead of Virginia and Texas A&M, and just barely Pittsburgh instead of Northwestern. St John's played a harder schedule than Virginia, Indiana St played a weaker schedule than Texas A&M, and Pittsburgh played a weaker schedule than Northwestern (but similar non-con). It would have awarded a slightly better seed to Auburn, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada, and a slightly worse seed to Clemson, Wash St, and S Carolina. None of these are outliers in strength of schedule in either direction. In each of these cases, betting odds are closer to the MasseyComposite than the selection committee's rank, or in between the two.

To get in, you really just have to (on average) do a bit better than a ~#40 team would against your schedule. To get a certain seed, you have to (on average) perform however that seed should against your schedule. There's going to be lots of variance from game to game, and the computers do a pretty good job at averaging all that out, while humans need to oversimplify.

 

[grue2]

I obviously disagree with most of Izzo's rant (especially the part where he blames computers for mistakes caused by humans blatantly ignoring the computers), but he has a point about conference tournament champions getting auto bids. There's so much variance in a conference tournament (well, the NCAA tournament also, but that's another story), so perhaps we should weight the full body of in-conference results a bit more than who happened to win a conference tournament.

I thought individual conferences set the rule for who gets their auto bid. They can say regular season champion, or tournament winner has play off with regular season champion as far as I know.

 

[ever]

I thought individual conferences set the rule for who gets their auto bid. They can say regular season champion, or tournament winner has play off with regular season champion as far as I know.

Yes, conferences have this choice (or at least used to, since as someone pointed out, the Ivy League used to use regular season record).

I didn't mean to imply that conferences are forced to have a tournament, just commenting that the randomness of auto-bids for conference tournament winners (and the increase in number of conferences) leads to a weaker pool. I acknowledge that conference tournaments are exciting and bring revenue, but there are other ways to handle this, like giving autobids to both the regular season winner and tournament champion and increasing the number of play-in games to accommodate the worst ones without taking the place of at-large selections.

Edit: I don't like play-in games for 10 seeds. Make all the really bad teams play each other for a real spot

 

[eas23]

Yes, conferences have this choice (or at least used to, since as someone pointed out, the Ivy League used to use regular season record).

I didn't mean to imply that conferences are forced to have a tournament, just commenting that the randomness of auto-bids for conference tournament winners (and the increase in number of conferences) leads to a weaker pool. I acknowledge that conference tournaments are exciting and bring revenue, but there are other ways to handle this, like giving autobids to both the regular season winner and tournament champion and increasing the number of play-in games to accommodate the worst ones without taking the place of at-large selections.

Edit: I don't like play-in games for 10 seeds. Make all the really bad teams play each other for a real spot

The 10 seeds were the worst at large teams this year with all the bid stealers.

 

[Illini2010-11]

I am still not entirely convinced BYU makes it past Thursday, especially if they go cold beyond the arc.

I wish I had that much confidence when I filled out my bracket. I knew Duquesne had a fighter's chance, as BYU was not the same team away from Provo. This bracket is coming together in a favorable way already, and at least we won't have to hear from the crowd shouting how unlucky we are. Go Illini!!

 

[WhiteHorseWings]

That will be awkward when we beat Duquesne

Giddeyup!