Joe Lunardi Releases His Way-Too Early Bracketology
Lunardi released his way-too-early-its-almost-insane Bracketology for next year. He currently has us a 1 seed. The basis for this is he probably thinks that Nik is gone and Mitch/GR3 return. Other B1G teams: Wisky-1 seed, MSU-5 seed, Nebrasketball, Ohio, and Iowa are all 6 seeds, and Minnesota is an 8 seed.
The most important thing for Michigan next year is not seeding but the region they are in. If they are in the Midwest a path to a NC could go Columbus/Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Indy. Basically homecourt throughout the tournament. Plus it would be nice to tear up Ohio on the way to a title
Link: http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/bracketology
Be careful what you wish for.
Way to be with the times.
Is it basketball season yeat?
Is it curling season yet?
There are still 143 days until august 30th. :(
His work is basically "Take approximate rankings and conference leaders, put into bracket in almost exact order they are ranked". And he's not even good at it either. Must be nice to work like 40 hours a year.
Literally any of us could do his job.
claims $2.2 million. And I really hope that answer is as wrong as I think it is.
Bracketologists are like assholes....because, they're all assholes. Wait, I think I got that wrong. Lunardi - you're an overpaid hack. Just like my asshole. Wait. Ok, I'm done. Sorry guys.
Lunardi has the best job in the world.
You only work about 2 months of the year and nobody cares about your work until the last 3 weeks. And you don't even have to be right.
SMH.
Joe Lunardi has a full time job. He is a honcho in St. Joe's Marketing department and also works as an announcer for their basketball games. They were a client several years ago; met him a couple of times in meetings. </Cool story bro>
Sign me up, even with that "overtime".
Then, hopefully
Agreed.
Way too early.
You'd think Indy would've been home court for Michigan in the regionals this time around, but Kentucky fans DOMINATED that stadium. Easily a 3:1 ratio of UK:UM fans.
Anyway, how do they select the locations? It's been a while since they've been in Chicago (where I now live). It looks like they prefer domed NFL stadiums; United Center only holds about 20k, so they'd probably only do the opening rounds there.
Well Lexington is about an hour closer to Indianapolis.
Plus the UK Bball fanbase >>> UM Bball fanbase (in terms of size anyways)
But I was reacting to the previous post. My point is that just because the Final Four is in Indy next year does not mean an automatic home court advantage, should Michigan make it.
Michigan will have a ton of incentive to get a high seed next season. The Midwest Regional is in Cleveland and one of the second/third round games location is in Columbus
I bet he releases another one after taking a poop this evening.
nah, he's a morning pooper.
I won't lie about this - from this moment forward now, whenever we talk about Joe Lunardi releasing another bracket, this post is going to come to mind and I will probably chuckle about it for a bit. Indeed, a stomach virus may now be known as an "upset bracket" now.
ESPN only goes back as far as November, but he did have us in Milwaukee as a 3-seed even though we ended up a 2-seed, so it was fairly close. It would be interesting to take a conference like the Big Ten and compare his earliest available picks versus how teams entered the tournament.
Lunardi still is counting Maryland as ACC I guess, or else we'd have 8 teams and the ACC would have 7.
And since they should be B1G, unless we only played Maryland once during the regular season we wouldn't be able to play them in the round of 32. Even if we did only play them once, I'm sure the committee would prefer not to have us potentially meet in the round of 32.
With man this is impossible, but with Beilein all things are possible.
Next year it should come down to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio.
They will be tough with Craft being in his 7th year and all.
next year he'll be perfecting his airball follow through form in the slovakian minor leagues.
tickets to Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games at the Carrier Dome for next year.
My track record suggests Michigan will NOT be playing in the East.
I don't really know why everyone is so down on Ohio about next year... Obviously they need to find a scorer, but they have plenty of options including a loaded recruiting class and incoming grad-transfer Anthony Lee. Along with that, an extra offseason should be beneficial to the already young group they had.
IMO, they'll be a three seed, but damn, I would sure love another season like this past one for them.
1 UM vs. 8 Maryland in the second round?
Either Lunardi doesn't realize Maryland is in the B1G next year, or, he is predicting that the selection committee will change its long existing rule to make sure conference foes don't face each other until the Sweet 16 at the earliest.
The new rules allow teams that only play once in conference to meet as early as the second (third) round. Is Maryland a single play this year? I can't recall.
is a single play, on the road.
It looks like I owe Mr. Lunardi an apology.
Anyone have his number?
$2.2 million according to the above.
The NCAA rule is that If teams only have played once previously, they can be bracketed to meet as early as the “third round” (i.e. Round of 32). I belive that Michigan only plays Maryland once (away) next year.
is an idiot, or the tournament rules will change? Occam's razor, anyone?
Color me impressed that UM has gotten to the point in the past 5 years that I'm no longer shocked when pre-season rankings point to them as one of the top teams in the country and I'm not surprised.
that only Stauskas is leaving or maybe even that Stauskas is coming back (but I would think that we would be #1 then).
April 10th, 2014 at 11:45 AM ^
Michigan playing in Pittsburgh next year would be great, as I live in Pittsburgh. I already plan on going to the first/second round regardless - so Michigan being there would be icing on the cake. Those games will be sold out - Pittsburgh has a good track record of hosting the NCAA tourney.
Agree with an earlier post - the committee can't have us going to Columbus - that would be brutal. Even Cleveland in the regional finals is not great, in my opinion. I hope Cleveland only being 2 hours from AA would drown out the home town osu crowd.