Amateur bracketologists page.
Mistersuits posted a bracket projection a couple of days ago and I thought it might be good to have a single thread where people could post their contributions to the genre.
Mine is more or less the current Massey rankings turned (I hope) into a rule-conforming bracket. I'm mostly posting it because I'm amazed at how many interesting matchups I got without moving anyone off their natural seed and with minimal movement within the seed lines off the desired s-curve:
- possible 2nd round Harvard/Michigan (needs no explanation)
- UCLA/St. John's (Lavin)
- Dayton/Xavier (byobracket doesn't allow movement of the play-in games from the default regions, as far as I can tell, but I would put this in the east under Villanova so the winner would be in the Cincinnati/Toledo/Pitt pod)
- Louisville/Eastern Kentucky
- Creighton/Nebraska share a pod
- And lots of former conference rivals separated in this year's restructuring meeting early: Louisville/Syracuse, Villanova/Cincinnati/Pittsburgh.
http://byobracket.com/seeding/u/yeoman
Last I heard, the NCAA hadn't decided what they would do if Dayton were one of the last four at-large teams. My guess is that they'd slide them up and out of the play-in game instead of giving them home court (and wouldn't tell us that's what they'd done), but I'm not giving up Xavier at Dayton without a fight. If you live around here, you understand.
Anybody else have one?
please no harvard game
Nik Stauskas says bring it on.
Game vs Harvard would be Fantastic in my opinion. Would be fun to watch I think.
style and level of play was just plain hard to watch. I agree that we'd wipe Harvard out in the first half.
MSU and wisconsin lose!!! Perfect end to a perfect season
Anybody want to venture a guess what the loss to Nebraska will do to Wisconsin? They were a 2 seed before, how about now?
I wouldn't be surprised to see both UM and Wiscy get a 2-seed with them getting the better draw. Objectively they have a better overall record, have beaten the #1 team/SEC Champ, AND the ACC Champion, and split with us head-to-head.
Michigan and Wisconsin's profiles are so similar right now that it's hard to say which should be seeded higher. Thankfully the BTT should sort that out. I give it to Michigan right now based on the superior conference record against a harder schedule, more top 50 wins, and the fact that Michigan was dealing with injuries to both Stauskas and GRIII in the Charlotte game, which somewhat mitigates our worst loss.
gives them less room for margin in the conference tournament. Loss in their first game would probably bump them down to a 3 seed. Don't know that they have a shot at a 1 seed anymore either.
The lossed are falling into place, nicely. MUHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Think about this for a second:
WE COULD HAVE LOST 3 MORE BIG TEN GAMES AND STILL SHARED THE BIG TEN TITLE.
Go Blue!!!!
You mean I could have done chores instead of watching the last two weeks of Michigan games? Now you tell me.
Depending who they were to. If we had lost to MSU, then no, we'd only be able to lose two, not three.
Show me the two seed baby
I would be shocked if Lousville got a 2. They're a 4 at Bracket Matrix now, and they really don't have a resume worthy of a 2.
They have 2 wins over UConn and SMU, a win over Cinci, but that's it. They beat no one in their non-conference schedule, so with UConn and SMU probably falling out of the top 25 with their loses, that makes only one win over a current top-25 team all year for Louisville.
I think they're a good team, but their resume is in no way that of a 2. Even if they win the AAC tournament, they'd need major help to get a 2.
Hey, we beat Nebraska.
I don't know if MSU falls out. Plus, OSU might jump in as well. So it could potentially only be Wisconsin, but it could also be Wisconsin, MSU and OSU, for a total of 4 wins.
Note that I was using Massey to get my seeds. (They were also the last of the twos, which you can't tell from my grid.)
The computers love Louisville, which to me means there's at least some argument that they have a deserving resume. They're #8 at Massey (#5 in Power, which is a better predictor); they're #2 at Sagarin (and also #2 in Predictor); they're #2 at kenpom.
They're lower at Massey because that's the system that most heavily downgrades blowouts. As far as he's concerned, once you've won by enough that you've established clear dominance it doesn't matter any more. But Louisville absolutely slaughtered a couple of likely tournament teams--by 33 over UConn yesterday, by 31 over Southern Miss. They're SMU's only home loss (and it was by double digits), they're Cincinnati's only home loss.\
And unlike most of the schools they're lined up against on those seeds, they have no bad losses. @ Kentucky (33 at Massey) is the worst. Schools ahead of them on the matrix with worse losses:
- Michigan St. 3 (Georgetown, Nebraska, Illinois)
- Cincinnati 2 (Xavier, SMU)
- San Diego St. 1 (Wyoming)
- Iowa St. 2 (West Va., K-State)
- Creighton 5 (everyone they lost to)
- Duke 3 (Notre Dame, Clemson, Wake)
- Syracuse (B.C., Ga Tech)
- Michigan 2 (Charlotte, Indiana)
- Virginia 2 (Green Bay, Tennessee)
- Wisconsin 3 (Indiana, Minnesota, NW)
- Kansas 4 (Colorado, OK St, K-State, W VA)
- Arizona 2 (Cal, Arizona St.)
That's everyone but Wichita, Florida and Villanova.
I tend to agree with TeamRankings when it comes to Louisville, as they have them as sitting perhaps on the 3/4 line right now. The current 3 and 4 seed alignment on their site is as follows:
#3 - Virginia, Creighton, Duke, Louisville
#4 - North Carolina, Iowa State, Michigan State, San Diego State
Question: I made a diary on the BTN's Committee selection process. However, one question remained unanswered, for me, one I've been wondering since the Tournament "expanded" to 68. How exactly are the play-in games determined and how do they determine which seeds are forced to do said games? Further, why are some of the automatic qualifying 16-seeds forced to play the extra game and others not, and the same with the 11/12-seed-to-be, they've picked in the past/will pick this year?
...the last four at-large teams play play-in games, the weakest four AQs play play-in games.
The justification was that (1) the committee recognizes that those last few at-large selections are a bit of a coin flip--this lets the coin flip get decided on the court instead of the committee room, and (2) it gives the perennial 16-seeds, like whoever wins the SWAC, a chance to win a game in the tournament every once in a while.
Cool, thanks. I suppose that's how I had it in my head. Good point on the lower seeds "being able to get a win". I know most of us fans don't really consider those first 4 games meaningful or a part of the true Tournament, but they really are NCAA Tournament Wins. I've always looked at it as being unfair they have to play the play-in game, even though they were an automatic qualifier and other at-large teams were given a pass straight into the Dance, but they're technically racking up Tournament wins by doing so.
though I've never heard them admit it: knocking two of the 16-seeds out in a preliminary round reduces by two the number of ridiculous blowouts we have to watch on Thursday and Friday. If you can't beat Florida A&M you probably weren't going to give Villanova or Arizona much of a game.
March 10th, 2014 at 12:07 AM ^
March 10th, 2014 at 12:22 AM ^
Michigan wins.
Everything.
with Arizona as #1. It didn't show #3, but you know the selection commitee will put us opposite San Diego State.
They'll definitely be out west if they are a 1-4 seed, because there aren't any other western teams to take that spot, but they might need to win their conference tournament just to lock up a 4 seed, and that's definitely not a sure thing.
March 10th, 2014 at 11:28 AM ^
As long we are in the midwest or east I don't think it really matters seed wise. Millwaukee and Buffalo are the same distance from ann arbor, neither villanova or wichita state is all that scary, especially compared against zona and florida and I think michigan fans have just a good a chance of taking over msg as they do indy. I'd prefer the east because i live in nyc but I'm cool with either one. Would much rather be a 3 in either of those places than a 2 in the south or west.
I would very much like to see Michigan get the 2 seed in Witchita State's midwest (Indianapolis). For this to happen, Michigan will need a good showing in the big ten tournament and finish ahead of Wisconsin and Kansas on the S curve. The wo other teams that seem to be competing for the 2 seed in the midwest. Obviously to make the bracket work some exceptions need to be made, but these seem to be the three teams vying for indianapolis' 2 seed.