OT- Any perfect brackets out there?

Submitted by MGoPietrowski on
Sitting here at the brewery, grading everyone's brackets, and on a basic 1-2-4-8-16-32 point scale, the highest I've seen is 47.

The top half of the West bracket garnered everyone about 1 point.

Do any of you guys honestly have a bracket that can reasonably be described as "in good shape"?

taistreetsmyhero

March 26th, 2013 at 4:31 PM ^

right now I'm in the 97th percentile on ESPN. But my predicted Wisconsin/Pitt matchup isn't happening, and Georgetown to Final Four didn't work out. So at best I can get 6/8 elite eight and 3/4 final four.

DealerCamel

March 26th, 2013 at 4:33 PM ^

Last year I caved to peer pressure and created a bracket, but just to be contrary I had us going out in the first round.

Needless to say, I have not blasphemied since.

Password is Taco

March 26th, 2013 at 4:34 PM ^

I think anyone with even so little as an intact final four should be proud of themselves. I'm first in my pool and had Georgetown in the Final 4.



As an aside, anyone else hate the 1-2-4-8-16-32 scoring system? The last two rounds completely negate the first 4. There's no point in picking the 12-5 or 10-7 upsets in the long run. Those games just don't matter. My pool switched to the Fibonacci option on Yahoo this year and I like it so far. It's 2-3-5-8-13-21.

MGoDC

March 26th, 2013 at 4:37 PM ^

My final four is intact! That's why you always pick Michigan!! No way am I going to do well though, my final four is Duke, OSU, Michigan, Indiana with Michigan over OSU in the title game. I just picked a scenario that would make me laugh. Sparty left ouf of the Final 4 -- dong punched by Duke. Then Duke dong punched by OSU and Crean dong punched by Michigan so our coaching staff can laugh at him. Finally Michigan dong punching Craft in the championship game. Everybody is gettin their dong punched except us in my bracket!

joeyb

March 26th, 2013 at 5:52 PM ^

Each round is worth the same amount, so the last two rounds might negate the first two rounds, but not all 4.

I don't mind the traditional scoring system. I basically means you have to at least pick the champion or the two teams in the game correctly to be in contention and between all the teams in contention, the first two rounds act as a tie-breaker essentially.

My work bracket decided to do upset scoring (without mentioning it beforehand), so each pick is worth the traditional round points plus whatever seed the team was, e.g. picking FGCU over Georgetown got you 16 points. It's kind of a cool idea, but it definitely favors picking a lot of upsets in the first round. For example, if I had picked all of the 15 seeds to win, I would have earned 16 points total as opposed to the 12 potential points if all of the 2 seeds had won. You just have to be careful not to pick upsets over teams that will probably advance.

gbdub

March 26th, 2013 at 5:59 PM ^

The Fibonacci option is interesting, but the traditional option works fairly well when there are some clear favorites for the final 4 - then, either chalk makes it to the FF and the early rounds matter a lot, or chalk gets upset in the middle rounds and people who pick that are justifiably rewarded.



The problem with the Fibonacci version, to me, it that it overvalues the first round, which is where random stuff like the crazy guy down the hall that let's his kids pick all the bird mascots can do really well.



If you want to value good basketball knowledge and judgement, the late rounds do need to weight highly.



That said, I like chaos and don't usually play money pools, so go Fibonacci!

M-Wolverine

March 26th, 2013 at 7:31 PM ^

I got with the 1-2-4-6-8-10 system. I don't think picking Louisville or Indiana is really 32x harder than getting the 7-10 game. You have to be right 6 times, but you get rewarded for every game they win along the way. To me getting 50 games right or such is harder than picking Kentucky last year.

Muttley

March 27th, 2013 at 3:11 AM ^

On most sites, you can set the scoring manually, but then you'd have to explain the reasoning.

I'm guessing the Fibonacci option would make the variation of scores in each round about the same.  Maybe you want it to grow a little by round.  But, yeah, I don't like pools in which the winner is COMPLETELY determined by who got the national champion right, then by who got the most in the semis, then who got the most in the elite 8, etc...  The early rounds in that format become merely a tie-breaker.

MGoDC

March 26th, 2013 at 4:34 PM ^

If there was a perfect bracket we would've heard about it by now. First ever 15 seed to go to the Sweet 16, Zaga out early (although i had them losing to Pitt instead....[half credit?]). Harvard won too for the first time in over 50 years. A bunch of 11 and 12 seeds won and not the trendy one (Belmont). I sincerely doubt anybody is close to perfect.

Password is Taco

March 26th, 2013 at 4:36 PM ^

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/199944771.html



At least on ESPN. 8.15 million, no perfect ones.



"After three rounds of the tournament, no one entered a perfect bracket. Five brackets picked 30 of the 32 games correctly in the round of 64. Four brackets missed just one Sweet Sixteen team.

Some data on the choices:

- Just 20% of the brackets picked Ole Miss to beat Wisconsin. The Badgers were picked to advance to the round of 32 in 80% of brackets and to the Sweet Sixteen in 54.7%.

-  Just 1% of the brackets picked Florida Gulf Coast to advance to the Sweet Sixteen, and only 1.3% of the brackets picked La Salle to advance past the third round.

- The West Regional proved the most damaging to bracketeers. Only 966 brackets correctly picked Ohio State, Arizona, Wichita State and La Salle.

- The East Regional was the easiest to pick with 35.5% of brackets accurately picking Indiana, Syracuse, Marquette and Miami.

- Only 2.3% of brackets picked FGCU to beat Georgetown.

- A hefty 5.6% of brackets picked Harvard to beat New Mexico."

jtmc33

March 26th, 2013 at 4:38 PM ^

My 6 year old daughter is the only family member still "in the hunt."   She finishes first of 240 entries if UM beats Duke.   All other games are irrelevent.

I let her pick her own bracket.   I pick the low seeds in the first round but she picks the rest.... based on team mascots.  She knows who the Wolverines are ... last year she was on a "Bears" kick and lost out when Baylor got the boot early.

Muttley

March 26th, 2013 at 4:40 PM ^

two are tied w/ the highest score at 560 (out of 640 possible)

http://games.espn.go.com/tournament-challenge-bracket/en/frontpage

In the MGoBlog Community pool on ESPN, I'm tied w/ many for 39th place out of 597 non-blank entries (three_honks 2) at 450 points or in the overall 94.4th percentile of ESPN entries.

http://games.espn.go.com/tournament-challenge-bracket/en/group?groupID=…

The leading MGoBlogCommunity entry, WEON til WEOFF, is at 510 points, or in the (to one decimal place) 100.0th percentile.

Buzz Your Girlfriend

March 26th, 2013 at 4:40 PM ^

First I've heard of the 1-2-4-8-16-32 point scale, that's a bit ridiculous. I've always played with a 1-2-3-4-5-6 point scale.

My bracket is in good shape. I still have 7 out 8 elite 8 teams alive (ARRRGHHGHG Pittsburgh) and all 4 of my Final 4.

Muttley

March 26th, 2013 at 4:57 PM ^

While each round in the 1-2-4-8-16-32 format has the same number of points, the dispersion or variation of scores in each round grows so as to make the earlier rounds mere tie breakers.  If someone picks the national champion, they almost surely will not be beaten by someone who doesn't.  And that seems like a reasonable preference if that's what you want, i.e., to win you must do better than the other participants at the end of the pool.

The 1-2-3-4-5-6 format, on the other hand, will actually place more importance on the first round than on the final.  From my eyeball regressors, I've noticed a typical range of say, 20-28 correct in the first round.  The range of the first round (~8) is greater than the range of the finals 6 (from 0 or 6).

I prefer something in-between, where the range/variation grows by round, but not so much that it is COMPLETELY dominated by the end.

I think the Fibonacci format 1-2-3-5-8-13 gives about that characteristic.

Butterfield

March 26th, 2013 at 4:49 PM ^

8/8 of elite 8 still left, along with nailing the LaSalle/Wichita State matchup (with WSU heading to the Elite 8).  But still far from a perfect bracket, fortunately the misses I had were teams I only expected to win one or two games tops. 

M_Jason_M

March 26th, 2013 at 4:57 PM ^

The top half of my bracket is great. I only missed on Mizzou/Colorado St and I had Georgetown losing in the sweet 16. The bottom half...not so much.

LSAClassOf2000

March 26th, 2013 at 4:58 PM ^

Being in four pools, I can report that in one pool am alive and well with 14 of the 16 in the Sweet Sixteen and an Elite Eight that is still intact for now (as well as my Final Four selections there). In the MGoBlog challenge, on the other hand, my "other formula" (which I plan to abandon soon) has only 5 of my 8 Elite Eight picks alive and 3 in the Final Four, good for the 42nd percentile or thereabouts, which for a terrible bracket is actually quite good this year, it seems. The remaining brackets I have out there are in varied degrees of disarray in between those two extremes. 

APBlue

March 26th, 2013 at 5:02 PM ^

My bracket is perfectly toasted.  My wife's bracket is kicking my ass.  This is very unfortunate.  

The funny thing is that I conservatively estimate that I am an above average college basketball fan.  WTF?

 

ILMichFan70

March 26th, 2013 at 5:03 PM ^

It amazes me how many times I hear people saying that their wife's bracket is doing better than their own. In all of those cases their wife isn't even a fan of college basketball.  They just have some crazy way of picking the winners. It never really makes sense but I guess in regards to the tournament anything can really happen.

ILMichFan70

March 26th, 2013 at 5:00 PM ^

I have 12 of 16 remaining in the Sweet Sixteen, 6 of 8 remaining in the Elite 8 and 4 of 4 for the Final Four. My two killers were Wisconsin and Georgetown, otherwise I'm not too bad for now.

WolverineHistorian

March 26th, 2013 at 5:19 PM ^

All four of my final four picks are still alive.  But my bracket looks, as it does every year, like a trainwreck.  I'm 29 out of 48.  That ranks me tied for 393rd place in the yahoo "Bracket Busters" group. 

ixcuincle

March 26th, 2013 at 5:22 PM ^

I was watching the news and they said you have a better chance of winning a Powerball lottery or dating a super-model than getting a perfect bracket.