Miscellaneous

The Madness

By Chris Stevenson

March Madness is upon us.  I have really come to enjoy the bracket contests over the last few years.  I've got mine about 90% filled out.  Here are my takes:

General

One thing I've heard repeatedly that I've taken to heart and applied to my bracket is that this year's field is top-heavy.  So, the parity that has made Bracket Einsteins nervous is muted this year.  There appears to be more separation between the higher and lower seeds.  Put another way, it means that higher seeds are more likely to prevail over lower seeds than in years past.

The Tough Ones

I always really struggle with about 5 or 6 matchups every year.  This year they were:

1. St. Joseph's v. Oklahoma
2. Miss. St. v. Oregon
3. Davidson v. Georgetown
4. Miami v. St. Mary's
5. Memphis v. Texas
6. Western Ky. v. Drake
7. Duke v. Xavier

To a lesser extent, Butler v. South Alabama

My Horses

Everybody has teams that they've picked to go far that go against the grain.  Mine are:  Davidson, Clemson and of course, Texas.

The Numbers

You can really make your head swim with all of the information that is available.  In the interest of time, I usually focus on a few key areas.  I usually look at the schedule and results.  Most bracket contest sites will publish the teams' records against top-25 teams, but that's not quite accurate enough for me.  Wins over no.'s 17, 21 and 25 are not as impressive as wins over 4, 8, 15.  I used to pay attention to streaks - if a team was hot coming in to the tournament.  But not anymore.  For one thing, all of the teams most recent twelve games or so are all against conference opponents, for the most part.  If a team is from a weak conference then they probably haven't played anybodyin those most recent twelve games.  So that  winning streak isn't as impressive as it seems.  I also look at the matchups of the strengths of each team.  Usually, a team will either be a good backcourt or good frontcourt team; rarely both.  If a team whose main offensive weapon, say 3-pointers, is matching up against a team whose defensive strength counters the offensive weapon, I'm going with the defensive team on the theory that it's more difficult and unlikely that a team will find new ways to score or run their offense.  I usually disfavor teams where their big men are the scoring leaders (Georgetown, UCLA).  I almost always go with the blue-blood programs to go to the Final Four.  So I never take the George Masons, Marquettes, etc. to make it that far. 

Full post as published by Cursed With Ambition on March 18, 2008 (boomark / email).