Thursday, March 17, 2011

NCAA and the March Madness (Day 1 Round 1)

So I decided to have some fun and make 4 brackets this year. The parameters for each were as follows:

Guessing : I am certain this is all guessing, but without reading anything (nation rankings, stats, etc) I picked a bracket. Feelings about schools were the main predictor here.

Educated Guessing : I looked through stats, rankings, games W/L against same opponents and so forth.

Seed : Highest seed wins, simple enough then final 4 broken by coin flips.

Randomness : I created a random number generator to decide my bracket.

 

I am fairly sure that my Educated Guessing bracket will win out followed closely by Seed. My reasoning is that it will keep an upset 14th type seed from making it past the first round where as my Randomness bracket can allow for a 15th seed to win the entire tournament. Before I even look at how they have done today I am going to predict that the go (1) Educated Guessing (2) Seed (3) Guessing (4) Randomness.

 

And now how have they faired through the end of Day One of Round 1. (Winners are underlined).

Game Educated Guessing Seeded Guessing Randomness
Clemson(12) v. WV(5) West V West V West V West V
Old Dominion(9) v. Butler (8) Old Dominion Butler Old Dominion Butler
Morehead St.(13) v.
Louisville(4)
Louisville Louisville Louisville Morehead St.
Penn St(10) v. Temple(7) Penn St. Temple Penn St. Penn St.
Princeton(13) v. Kentucky(4) Kentucky Kentucky Kentucky Kentucky
UNC Asheville(16) v. Pittsburgh(1) Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Pittsburgh
Richmond(12) v. Vanderbilt(5) Vanderbilt Vanderbilt Vanderbilt Richmond
Northern Colo.(15) v. SDSU(2) SDSU SDSU SDSU SDSU
UCSB(15) v. Florida(2) Florida Florida Florida UCSB (ouch!)
Wofford(14) v. BYU(3) BYU BYU BYU BYU
Bucknell(14) v. UCONN(3) UCONN UCONN UCONN UCONN
Belmont(13) v. Wisco(4) Wisco Wisco Wisco Belmont
Michigan St.(10) v. UCLA(7) UCLA UCLA M St. M St.
Gonzaga(11) v. St. John's(6) St. John's St. John's St. John's St. Johns
Missouri(11) v. Cinci(6) Cinci Cinci Cinci Cinci
Utah St.(12) v. Kansas St.(5) Utah St. K St. K St. K St.
Totals 9/16 (56%) 13/16 (81%) 10/16 (62%) 11/16 (68%)

 

After 8 games I was 7 for 8 with my Random bracket, but in the end, simply picking the favorites for the first 16 games gives you a 81.25% win rate, so that is awesome. Unfortunately the Louisville and Vanderbilt losses set me back in the 2nd round. In the long run I am pretty sure that my guesses for over all placement should hold out between the brackets. Till tomorrow.

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