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.