2010 NCAA Tourney

Here are my selections for the 2010 NCAA Tourney.  I've also compared them to Joe Lunardi's picks at ESPN and Jerry Palm at CBS Sports.

All of us agree on 63 of the selections.  Let's see how the field turns out.  I'm off to play golf, and I'll be back later in the day with another post to see what happens.

Enjoy!

2009 NCAA Tourney

Ok, so the selection committee has announced the field of 65 for the 2009 NCAA tourney. Earlier this morning, I decided to become a bracketologist, and do my own projections for the field of 65. You can see my projections here.

So, how did I do?

I accurately predicted 64 out of the 65 teams in the field. To be quite honest, it wasn't that difficult a task. First, 31 of the teams receive automatic bids - the winners of their respective conference championships, and the Ivy League regular season winner. So, in essence, I'm only predicting the 34 at-large invitations.

Most of the at-large invitations are fairly easy - teams like North Carolina, Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Oklahoma, or Kansas. Where it gets really difficult is deciding between a team that finishes in the middle of the pack in one of the power conferences, such as the ACC or Big Ten, versus perhaps a team that either finished first or second in the regular season in a smaller conference such as the WCC or the Missouri Valley. This where all the pundits spend their time justifying Team A or Team B.

For me, it came down to about 8-10 teams to slot into about 4 spots. I generally went with the following criteria (not necessarily in order):

Must have a 0.500 or better record in conference

RPI (as best I could get it from Yahoo! Sports)

Strength of Schedule

Who really knows what criteria the selection committee applies? We're not there - all we see are the final selections.

Using my criteria, I projected San Diego St in (4th in the Mountain West, and runner-up in their tournament). Also, because of my self-imposed rule of having a 0.500 or better record in conference, Maryland wasn't even a consideration (see my bubble list). Clearly, the selection committee didn't use that as part of their selection logic.

So there you have it, I now consider myself a bracketologist - I can rival any expert out there.

NCAA Field of 65

March Madness is here.  And all I've been hearing on ESPN is bracketology, the art and science of picking the field of 65 for the NCAA tournament.  All the experts are opining as to which teams are "in" and which ones are "out".  Joe Lunardi is supposedly the resident ESPN expert - the official bracketologist.  So, I decided this morning that I was going to give this a shot - I mean how difficult can this be?  So here it is - my projected list of the field of 65.

The first exhibit is the projected field with their seedings.

The second exhibit was my thought process, in terms of getting to the field.  Who I thought was on the bubble, and who was last in, and first out, etc....

Enjoy!

I'll have a follow-up as soon as the official field is announced at 6pm ET so I can see how well I did.