Final 2013 Field of 68 Prediction

Once again in alphabetical order. After going through a mock selection committee process last night (results can be seen here) I didn’t want to put all that thought into seeding these. I just wanted to see how many of the 68 I could get right.

Here it is:

Field of 68 Prediction (Two Days Out)

This is prediction #3 for the field of 68. This time around I’ve included seedings. Schools with asterisks are play-in games and the ones in bold have already gotten an auto-bid into the tournament. I’ll put up one more prediction on Sunday before the teams are actually announced. 

Field of 68 Prediction (One Week Out)

We are actually less than a week out, but I figured I would go ahead and keep a similar title to my last post. There isn’t much to say that I didn’t say last time, only that there are some teams that have already earned a spot in the tournament by winning their own conference’s tourney. Those schools will be in bold to make things easy.

I am again going to simply list them in alphabetical order. I strongly considered listing them with their seeding this time, but that would have involved figuring out which schools would be in the four play-in games, which didn’t sound very appealing. Either way, I will again be providing my “last four in” at the bottom.

Check out the list of 68 after the jump.

Field of 68 Prediction (Two Weeks Out)

Well, it’s been about nine months since I’ve posted anything on this lovely blog, though I have engaged in some discussion via the comments section of one of my old posts since then. Either way, with Selection Sunday just under two weeks away, I thought I would go ahead and put up my initial prediction for the Field of 68.

I try to do at least one of these every year, even if it’s a last-minute one that I put up within an hour or so before the Selection Committee actually announces the teams. This year, however, I’m going to try to put up three or four in these two weeks leading up to Selection Sunday. The first one is obviously this one, the last one will be right before they’re actually announced, and then there will hopefully be one or two others somewhere in between, and I will of course be revisiting my predictions after the field is actually announced to see how I did.

For this first prediction, I’m going to list them in alphabetical order. Next week I might start actually seeding them, but at the very least I will provide seeding predictions with my last one.

Check out the list after the jump:

The Route to The Championship Game

This is part two of three in my look at the road teams have had to travel to get to the final weekend of college basketball. A few days ago I looked at the Road to the Final Four, and examined what each of the Final Four teams (including this year) from this millennium had to do to get to the Final Four.

Simon says, "indicate the coach that will win the Championship."

This post, however, is to examine what teams actually had to do to make it to the Championship Game. I took it one step further this time though because instead of looking at just the teams from this millennium, I’ve taken the data from every team to every make it to the Championship Game since they expanded the field to 64 teams in 1985.

Road to the Final Four

A few weeks ago I started wondering about what teams/schools have had the easiest route to the final four. As soon as the bracket is announced every year people start talking about which top seeds have the “easiest” bracket and who will have the best chance of making it to the Final Four.

Whenever these conversations take place, I immediately think “doesn’t it have more to do with which region has the most upsets, rather than what the other top seeds are in the region?”

For example, this year you would have likely looked at Xavier (a 10-seed) and thought they wouldn’t even survive the first weekend, because even if they managed to upset 7-seed Notre Dame, they would then have to face 2-seed Duke in their second game. Well, Duke got upset by 15-seed Lehigh, and next thing you know Xavier is a favorite in their second game and went on to make it to the Sweet 16.

Baylor didn’t even have to play a single-digit seed until they lost to Kentucky in the Elite Eight. They played 14-seed South Dakota State in the round of 64, 11-seed Colorado in the round of 32, and then 10-seed Xavier in the Sweet 16.

The amazing thing is that I came up with those two examples by only looking at one half of one region in one year’s bracket. Imagine what we could find if we looked at all four regions from every tournament from this millennium.

That’s exactly what I did. Check it out after the jump.

Reviewing My Field of 68 Prediction

Alright, I’m an idiot because I forgot that the Great West tourney winner doesn’t get an automatic bid, but other than that I did pretty well with these predictions, missing only three. I got three of the four #1 seeds right, with North Carolina taking one of them instead of Missouri.

After the jump I’ve listed my prediction again, with the teams I got correct in green and the teams that I was wrong about in red and a strikethrough with the actual team next to it in black.

My Predicted Field of 68 for 2012

The Big Ten Tournament just ended with an close win by Michigan State over Ohio State and the selection show for this year’s NCAA tourney starts in about half an hour, so I’m putting up my predicted field of 68 just for kicks. I did this in 2009 and 2010 and only missed two or three (I believe) both years, so let’s see if I can find similar success this time around.

I’m simply listing my predicted 68 teams in alphabetical order because I don’t have time to predict the seedings right now.

Either way, the list is after the jump.

Shaka Smart

All of you know that it has been a long time since either Bryan or I posted anything, but this couldn’t go unposted. I can’t say that this is necessarily and indicator that Bryan and I will be blogging regularly again, but this site started because we wanted somewhere to write down our thoughts on different things in the sports world, so that’s what I’m using it for now. If you couldn’t tell by the title, this post is about the Virginia Commonwealth men’s basketball coach, Shaka Smart.

Growing Hate – Living in SEC Country

For those of you that don’t know I moved to Knoxville just over a year-and-a-half ago. I made this move because I’m a Tennessee Vols fan. I grew up watching Tennessee football, and have bled Orange since the day I was born in January of 1988. Growing up I quickly developed a deep-seeded hatred for the florida gators. I got mad, and expressed dislike toward other teams when we faced them, but it was nothing compared to the blood-boiling levels of hatred I embodied and held in reserve just for florida.

It didn’t matter if we won or if we lost, if it was close or if it was a blowout, no matter what I despised everything about the university of florida and the town of gainesville. I always recognized that from a historical perspective Tennessee was a bigger rival with Alabama, but I just couldn’t get myself to churn up that same, raw dislike that’s there for florida.

In my lifetime Tennessee and Alabama have never been good at the same time. Since 1995 there have only been five game between the two schools that were decided by a touchdown or less, and we won three of those. In that same time period the biggest win we’ve had over florida was by 14 points in 2003, and the second biggest win was by just three points in 1998.