f13.net

See what happens when you're an Indiana fan (http://syracusefan.com/threads/so-up-in-section-317-tonight.62987/)? 


(http://i41.tinypic.com/3vjnm.jpg)

Tats ahoy.

Maybe we've found the future ex-Mrs. Paelos?   :why_so_serious:

The guy in front of her is asking his friend, "Hey man, is that bitch in her underwear?"

Shocking that you are single.

The fact people are ignoring it is the funny part.

Wow.  North Carolina took down a very good Michigan State team.  UNC is going to be very dangerous at tournament time, IMO.

Also, Roy has won the last 7 meetings against Izzo by an average of 16 points.  For someone that has a reputation as the "best in the game", you'd like to see better results than that against a Roy Williams. 

(http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/.element/img/4.0/global/swapper/201312/131205.01.gif)

NUMBER ONE, BABY!

I don't think I've seen a UofA team this long and this athletic in years. 

Aaron Gordon is really a nice addition to that team.  I think you guys will win the title.  Kentucky will be good at the end of the season, too.

Yeah, Arizona is looking like they'll go undefeated this year.  That is a damned good team.

Louisville has completely shit the bed early. They looked strong coming off last season's win, and now they are down two major players with no ability to play good transition D when it matters.

Also, the fuck Gonzaga? Losing to Portland?

So, Warren Buffet is offering...ONE BILLION DOLLARS...to anyone who correctly picks every winning team in the 2014 NCAA March Madness tourney.  The odds of winning are 1 in 4,294,967,296.

However...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMRrNY0pxfM

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/01/21/warren-buffett-offers-1-billion-for-perfect-march-madness-bracket/

Bah, started conference 5-0 and lost to USC of all teams.  :uhrr:

Imagine the stress if someone gets it all right to the finals and then has to watch that one game with a billion on the line.

You bet your ass I'll be entering that. Fuck it, I'll be filling out brackets anyway, might as well take a shot at more money than I will ever earn in my fucking lifetime.

I'd love to have the stress of a billion riding on one game.

Stress?  Buffet makes something like $24 million a day.  

It's brilliant marketing.  He will make a ton in online advertising for a something like a 4,294,967,296:1 shot.  He's also limiting entries to further pad his odds.

The guy should start a casino in Vegas.

(http://www.parade.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/a-chance.gif)

 :drill: :drill: :drill: :drill: :drill: :drill:

(http://i.imgur.com/1quIZAn.jpg)

Thank you.

Better picture:

(http://i.imgur.com/X10U8wR.jpg)

Classic Cal fan faces.  :awesome_for_real:

The ref's face is the best non-Cal face in that picture.

Brandon Ashley is done for the year.  We replace him with a very talented frosh.  Our small bench:  it's smaller now.  Thanks, jerks.

Why are we forced to listen to Dicky V's dumbass on every single matchup the national audience might remotely give a shit about in the regular season?

Can't he catch whatever Joe Buck had?

Prediction-  Florida will win the national title this year.  They look damned good and play very well as a team. 

Syracuse keeps escaping. I don't know when the clock runs out for them.

Syracuse is damned good, too, but I have little confidence for Jim Boeheim's defenses in the tournament and he doesn't have Carmelo Anthony to carry his team this year.  They could still pull it off though.  The problem for Boeheim is that it is usually teams that are the "hottest" when it comes to knocking down shots, particularly 3 pointers, that burn through the early stages of the tourney and also burn through zones, both of which are bad for Cuse.

Revenge!

(http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b360/gidneyncloyd/REVENGE-WANDA3.gif)

What are we revenging?

The Cal win over Arizona earlier this season. Still one more win against Arizona than I expected!

I'm convinced Syracuse is a fraud for a 1 seed. I'm not as convinced Arizona is a fraud, but I have serious doubts about their team. The Pac-12 will get a ton of bids to the tournament according to Jerry Palm, but I can't for the life of me understand why. They have one ranked team. They are 3-6 against the ACC, 3-3 against the Big 12, 5-2 against the Big 10, and 4-1 against the SEC. They are certainly a better conference top to bottom than the SEC or the Big 12 right now, but the Big 12 and SEC both have better top end ranked teams.

So when I look at Arizona's ranked wins I see Duke. And that's it, with two bad losses. I see a Florida team with 3 ranked wins, and 2 ranked losses. Then there's Witchita State who nobody can really put a bell on except for the fact they win. I guess if I'm sorting brackets, I want to be in Arizona or Syracuse's bracket. Not Florida or Witchita State.

Arizona has also beaten ranked San Diego State and Michigan on the road.  Again, these are facts and they happened, so I assume you will dismiss them completely.  The wins probably lacked heart, gusto, or moxie.

I just pulled up the schedule. They weren't ranked when they beat them, so those didn't show up. Those are good wins for them, so absolutely they count. If anybody out of the PAC-12 could have a shot, it's Arizona, since they are the only team to win the thing out of the PAC 12 about 15 years ago.

I honestly don't see West coast basketball (time difference) so when a PAC-12 team claims a #1, I tend to roll my eyes since the last final four team from the PAC-12 was (correct me if I'm wrong) UCLA in 2008. Since then, I haven't really taken the conference seriously, but maybe it's time.

I don't know if we can avoid a bad shooting/scoring day come the tournament.  The Brandon Ashley injury really devastated the team.  He is part of what made our defense so scary.  We were huge and athletic.  Now we either have to start a 3 guard set or go with Hollis-Jefferson, whose defense pretty much cost us the ASU game. Also, while Jefferson's offensive output is comparable to Ashley's, Ashley was somewhat of a match up nightmare due to his size, bulk, and the fact that he's one of the few people on the team that can hit a fucking free throw. 

If I had to put money on it, I'd say Florida, Duke or maybe even Kansas takes it. I do think we can beat any one of these teams given a solid defensive game and not having a sub 50% free throw night.

My money is on Florida or Louisville. My dark horse candidate this year is SMU.

Duke and Kansas are coming on strong.  This would be a perfect year for a decent Krykrewski team to win it, too, because there is no other dominant team than Florida.  If they lose Duke looks the best to me.  They're well coached and have the "it" player in Parker. 

Even more convinced this morning. They have been completely exposed over the last 2 weeks. There's no way they deserve anything better than a 2 seed at this point, and I think they are playing like a 4-5.

Probably the NIT for us after today's tourney loss.

Tournament time. Does anybody care? I'm going for a billion doll hairs.

On vacation, so I'm bowing out of my usual brackets.   

And, haha OSU.

Hope you picked Dayton.

Eat all the dicks OSU  :awesome_for_real:

Nope I'm out. Like half the world. If Dayton didn't do it, Harvard would have.

Got Harvard, missed Dayton.  Doesn't matter anyway.  Was filling out my billionbracket last night, taking my sweet time because the deadline was Thursday and hit submit at 9:59pm Pacific...  got back registration closed. :oh_i_see: 

Not a huge deal since I didn't send myself the perfect bracket from the future and had to guess this year.  I must have done that next year for the second annual billion dollar bracket promotion.

You realize how impossible the perfect bracket truly is in the first day.

Illinois is going to round 2 of the NIT. They even did it on the road because they demolished all of the entrance ramps to the Assembly Hall last week as part of the renovations. That is the only tournament results I really care about at this juncture. Heh.

The NIT... what is that for, 69th place?

More like 40-something-th. The team that wins the NIT will likely be a better team than many of the bottom-seeded automatic qualifiers.

The sar-chasm is both deep and wide.

Georgia won in the NIT as well, meaning this season won't freaking end.

And now you have to write more stipend checks.  :why_so_serious:

Dumbest crime ever. I'd like to give them credit for producing white collar crime instead of the usual assaults, but that's dumb even for fraud.

Duke.  :awesome_for_real:

I think that billion dollar bracket is gone.

I was hoping that some granny would win and admit that she picked teams based on the mascot. 

Once again, a 5 seed is death.

And a 3 seed, and a 6 seed, and 7 seed  :grin:

It's a weak year for top seeds around the country, and that was well known going into this. There's very few dominating teams this season.

#5 seeds are what, theoretically #17-#20ish ranked teams? 5-12 upsets shouldn't really surprise us that much, teams in that range have clear weaknesses usually.

(http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/dyz7hf.gif)


(http://d3j5vwomefv46c.cloudfront.net/photos/large/844809628.gif)

There's no spots at the Cracker Barrel in Macon, GA tonight.

Aww fuck yes, Kansas lost. Suck it Bill Self.

The SEC is suddenly showing up as a basketball conference.

If more than Florida makes it to the Final Four I'm going to laugh.

Good win for Arizona last night and overall a good showing for the PAC12 so far. The SportsCenter highlights for our games are hilarious.  You'd think every Arizona game just consisted of Nick Johnson and Aaron Gordon dunks.

Arizona so far has been waltzing through their draw, which is to be expected. For them and Florida, I don't see any stumbling blocks until the 8, and Florida may not have any until the Final 4.

I really dislike how the brackets were laid out this year. Too many great teams in the Midwest and East, too many weak ass pretenders in the South. Florida's bracket is going to have a 10/11 in the elite 8. That's ridiculous.

This. F'ing. Game.

Arizona won, which is good because losing that game would have knocked the Pac-12 out before the Elite 8, and I would have mocked you roundly for making me question my normal "I don't pay attention to that conference" attitude towards their basketball. 6 teams in, one team left. There's still time.  :grin:

If Arizona plays remotely like that against Wisconsin, that will be the end of the road. The Badgers are playing well right now. I fully expect Louisville to beat Kentucky, although that game could go down to the last ticks. Tennessee's luck has to run out at some point, they just aren't that good. Iowa State and UCONN will be the game nobody watches because nobody outside those schools cares. Michigan State better beat Virginia, since I don't like the ACC, and I would like to see them bust out before the 8 as well.

Yeah, depends which Kentucky team shows up.  If they decide to play defense Louisville will have their work cut out for them. 

There's one thing that makes me believe in Louisville more than Kentucky.

I know Louisville will play defense.

I'd say there's about a 70% chance U of L will win. 

This is a rivalry game.  That probably helps U of L more since most of those players have experienced the rivalry multiple times and may harbor a little more animosity to fuel their play.

Hell of a game by Kentucky.  That bracket is fucking wacked out hard. 

Yep Louisville had them and couldn't make free throws. That's a deathknell in the late rounds of a tournament game.

Oh well, Michigan State and Florida are still in my final four, along with Wisconsin. We'll see if they make it.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that either Michigan State or Kentucky are in the final eight.  They were the top two ranked teams in the pre-season, so clearly the ability was there.

I loved the "plucky underdog" joke about Kentucky that had permeated their previous games.  They have a ton of young talent, it should not be a surprise they can do this (which everyone seems to acknowledge).   That being said, I'd rather play them than Michigan.  Even though they looked shakey at the end of that Tennessee game, we barely escaped with a win last time we played, and I think we still had Brandon Ashley.   

Wisconsin is going to be tough. The Big 10 is looking really good, and a team that can shoot well always scares me against our team.  Plus, the free throw thing is going to emerge sooner or later.

Yeah, there are a lot of very high quality teams left.  I don't think I'd sleep on Dayton if I was Florida, either. 

Florida has been on cruise control, and several times have started poorly against inferior teams. If they spot Dayton a huge margin, they may not be able to climb out of it.

Florida reminds me a lot of the Spurs.  They are a spectacular team but just don't have the talent that the other teams have.  Kentucky, Arizona and Michigan State are all much more talented.  Same deal with Wisconsin.  I think it's tougher for those sorts of teams to win out.  The end of the year is when the talent really shines through.

I'm actually going to pick Michigan State to win out, with Arizona being my second pick.

I'm a little shocked but happy the Vols made the sweet 16.  Very close game vs. Michigan.  Vols have been hot down the stretch.  Maybe next year!

I figured they were going to beat Michigan.  I'm personally much happier Kentucky is playing Michigan, tbh. 

Elbows all game.  :oh_i_see:

The final 2 minutes of every game is slow. Reviews make it so much worse. I hate it.

That said, Wisconsin wins!!!!!!

That is the Big Ten in general and Wisconsin, in particular.  It was to be expected.

Aaron Gordon had a fucking amazing game for you guys and yet an awful game at the same time.  Eighteen fucking rebounds is pretty awesome, but he couldn't hit the ocean from the beach tonight.

Griping aside, we still could have won.  We didn't have a great game, but they played good D.  It still would have been nice if they ran a better play there at the end or Johnson got off a legit shot.  Not super happy with how the game was called, but they avoided slapping us with most of the stupid fouls that plagued our first few games.  Only Tarczewski and Jefferson played well offensively, but the former had a hideous defensive effort.  I do hope he comes back next year, however.  He keeps improving.

I can't imagine where Tarczewski would go.  He's not looked at as a first round draft pick, I don't think. 

You guys have Stanley Johnson coming in next year to replace Gordon (assuming he goes to the NBA) who I actually like quite a bit better.  I think you guys will be improved next year.  Miller has you rolling.

Now my team will lose every player on the roster to the draft, for what that is worth.   :oh_i_see:

Game was interesting while at the same time being terrible offensively. Both teams shot under 40%. I agree with Barkley that the officiating was a complete joke. The amount of times they flat out flew out-of-bounds calls was appalling.

That being said, I'll insert my dig at the Pac-12 here. Add on another year where nobody makes the Final Four.

Florida looks like they are going to run away with this thing if Michigan State doesn't stop them.

It will be interesting if it is an all Big Ten/SEC final four. 

I think that Florida probably doesn't want to play Kentucky again.  It is really tough to beat a team four times in a season. 

Wow.  How bout dem Wildcats?  And Michigan had a TON of fight in them too.  Great game.

Kentucky's margin of victory is about what, 4 points? 

They've had a really, really tough bracket though. 

Yep, my bracket is blown to shit.

I have Wisconsin and Kentucky in my final four.  I imagine having two is pretty decent, although a lot of people will have picked Florida and Wisconsin.  Doubt too many people except Kentucky idiots have picked them to get to the FF.  I'm currently third in my fairly large group.   :awesome_for_real:

I had Florida, Wisconsin, Louisville, and Michigan State.

Spartans let me down.

Monty retiring, presumably headed to the HOF eventually:

http://blog.sfgate.com/cal/2014/03/31/montgomery-calls-it-a-career/?cmpid=hp-hc-sports#22053101=0

HoF seems a stretch for a guy who got to one Final Four in 32 years, but he had a long career with a lot of good teams.

I'll always think of that Stanford team that went 29-1, and crapped out against a bad Alabama team in the second round. That was my senior year of college and right when I started paying attention to the tournament. It's one of the more embarrassing exits for a #1 seed I can remember.

Kentucky versus Stanford in 1998 is one of my favorite games ever.  I hated those son of a bitches.  Mark Madsen was super annoying. 

Yeah Madsen is probably in my top 5 of hated Stanford athletes ever. Certainly the top 10.

Who is worse? 

Off the top of my head, I know I hate Tommy Vardell most of all - playing against him was just agonizing. "Tommy Vardell hits the line and falls forward for 7 yards!" Pete Sauer, on the same team as Madsen, probably wins the crown for most hated in basketball. John Elway of course. I never really hated Luck for some reason but I sure hated Fleener and Ertz, they just seemed unfair.

Tiger Woods.  :awesome_for_real:

Arthur Lee from that '98 Stanford team was ridiculously good.

Louisville wins the final four........of meth (http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/meth-madness)!   :awesome_for_real:

Wisconsin has the third worst graduation rate among NCAA tournament teams. (http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/03/17/ncaa-men-basketball-tournament-teams-see-record-graduation-rates/P3QxfXSFvfLBDJUmDDmLML/story.html)  Suck it, Bo Ryan. 

One thing about those numbers is they never compare it to the overall rate for the schools in question. 44% is bad, and should get them in trouble - but it's actually not super far behind Wisconsin's 56% overall 4 year graduation rate. Big public universities don't typically engage in hand-holding and people drop out at a fairly high rate.

I think the point is that Bo Ryan was being a pretentious dick about Wisconsin focusing on "the student athlete" and that his players are "students first".  Sure, Calipari could care fuck all about education, but at least he's honest about it.  And he's honest with the players.  Ryan is a hypocritical dickbag. 

Ah I hadn't heard about that, was just pondering the chart.

Shocker that the conference that prides itself on Leaders and Legends would employ pretentious assholes. I despise everything about the Big 10. I could stomach them if they were actually good, but they have an undeserved superiority complex that hasn't been real in a decade.

 :roll:

Yeah, I'm sick of hearing about the spectacular Big Ten academics.  Apparently AAU status doesn't help your players graduate. 

Win something. The last football one was 2002. That was over a decade ago. The last basketball one was 2000.

The conference has been worthless in the popular men's sports for more than 10 years. Put up or shut up.

Love them or hate them, the Big 10 still has quite a few STEM programs ranked in the top 10 in the country.  You won't hear that about the SEC. 

They do, and I won't argue that the Big Ten has better academics at their member institutions than the SEC does.  However, I don't think it's cool to hold that out as a great thing about your athletic program if it doesn't hold true for the athletes.  Same deal for UNC-  it's a great school.  They are a bunch of cheating hypocrites though, and it makes them sound like assholes when they act all superior about their "student athletes". 

They're all lying assholes when it comes to academics.  SEC, ACC, PAC 10, BIG 10... ALL of them.  However it IS a great thing for the women athletes.  Most of them get great value out of their education.  The same goes for men's sports other than football, basketball, baseball, or hockey.  Academics matter to those student athletes not trying to land a big sports contract after their sophomore year.  

If I knew I wasn't a marquee athlete or in a non-money sport, I'd choose the Big 10 over many other conferences for their academics.  It's a reasonable selling point.  You just have to realize that they aren't talking about athletes in the big dollar sports.  We all know that.

EDIT: I am biased.  I was a student athlete in the Big 10.

The SEC is the least hypocritical though.  They are all about the money of football and winning.  It's very transparent, actually.

Case in point for the worst role model for athletic programs-  Texas.  The new AD has nothing to talk about other than their "brand" (http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/10710069/texas-longhorns-ad-steve-patterson-not-interested-rivalry-texas-aggies).  It pisses me the hell off.  It's shit like this that is the reason why you have the folks at Northwestern forming unions.  Players are taken advantage of with no limits, and it's often the worst at the big name academic schools, i.e. the Big Ten.

I like Minnesota.  I have a buddy that is a faculty there.  It's a great school, but you guys haven't been immune to the academic scandals either, thanks to good ole Clem Haskins (a Kentucky boy, btw....).

I never suggested otherwise.  All I said is that there are many many student athletes that benefit from the quality academics at Big 10 universities.  They're just not typically from the big money sports.

That's fine if Big 10 fans want to beat their chests at men's soccer or women's field hockey games.

When they show up in the big boy sports, I expect them to compete or be quiet. But of course, they are incapable of doing that, and instead like to bore everyone with talk of academics and traditions. Or we get talk about undefeated runs against garbage, and then the moment a difficult game appears, they get waxed.

Mind you, when the PAC-12 is bad, I don't hear the same conversations out of them. Generally when they are good, they are loud, and when they are bad, they are quiet. The exception is Oregon, who gets knob-slobbed over their OMGOFFENSEISKING nonsense before they run into an actual defense and get stomped.

BIG 12, SEC, and ACC are far worse than the Big 10.  The PAC 12, I'll agree, tends to be the more well behaved of the conferences.  

You should try dealing with the fans from a player's perspective.  It's a lesson in anger management.

I accept that the ACC, the SEC, and the Big 12 are far worse. They win stuff. They're allowed to be obnoxious about their teams.

And I would agree that everything is worse from a player perspective. That doesn't really change my point here. I'm saying that it's fine for the Big 10 to crow about stuff if they win. But they aren't winning, and haven't won any of the money-maker sports since 2002.

You're missing the point of the crowing then.  It's about attracting students to their schools.  It has nothing to do with them winning or not.  

Also: The Big 10 has been to 4 of the last 10 finals in the NCAA tourney.  How is that not good?

Only the winner matters, yo!

Say it in green all you want, it's the truth. You're not some mid-major conference who lives for hanging a Final Four banner because they got there. You're supposed to be the most decorated traditions blah blah blah conference in the land.

Except you don't win. The Big 10's been to 4 finals? The SEC has won 3. The ACC won 3. The Big East won 4.

The major problem is that the Big 10, and I am talking specifically football in this case, doesn't pay coaches well across the board. Out of the top 25, the Big 10 has 4 on that list. The two highest ones, Brady Hoke and Urban Meyer are fairly recent. The SEC has 10 coaches on that list. It's a big difference.

Also, of course the Big 10 has to try to attract students. The schools are in states with shitty climates, no championships in a decade, and aren't exactly known for blazing hot co-eds like the schools near the coasts. If they don't purport educational superiority, what do they sell?

You DO get it.  Yay for you!

Oh goodie. Paelos is making an ass of himself all over the forum this week in ways only a southerner can. How grand.

The SEC is a bunch of damned rednecks.  It's awful.  Texas has pretty good fans, tbh.  I feel like opposing teams' fans are always treated pretty nicely when they're walking around tailgating and there is little shenanigans regarding the players. 

If Wisconsin wins this week, it'll be the first one in 14 years for the conference, and they will have earned some respect for doing something Ohio State hasn't managed to do since 1960. Michigan last won one in 1989. Michigan State in 2000.

If Kentucky wins, they get a notch closer to chasing down UCLA for the all time record in NCAA championships.

If UCONN wins, they tie Duke for their record at 4.

IF Florida wins, they move into a tie with Kansas, Louisville, and UCONN.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82533/wjANVCD.jpg)

And Wisconsin with the throw. Bottomless pit of Kentucky talent prevails.

Kentucky's wins in this tournament have been completely insane.

EDIT: Oh and watching Florida get embarrassed was glorious. GLORIOUS! I hate the Gators.

UK average margin of victory-  4.25

They've had one of the toughest roads to the final game ever though.  Lots of tough teams along the way.

Oh hey there, Obama's pick won the tournament.

BLAME OBAMA!

Kentucky just couldn't keep up the comeback cats thing, which makes sense. They really skated this far while UCONN, with the exception of one early game, really dominated their matches.

All that being said, this really shows how badly the committee fucked up the seedings this year in epic fashion.

I don't think the winner or final in general say anything about seeding.  The seeds may have been a bit high, but these teams had some bad losses during the year and weren't really popular picks to win it.  This UConn championship team feel like one of the weakest winners since the last UConn championship team.  :awesome_for_real:  There was some weirdness in the ordering past the second seed, due to the emphasis on the entire schedule, and the committee can never get the five seeds right.  They always lose in droves.

Superior talent and peaking at the right time is a good formula for winning.  Still, I think almost any team in the Elite-8 could have won it, with the exception perhaps of Dayton.  They were eventually going to be run over.  

Seeding isn't supposed to be some kind of magical predictor of who will win/lose in a single elimination, single game tournament anyway. It's just a reward for regular season performance.

And yet, this is the highest seeded final ever, and Kentucky was preseason #1.

Duke lost 8 games but was somehow in the top 25 and ranked for a 2 seed. Kentucky lost 10 including 2 losses to Florida on the back end? Unranked and an 8 seed?

The seeding sucked. Teams that had no business with their losses got high seedings, then got exposed.

Basketball is a pretty random game. Not as random as baseball, but still pretty random. If you put each of those teams in a 5 or 7 game tournament the highest seeded team would win much more often and then when they were upset you could say that the seeding sucked.

Highest seeded final ever. I'll just keep pointing that out.

With marquis players more commonly leaving college after their first or second year for the NBA, seeding will continue to be unreliable.  This year was just an exceptional example of this. 

Oh no! A random event had an unlikely occurrence which actually isn't that unlikely considering the 75 iterations of the random event

I mean if i cared, i could tell you near exactly how unlikely this event was by some pretty simple statistics* but the end result is probably that "its really not that unlikely, it just hadn't happened yet"

*Regress win probability on rank differential then run millions of iterations of the monte carlo resulting from that.

No one likes a math geek.

Aren't everyone here programmers or academics?

Paelos is a accountant that doesn't believe in stats.  Or logic.

That doesn't mean that we like math OR math geeks.  :grin:

(http://ak2.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/1301215/preview/stock-footage-arrow-hit-bullseye-center-on-new-rotating-dartboard.jpg)

Plus... who really gives a shit what the seeding is? Other than butthurt gamblers who don't follow the game closely enough to know if Dayton is any good but bet on games anyway.

It's not like we'll see ever see Dayton again after another 2 or 3 years.    :why_so_serious:

Probably depends how long Archie Miller stays.  Once a big program lures him away, they'll likely slip.

Oh please. You know I believe in stats. The debate shows up on which stats are more important than other stats.

As for the seedings, you can pull almost any article from the sports sites and they talk about how poorly this was handled, and how seedings aren't indicators anymore. Nebu is right, they don't know how to evaluate the talent, and they have no idea how to seed because of it.

That means that there isn't a regressing win probability across the seeds when they get them wrong. If anything it's more of a tossup. Here's a recent AP piece that talks about it, and the impact freshman are having that is making the tournament seeding basically pointless.

You don't seed based on talent. 

That's the point though. Seeding based on "record" or "RPI" isn't going to be a good indicator of a bunch of young kids who are playing poorly in October and learn how to play as a unit by March. Not in this new world of one and done NCAA basketball.

They should be seeding on talent. The early wins and losses before January are basically pointless in the case of a tournament like this.

EDIT: In fact there should be weightings that give more credence to later wins than earlier wins.

I thought the point of the higher seed was to reward regular season performance... to give it added value.

How do you factor in moxie and gumption?  How much of a higher seed should get you get for some good ole fashion elbow grease or unquenchable desire for victory?  Should the heart of a champion get you out of that dreaded five seed?

As has been said: you reward based on performance. Seeding is not a handicapping service.

You forgot "Eye of the Tiger" and being a "Diaper Dandy".

If the game wasn't currently rigged by allowing these new transfer and one-and-done rules, I'd agree.

College basketball wants to reward the regular season, but we all know that 95% of their viewing audience gives absolutely no fucks about the regular season. They tune in during tournament time, and they want the seeds to reflect how good the teams are.

Here's the thing, I'm not saying Witchita goes undefeated and doesn't deserve a #1 seed. I'm saying the committee has long-standing biases that no longer apply with younger teams, and they are using the wrong data to subjectively decide between teams that are within 3-4 wins of each other. You can't simply seed college basketball by straight wins and losses, but the committee is way overvaluing certain wins, and ignoring certain losses. That's what leads a team like Louisville to have a 4 seed with 5 losses, while Kansas and Duke got higher seeds with 2-3 more losses a piece. Because they played the "harder" schedule. Yet, when we look back at the results, did the committee completely overvalue those schedules? I think yes, and that's what causing the issues.

If the difference is a team playing better ball at the end of the year with more developed talents and a better February and March record, I think that should count for something in the seeds if the teams are only separated by a handful of wins.

 :oh_i_see:


 :roll:

Meh yall are just still mad Wisconsin didn't win so you can't rub it in my face for shitting on the Big Ten.  :why_so_serious:

Nah, the thing I don't get is why you act like winning a single-elimination tournament is deeply meaningful in any sense other than one of about 20 teams who could realistically win it all getting hot and lucky.

I meant Rasix and the resident Big 10 lovers, not really you.

It's meaningful in that we've seen a lot of the same teams win them, lucky or otherwise. Call it what you will, but I'm intrigued by the dominance of certain programs when the field is this large. Of the 6 teams that have won in the last 10 years, those teams have a combined 29 NCAA tournament victories in the history of the tournament. And that's leaving out UCLA who has 11 of their own. The majority of these wins belong to a handful of schools, with well over 300+ potentially competing.

Its because over a large number of games, random events converge to the mean. It is therefore expected that the dominant programs (which can continue to be dominant due to winning) will win the majority of the championships.


Just letting you know that you're saying two diametrically opposed things

I'm intrigued by why they are dominant, not just that they are dominant. Is it recruiting the youngest talent over and over, is it teams of battle-tested seniors with non-NBA skills, or is it finding the best coaching? Several teams are trying different things in the one-and-done era, and other teams are watching to draw conclusions about how they should operate their programs based on tournament successes.

A lot of the best programs have completely different styles as well. Winning today in this era would be completely different than winning in the say the 70s.

I didn't want to start a new thread so allow me to wallow in grief here.  Martin leaves Tennessee for Cal.  That's very disappointing, after Pearl, Kiffin and the incompetent Dooley, Martin brought both integrity and a Sweet 16 appearance to the Vols.  And he's taking his 7' Arizona star HS player with him.  The guy twitter-committed to UT and then twitter-bailed on us a few hours later. 

Best of luck Coach Martin at Cal.  :heartbreak:

Your pain is Ingmar's gain it seems.

Hopefully. The shoes he has to fill are pretty big and our best overall player and best big man are both graduating. Supposedly he's bringing some 7'1" recruit with him but I have no idea if the guy is any good. Cal fans are usually at least semi-patient with new coaches, but this guy is replacing a retiring good coach rather than a bad fired one so they might be more impatient than usual.