Not predicting the unpredictable.

I do not have any magical power that will tell you how the unpredictable things in this tournament will play out. I can't tell you what things outside of the norm are going to happen.

But I can tell you some things to watch out for.

One of those is consistency.

Consistency shows how often a team plays as expected. More accurately, you might call it how well Ken Pomeroy's stats (adjusted by me) can predict a team.

So here are the top 25 teams you shouldn't be surprised by when they do something crazy different than their ranking presupposes on Kenpom.com

(16 and 15 seeds not included)

	team	standard deviation from expected point margin
1	cornell	12.96
2	western kentucky	12.59
3	louisville	12.55
4	michigan st.	12.41
5	north carolina	12.31
6	louisiana st.	12.14
7	arizona st.	12.11
8	west virginia	11.94
9	clemson	11.74
10	marquette	11.56
11	gonzaga	11.55
12	tennessee	11.35
13	kansas	11.28
14	akron	11.27
15	maryland	10.98
16	wake forest	10.74
17	michigan	10.73
18	missouri	10.63
19	northern iowa	10.34
20	boston college	10.28
21	syracuse	10.26
22	brigham young	10.22
23	mississippi st.	10.18
24	UCLA	10.17
25	illinois	10.08

Some things to note.

I ran about 5,000 simulations of the bracket today in Excel, to find who was most likely to win the championship (the math was a little too complicated to enter in, so I just made a simulation program).

Here is a short list of some important things to know: http://lazydrumhead.googlepages.com/simresults.html

And here are some other things to note:

1) North Carolina's bracket is ridiculously difficult (Gonzaga and Arizona State are underseeded, and Oklahoma also poses a big threat.

2) I guess you could say that Connecticut's bracket is ridiculously difficult, because Memphis is the overwhelming favorite to win the NC in general.

Here are my top-10 predicted closest games:

1. Marquette v. Missouri - 2nd round

2. ASU v. Oklahoma - Sweet 16

3. Syracuse v. ASU - 2nd round

4. Kansas v. WVU - 2nd round

5. FSU v. Wisconsin - 1st round

6. Louisville v. WVU - elite 8

7. Tennessee v. Oklahoma St. - 1st round

8. Memphis v. Pittsburgh - championship game

9. Washington v. Purdue - 2nd round

10. Gonzaga v. North Carolina - sweet 16

Info on The Bracket-Maker

In order to use the bracketmaker, you must have Microsoft Excel or Openoffice Calc.

To purchase it, click the "Buy" button up at the top of this blog, and you'll receive an email shortly with download instructions.

Here's a quick rundown of how the bracket-maker works:

http://lazydrumhead.googlepages.com/thebracket-maker

The day has come!

My random-bracket generator is complete!

Five bucks!


Ok, now here's the picture you need to see:

Oh my goodness....

Joe Lunardi is picking the FIFTH-best conference to get the most NCAA tourney bids.

• Big Ten (7): Michigan State, Illinois, Purdue, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio State
• Big East (6): Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Villanova, Syracuse, Marquette, West Virginia
• ACC (6): North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, Clemson, Florida State, Boston College

And Penn State is only four teams off the bubble.


The Big Ten qualifiers just have a ton of losses and some random wins against BETTER teams (UCLA, Duke, Louisville).

NCAA Basketball Stats

Overrated/Underrated, continued.

I've been reading up on ESPN's "Giant Killer" stuff (I am using my 30-day trial for INsider) and they make some pretty good points. So I'll just auction off this information:

According to ESPN:

Florida State, Butler, and Xavier all have great potential to fall far.

and my, my, look who's predicted to knock off some giants:

San Diego St., VCU, Cleveland State

VCU, as we all know, owned Duke a couple years Back. And Cleveland State shocked the world (barely) this week as they clinched an automatic NCAA tournament bid by winning the Horizon League tournament, over highly-touted Butler.

While this is all well and good, none of these 3 giant killers are above the 50% stat that they often require to kill giants. So I'm just gonna delve into some more over and underrated territory.

I know I should be patient and wait for the brackets, but some important things are here:

Overrated:

Florida State:

Likely Seed: 5

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 12, 4

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #37 (10)

LSU:

Likely Seed: 6

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 11, 3

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #40 (10)

Utah St:

Likely Seed: 10

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 7

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #59 (15)

Dayton:

Likely Seed: 9

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 8

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #83 (21 aka 16)

Siena:

Likely Seed: 9

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 8

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #63 (16)

Underrated:

West Virginia (still):

Likely Seed: 6

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 6,3,2

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #8 (2)

Gonzaga:

Likely Seed: 4

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 5, 1, 2

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #4 (1)

Purdue:

Likely Seed: 5

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 12, 4, 1

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #16 (4)

San Diego St.:

Likely Seed: 11

Likely Opponents' Seeds: 6, 3

Kenpom Rating (Seed): #32 (8)

wahoo!

my bracket-maker is pretty much ready!

once selection sunday is over, I can put in the data and have it spit out random brackets!

Cool features:

1) I don't strictly use Kenpom's data. The data automatically adjusts here for teams I think he overrates or underrates, according to the regression line of their over/underperformance.

2) You can tell my program how random you want it to be. At 100% randomness, a team's chance of moving on is exactly equal to my predicted chance of them winning. For example, if Providence were playing Louisville, my program gives Providence a 28% chance of moving on. If Providence gets 'lucky,' they move on in the bracket.

But at 0% randomness, the better team always wins. Or, the team my system predicts to win, always moves on to the next round.

I'll be selling this thing for $5 via Paypal, and for free if you help me collect the data! :)

Weighted Goodness

Here's a pretty rough ranking of mine for the top teams in the country, based on the best 3 predictors of NCAA tournament performance: Adjusted Scoring Margin, the LRMC, and Kenpom.com

I can actually use Kenpom stats to generate a much more accurate Adjusted Scoring Margin but I decided to use ESPN insiders'

Anyways, here's Nathan's top 25 teams.

http://lazydrumhead.googlepages.com/weightedranking.html

LAZY

Here are the top 10 teams from Kenpom.com, sorted by Provable Laziness

The definition of lazy here is:

"A lazy team stops playing defense when their offense is doing well, and vice versa."

	Top 10 Kenpom Teams, Sorted by Laziness
	(Correlation and slope of Actual-Expected Defensive efficiency and Actual-Expected Offensive efficiency)
	(higher is lazier)
		Provable Laziness Factor (slope x R value)
1	Pittsburgh	0.39
2	Connecticut	0.17
3	Memphis	0.12
4	Duke	0.11
5	UCLA	0.1
6	Kansas	0.02
7	West Virginia	0.02
8	North Carolina	0.01
9	Gonzaga	0
10	Louisville	0

Ups and Downs...

The under and overseeded.

Here's how I figger:

Seeding prediction: http://insider.espn.go.com/ncb/bracketology

How good they really are: http://kenpom.com

I just subtract their 'kenpom seeding' from their actual predicted seeding.

Underseeded:

West Virginia:

Kenpom 'seed': 2

Predicted seed: 7

Seed difference: -5

Gonzaga:

Kenpom 'seed': 2

Predicted seed: 6

Seed difference: -4

Michigan:

Kenpom 'seed': 15

Predicted seed: 12

Seed difference: -5

Brigham Young:

Kenpom 'seed': 3

Predicted seed: 8

Seed difference: -5

Overseeded:

Oklahoma:

Kenpom 'seed': 4

Predicted seed: 1

Seed difference: 3

LSU:

Kenpom 'seed': 10

Predicted seed: 6

Seed difference: 4

Dayton:

Kenpom 'seed': 21 (!)

Predicted seed: 9

Fifteen.

Fifteen = The number of teams predicted to finish within 6 points of Memphis (the #1 Kenpom team).

Fourteen = The number of teams predicted to finish within 6 points or better than North Carolina (the #2 Kenpom team).

Carolina is my favorite to win it all.