Category Archives: 2011-12 Big Dance

NCAA Tournament Upsets: A Re-Examination

1 Reply

You may recall a post I made way back in the beginning of 2013 where I examined how NCAA Tournament upsets happen.  In the interest of keeping this post relatively short, please at least skim that one.

As you saw when you skimmed the previous version, there is a list of “upsets” in the last five years that is the basis for our exercise here.  Even though there are situations (11) Minnesota -3 vs (6) UCLA, I’m defining an upset as a 6-seed or better losing in the Round of 64 or losing to a team seeded 7th or worse in the Round of 32.  Here are the upsets from the last five years:
Find out who the upset candidates are

NCAA Tournament Resumes: The Unseed-ables

4 Replies

On our weekly Bracketology post at College Hoops Journal, my colleague Brennan Keller asks me questions about my bracket.  Oklahoma was a subject of one of those questions, and Brennan actually compared them to Illinois.  It got me thinking that both of these were interesting cases for the Committee.  

Oklahoma and Illinois, along with Virginia, seem to be the most vexing teams for Bracketologists.  I decided to look back in history to see where teams with similar resumes have ended up being seeded in the NCAA Tournament.  Let’s see how it shakes out.

How about a blast from the past?

Bracket Update: Changes are Afoot

Leave a reply

As you may know (at least you darn well should), I’ve been posting all of my bracket updates to one page lately so as not to waste valuable front page space with constant updates when little changes from day-to-day.  That plan had to be temporarily abandoned, though, when I went a whole five days without updating the bracket – especially when two of those days were a weekend.

Below, I’ll lay out the biggest changes in the bracket, teams on the rise, on the decline, teams now in danger, and I’ll discuss the biggest addition to this version of all (and it’s not a team).  Enjoy!

Break Down the Bracket

Blogger vs. “Big-Time” – A Bracketology Breakdown

Leave a reply

As you know, I’ve been spending my time updating my bracket quite frequently lately.  I do my best to do this exercise independently of other brackets.  Sometimes that can be difficult, so I’m going to embrace it in this post.  Since 83 brackets is far too many to compare to, I’ll use the two most “mainstream” ones that I visit most often – Joe Lunardi’s ESPN bracket and Jerry Palm’s CBS bracket.  Here is what I found (click on each team’s name to see their resume).

Differing opinions await!

NCAA Tournament – Name That Team

Leave a reply

One of my favorite topics of discussion in college hoops is what matters when evaluating a team. Is it the RPI? As you’ll see at the bottom of this post, I believe it’s not, while others believe it is. Is it advanced metrics like KenPom.com? Is it the strength of certain wins, or the weakness of certain losses? I’ll give you all the information and let you be the judge, but without the “brand names,” the results may surprise you.

To find out which teams are which, click here to open the answers in another window (but be sure you come back and read the rest).

It’s Blind Resume time!