How Did College Basketball Experts Fare with their 2010-11 Predictions?

My most popular post of all-time  (by far) was this post from last January in which I rated each NFL expert on how well they projected the season.

95% of the hits on that article came because two ESPN writers – Paul Kuharsky and Pat Yasinskas – stumbled upon the post and plugged it on Twitter and the NFC South blog. Sadly, it still would have been my most viewed blog simply because of all the Google searches. People apparently just want to know how experts did with their predictions.

As expected, most of the experts weren’t anywhere close (although Green Bay was the most popular Super Bowl pick). I noticed that the spectacular failures tended to be the same picks across the board and theorized that the experts were simply scared to deviate from the norm. At the end of the season, they will look silly if anyone bothered to check, but no one expert will stand out from the rest.

I made it a point to write a similar article after every major sports season. After all, I gotta give the people what they want. Unfortunately, the college basketball season doesn’t really lend itself too well to a points system like I used for the NFL. So instead I have a bunch of random thoughts about the experts’ predictions, organized in some vague order.

For this article, I looked at the ten experts on ESPN.com (Jay Bilas, Eamonn Brennan, Pat Forde, Fran Franschilla, Doug Gottlieb, Andy Katz, Diamond Leung, Joe Lunardi, Dana O’Neill, and Dick Vitale), the three on CNNSI.com (Seth Davis, Doug Winn, and Andy Glockner) and the two on CBSSports.com (Gary Parrish and Jerry Palm).

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Once again, bold predictions weren’t the strong suit of the experts. Unfortunately for them, this year required bold picks: not a single expert picked UConn, Kentucky, Butler or VCU to reach the Final Four.*

* Jerry Palm does get the award for most amusing selection. He picked #4 seed Butler and #13 seed VCU to meet in the first round of the Southwest Region. At least he had the right idea.

We will give most of these guys the benefit of the doubt. As we saw this year, the tournament is a crapshoot; picking a Final Four team at the start of the year is an even bigger crapshoot. So I’ll dish out points for experts whose Final Four picks received #1 seeds in the tournament.

All four #1 seeds – Fran Franschilla

Franschilla wins this year’s contest going away. His Final Four teams – Kansas, Duke, Ohio State, and Michigan State – all earned #1 seeds in the tournament. Well done.

Three #1 seeds – Gary Parrish (Duke, Ohio State, and Pitt)

Only one other expert even managed to correctly predict three #1 seeds. The Michigan State bandwagon (see below) stopped Parrish from getting all four picks correct.

The frustrating part for Parrish is that we can see the rest of his bracket, unlike the experts on ESPN and CNNSI. I would assume that he would just prefer to have us put out hand on the screen to block out his #2 seed for Villanova, #3 seeds for Baylor and Memphis, and his #12 seed for Notre Dame. But whatever – Parrish still gets credit for picking three of four #1 seeds.

Two #1 seeds – Seth Davis, Luke Winn, and Jay Bilas (Duke and Kansas); Pat Forde, Andy Katz, and Diamond Leung (Duke and Pitt); Eamonn Brennan and Dick Vitale (Duke and Ohio State)

And now we get to the groupthink. None of these guys bothered to think independently of one another. Fifteen experts times four Final Four teams equal sixty potential teams. Here is the distribution:

Duke – 14 picks
Michigan State – 13 picks
Kansas State – 7 picks
Ohio State – 5 picks
Pittsburgh – 5 picks
Kansas – 4 picks
Gonzaga – 3 picks
Syracuse – 3 picks
Florida – 2 picks
Illinois – 2 picks
Villanova – 2 picks

Live a little guys! Coming into the season, there certainly were more than eleven teams in the running for #1 seeds. And that’s not even considering the fact that 13 of these 15 guys were picking Final Four teams rather than #1 seeds.

I’m also a little bitter about this whole Michigan State thing. Prior to the season, I bought a small amount of this Spartan hype. This was inadvertent, because I tend to despise all Big Ten teams, but it didn’t stop me from stupidly picking the Spartans to reach the Elite Eight as a #10 seed this year.

I get the idea on the preseason predictions – they were a Final Four team in 2010 and returned the majority of their lineup for this season. The reality is that they were a #5 seed last season and received a ridiculously favorable draw to reach the Final Four. They beat the #12, #4, #9, and #6 seeds in their region by a combined 13 points. They simply were not that good last year and they were even worse this year.

Ditto for Kansas State. At least the Wildcats at times showed they belonged after their surprise Final Four run in 2010.

Hard to tell where the experts that picked Illinois and Villanova got their intel from. Maybe  Gottlieb and Glocker (Illinois) and Vitale and Glockner again (Villanova) saw something the rest of us didn’t in those teams. The rest of us saw historically underachieving teams that were bound to underachieve again. Of course, this being a groupthink situation, at least they had each other’s predictions to fall back on.

Doug Gottlieb, Joe Lunardi, and Seth Davis all picked Gonzaga to make it to the Final Four. Gonzaga is an enigma. They set the standard for all mid-majors in their one run to the Elite Eight as a #10 seed in 1999. Since then, they have qualified for the tournament every season but have yet to make it out of the Sweet Sixteen again. They have actually been upset by a team seeded three spots or lower four times in that span and own an average 13-12 tournament record.

For reasons that remain unclear to me, Gonzaga is always a popular sleeper pick. This is bizarre. I’m not knocking on the Zags: they are a very good mid-major program, and virtually every other mid-major team not named Butler would kill to own a 13-12 record while qualifying for 13 straight tournaments. But I can’t seem to figure out why they are a sleeper Final Four team every year. Imagine if VCU was picked by three experts to qualify for the 2024 Final Four. I don’t even have to look into a crystal ball to find that ridiculous.

One #1 seed – Jerry Palm, Andy Glockner, Dana O’Neill, Doug Gottlieb (Duke); Joe Lunardi (Ohio State)

Now we get to the whipping boys and the award for worst picks of the college basketball preseason.

I’ll let Palm off easy – he picked an entire bracket before the season. Although his seedings were a bit of a mess, he generally got most of the teams that made the tournament, so we gets somewhat of a pass.

Gottlieb picked the stellar threesome of Kansas State, Illinois, and Gonzaga to reach the Final Four. I’ve pointed out his incompetence before though. And that was before his cell phone went off in the middle of a live SportsCenter. I assume that just putting his pants on every day is a victory for Gottlieb, so picking one #1 seed was far better than we could have expected.

O’Neill picked Duke and Michigan State like everyone else, but his other two Final Four picks were Kansas State and Syracuse. Not nearly the train wreck as some of the other experts in this group, so we can’t give him the award either.

That leaves Joe Lunardi and Andy Glockner.

In a close battle, the award for worst picks goes to Lunardi. As much as I like Lunardi’s Bracketology column, his predicting skills leave something to be desired.

Glockner shouldn’t feel bad though. Despite a potentially record-setting Final Four train wreck of Duke, Michigan State, Villanova, and Illinois, he had two things working against him. First, I’ve never heard of him, so I can’t set the bar too high. For all I know, he could be a random guy with a blog like me. Second, CNNSI had their experts predict a few other categories; Glockner picked UNLV as a surprise team, Virginia Tech as a flop, and Butler as the best mid-major team. Not a bad track record…enough to pull him out of the cellar.

Lunardi’s Final Four was Ohio State, Florida, Michigan State, Gonzaga. I give him props for being the only expert to buck the trend of Duke as a #1 seed. Of course with that said, if you were going to follow the pack with any team, shouldn’t it be the defending champion who returned most of their players and picked up one of the most heralded high school recruits (Kyrie Irving) in the country?

And Gonzaga over Michigan State in the final…well there’s just no defense for that.

UPDATE: Andy Glockner e-mailed me after this was published with “a link to his full predictions. He deserves more credit than I originally gave him credit for: he nailed much more of the bracket than I gave him credit for. As a mid-major fan, I’m impressed that he nailed the multiple bids for the Atlantic Ten, Colonial, and Mountain West (though less so that he whiffed on my alma mater Creighton). And he was quite nice on the e-mail, even though I came off like a dick in my original post.

So it’s all you Lunardi. At least you have something to work on this offseason.

How to Pick a Winning Bracket

After the college football bowl season, I typed up a list of lessons that I learned from bowls in hopes that I would actually remember them come next year. The logic behind them was fairly sound, although I am quite certain that I will make the same mistakes again.

I thought about doing the same for March Madness this season, but I learned one lesson and one lesson only: unless you are in a pool with ten people or less, pick a unique team to win the tournament. That seems fairly simple…but it’s actually the opposite of how most people pick their brackets. We’ll get to that a bit later though. First, you get to read a story.

Every year I enter into a March Madness pool that has upwards of 500 people in it. I have never won it (and won’t this year either). The closest I came was in 2006, otherwise known as the year of George Mason. I couldn’t fully enjoy the Patriots’ run though, since they knocked off Connecticut in the regional final.

That year I went with the traditional formula for bracket selection. I picked several upsets in the first few rounds but picked a favorite to win the tournament. Almost all of my upset picks hit. I literally nailed everything. I hit seven of eight Elite Eight picks, only missing the aforementioned George Mason, which virtually no one picked to even win a game. My Final Four consisted of LSU, UCLA, Florida, and Connecticut. The first three all got there.

Then UConn happened. I picked them to win the tournament that year, but didn’t even need them to win. There were about 430 people in the pool, but I was so far ahead that all I needed was UConn to beat George Mason to lock up the title. I had the Huskies beating UCLA in the final. Because of that, no one that picked UCLA to win the title could pass me and no one that picked Florida to win the title could catch me if I got the seven points for UConn’s supposedly inevitable Elite Eight victory (and no one picked LSU to reach the title game at all).

Imagine – the $1200 or so first place prize locked up before the Final Four even began. We all know that the sports gods are cruel though. The Huskies blew it in overtime, I received no more points, and the handful of people that picked Florida to win the next two games (11 points for the semifinal and 16 points for the final) passed me. I finished in sixth place, five points behind the overall winner.

You would think the epiphany would have happened then. I really liked UCLA and Florida, but instead of picking either one of them to win the title, I went with the consensus favorite Connecticut. I would imagine that 30% of the people picked UConn to win it that year. I followed all of them and where did it get me? Sixth place. I think I won something like $50.

And for what? The sixteen points obviously wouldn’t have done me a whole lot of good, since everybody else picked them. Sure, had the Huskies won it all, I would have needed to pick them at least to the finals to hold the rest of the pack that did pick them. But I should have just taken my chances. Although I finished sixth, I ruined an amazing year of picks.

Had I picked Florida over UConn in the Final Four, I would have won something like $1500 between two pools. Had I done so and UConn actually did win, I would have probably won $0. I think I did win about $75 between the pools, but I would gladly (duh!) exchange that for picking Florida, a team I really liked.

Fast forward to this year. Finally, I went with an off-the-wall team to win the tournament. This time, I went with Kentucky almost completely by accident. I liked the Wildcats to do well in the tournament because they really came together at the end of the season, capped off by the dominant SEC tournament run. I didn’t like number one seeds Ohio State and Duke on that side of the bracket, so it was wide open. I also kept hearing about all the parity this year, so I figured why not take my chances with a #4 seed that is playing well.

Eventually I picked Kentucky to make it to the final, where they would lose to Kansas. Then I remembered my track record with Kansas. The last two times I picked them (2006 and 2010), they went out on the first weekend. I quickly erased Kansas and had them go down in the Sweet Sixteen. I ended up with Pitt in the title game for reasons that remain unclear to me. I don’t actually like Pitt, so I picked Kentucky to beat them in the title game.

Other than that, this was my worst year ever. That is not an exaggeration. My ENTIRE Elite Eight on the right side of the bracket was done by Saturday night on the first weekend. When the dust settled, Kentucky was the only team that made the Elite Eight that I got right. To put that in perspective, only four of the 490 people in my pool missed all Elite Eight teams…and you know that includes at least 40 women that picked based on name alone (my wife was one of them, and she performed far better than me). Of 490 people, I finished better than four people on Elite Eight picks.

The early rounds weren’t much better. I picked Florida State to reach the Sweet Sixteen in an upset pick. I picked Richmond to beat Vandy. And that’s it for picks that panned out. Michigan State and Louisville, both Elite Eight picks, went down in the first round. Pitt and Purdue, both Final Four picks, went down in the second. After the first weekend of play, I sat in 423^rd place. After the second, I sit in 348^th place.

But it turns out almost none of that matters, thanks to Kentucky. If Kentucky ends up winning the title, I will finish in fourth place. I only picked one Elite Eight team correctly, and I still have a legitimate shot to finish fourth in a 490 person pool.

All that time spent looking at first and second round upsets got me nowhere. Sure, I can be proud of my Seminole Sweet Sixteen pick. That got me a whopping three points. I would have had to do that with at least three more Sweet Sixteen picks to finish in first. The three people that would finish ahead of me are the only other three people that picked Kentucky to win.

So that’s my lesson. If you are in a pool with ten people or less, by all means follow the standard route. Pick a favorite to win and try to pick off enough points in the early rounds to win the pool. It is fairly unlikely that anybody will have any team lower than a two seed winning the tournament anyway.

But if you are in a big pool, like I am, you HAVE to go with an underdog to win the title. Don’t go crazy – no team lower than a four seed has won since #6 Kansas in 1988. And of course your #3 or #4 seeded pick actually winning the tournament is still an extreme longshot.

Yet the one strategic question I missed was this: what are the odds that I do well enough in the sixty pre-tournament games that I build up enough of a lead to top the 100 or so other people in the pool that picked the same favorite I did to win the tournament? Turns out quite a bit less than picking a significant underdog to win the title.

I understand that if UConn would have won just one more game in 2006, I would have still won the pool while picking the runaway favorite to win. That took a great deal of luck and magic to get me in that spot, and I seriously doubt I will end up in that position again. The larger point remains: even the biggest favorite to win the tournament will have less than a twenty percent chance to win. Why not roll the dice on a unique team to win the tourney and take my chances?

The lesson is simple yet a bit counterintuitive. I have picked NCAA brackets every year since I was a four-year old in 1989 (that is not an exaggeration). In my best ever year, I picked the runaway favorite to win the title and finished in sixth place. In my worst ever year, I picked an underdog to win the title and have a very realistic shot at finishing fourth place.

I like those odds. And go Kentucky!