Category: Basketball

March Madness Previews, March 29, 2015

We’re down to these four teams fighting for two spots in next Saturday’s Final Four games. Last night, Kentucky and Wisconsin, two 1 seeds, won their games and qualified to play each other in the Final Four. Today we’ll see which two teams will play each other next Saturday for the right to play either Kentucky or Wisconsin in the championship game.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #7 Michigan State Spartans vs. #4 Louisville Cardinals, 2:20 p.m. ET on CBS.

Hey! This is our one chance — actually our one certainty — to get a team into the Final Four that wasn’t a 1 seed and therefore expected to make the Final Four. Usually, the team that unexpectedly makes it into the last four is the delight of the tournament but this is… a little different. It’s hard to think of either Michigan State or Louisville as a surprise underdog considering they’ve combined to make 11 Final Fours since 2000. That’s a sustained record of excellence unsurpassed by many programs. So, while it’s novel to see a 7 and a 4 seed play in the Elite Eight, it’s perfectly conventional to see these two teams.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #2 Gonzaga Bulldogs vs. #1 Duke Blue Devils, 5:05 p.m. ET on CBS.

You can view this game as a battle of old vs. new, traditional vs. modern. Duke is the traditional team — they’ve been a basketball powerhouse in one of the toughest conferences in the country for well over thirty years now. They’re built a little like an old-school team. Their star player is a big man, Jahlil Okafor, who plays close to the basket. Gonzaga is the future of basketball. They’re a “mid-major” team which means they’re the best team in a conference that has not traditionally produced NCAA Champions. Their best player is Kyle Wiltjer, a 6’10” forward who uses his hight primarily to shoot over people from distance as opposed to banging bodies down low like Okafor. In this battle of past vs. future, we’ll see who owns the present.

March Madness Previews, March 28, 2015

And then there were eight; eight teams left in March Madness, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships. There haven’t been many surprises in this year’s tournament so far, which itself, I guess could be considered a surprise. If every favorite had won, all the way through the tournament, tonight’s games would only differ by a single team. By the rankings, one would expect #2 Kansas to be playing Kentucky instead of #3 Notre Dame. Not exactly an upset of mammoth proportions. The downside of not having any giant surprises is that there aren’t attractive underdogs to root for. The upside is that the games are likely to be extremely close contests — and the best play that college basketball can provide for our enjoyment. Here is a little background about each game.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #2 Arizona Wildcats vs. #1 Wisconsin Badgers, 6:09 p.m. ET on TBS.

Many people believe that these are the two teams most equipped to truly have a chance at beating the still undefeated Kentucky Wildcats. To some extent then, it’s a shame that they play each other before meeting Kentucky. It means that only one will get a shot at the presumptive champs. On the other hand, the winner of this game will play the winner of the next game, and assuming that is Kentucky, at least it means that one of them are guaranteed to play Kentucky. This game itself could be one of the best in the tournament. Both teams are game tested, having survived close games in the previous round, and both have deep casts of excellent basketball players.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #3 Notre Dame Fighting Irish vs. #1 Kentucky Wildcats, 8:49 p.m. ET on TBS.

We’re all assuming Kentucky will win this game. After doubling their opponent in the last round (poor West Virginia lost 78-39!) Kentucky looks completely unbeatable. That said, the only thing they aren’t that good at (shooting three-point shots), Notre Dame is devilishly competent in. If Notre Dame gets off to the kind of fast start that they have in other games this year, when every shot they take seems to be just falling into the basket, then we could be in for a tight game.

March Madness Previews, March 27, 2015

Tonight is the second night of the Sweet Sixteen. The Sweet Sixteen is where the NCAA Tournament transitions from strictly numbered rounds (“the round of 64/32” or “the first/second/third round”) to rounds with catchy nicknames. The Sweet Sixteen reduces the field from 16 teams to 8, the Elite Eight winnows it down from eight to four, those four are referred to as the Final Four, and the two teams that win those games go on to play each other in the Championship game. The four games on tonight represent half of the Sweet Sixteen. Let’s run through these games and see what they mean.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #11 UCLA Bruins vs. #2 Gonzaga Bulldogs, 7:15 p.m. ET on CBS.

With two 1 seeds, a 2 seed, and a 3 seed advancing in yesterday’s games, the 11th seeded UCLA Bruins seem like they’d be the tournament’s last hope for the type of unlikely Cinderella story that everyone loves. The problem is, as I’ve written before, that UCLA is an overdog disguised as an underdog. UCLA men’s basketball has had too much success to ever really engender the kind of “it could be anyone” love that lower seeded teams sometimes do during March Madness. Gonzaga, on the other hand, is what happens when Cinderella wins and wins and wins until she’s not really an underdog anymore either.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #8 North Carolina State Wolfpack vs. #4 Louisville Cardinals, 7:37 p.m. ET on TBS.

Although ranked higher than UCLA, North Carolina State has more underdog cred. They’re certainly an afterthought in their own state, behind giants North Carolina and Duke. After beating number one seed, Villanova, last week, they’ll be ready to take on the confrontational but not insanely talented Louisville team.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #5 Utah Runnin’ Utes vs. #1 Duke Blue Devils, 9:45 p.m. ET on CBS.

One of the ways I suggested filling out your March Madness bracket before the tournament started was by looking at other people’s rankings, often done with the collaboration (or at least assistance) of a computer. Most of these rankings absolutely loved the Utah team — enough so that CBS wrote of this game that the rankings suggest it will be a very even game. That said, it will still feel like a triumphant upset if Utah can beat Duke. Duke is not as deep in talented players as Kentucky but they’re best five players are the closest thing out there to Kentucky’s.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #7 Michigan State Spartans vs. #3 Oklahoma Sooners, 10:07 p.m. ET on TBS.

Michigan State has gotten at least this far in the NCAA Tournament is six of the last seven years. They’re institutionally good! Vegas actually has Michigan State as a very slight favorite (less than two points) to beak Oklahoma. This game and the Utah Duke game seem like the best of the bunch tonight, so if you need to approach the evening strategically (either to carve out time for basketball or from basketball) there’s a strong case to be made to do something else early on in the night and switch your attention to basketball starting around 9:45. Good luck!

March Madness Previews, March 26, 2015

Tonight is the first night of the Sweet Sixteen. The Sweet Sixteen is where the NCAA Tournament transitions from strictly numbered rounds (“the round of 64/32” or “the first/second/third round”) to rounds with catchy nicknames. The Sweet Sixteen reduces the field from 16 teams to 8, the Elite Eight winnows it down from eight to four, those four are referred to as the Final Four, and the two teams that win those games go on to play each other in the Championship game. The four games on tonight represent half of the Sweet Sixteen. The other four games will be tomorrow. For now, let’s run through these games and see what they mean.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #7 Wichita State Shockers vs. #3 Notre Dame Fighting Irish, 7:15 p.m. ET on CBS.

When a 7 seed beats a 2 seed, like Wichita State did to Kansas in the last round, the standard narrative would be to view them as a surprise, Cindarella-like team. It’s hard to view Wichita State that way though because of their recent history of success. Two years ago they went to the Final Four and last year they were a 1 seed that lost only to the eventual runners-up, Kentucky. Wichita State is not an underdog but they’re also not unworthy of support. As a member of the Missouri Valley Conference, they still represent college basketball’s sympathetic second tier in a way that Notre Dame never could. Unless you’re a Notre Dame fan, I suggest throwing your support behind the Shockers.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #4 North Carolina Tarheels vs. #1 Wisconsin Badgers, 7:47 p.m. ET on TBS.

Wisconsin became my (and lots of other people’s) favorite team in the tournament this year when the team’s fascination with short-hand became public last week. That’s right, after their win last weekend, what seems like a majority of their press conference was focused on the team’s interest in the stenographer who was transcribing it. Nigel Hayes, a 6’8″ power forward, even sprinkled his answers with complicated and unexpected vocabulary words just to make things more interesting for her:

That’s enough for me — I’m now rooting for the Badgers to make it all the way to the Championship game.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #5 West Virginia Mountaineers vs. #1 Kentucky Wildcats, 9:45 p.m. ET on CBS.

Everything in the tournament, even the stenography obsession, is just a side-show to the ongoing saga of the Kentucky Wildcats. They’re undefeated and looking to become the first team to go through the entire season and win the championship without losing a game since the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers. There are only a few teams out there who are talented enough to challenge the Wildcats. The West Virginia Mountaineers are not one of those teams but they may be crazy enough to think they are and tough enough to have a shot despite their difference in talent.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #6 Xavier Musketeers vs. #2 Arizona Wildcats, 10:17 p.m. ET on TBS.

Arizona is one of the few teams with talent enough to match up against Kentucky. That should give them more than enough class to get past the Xavier Musketeers tonight. The best character on either of the teams is a senior center on Xavier named Matt Stainbrook who gave up his scholarship to his little brother, Tim, who is also on the team. The elder Stainbrook has been making some extra cash in his free time as the world’s largest (I’m guessing) Uber driver.

How March Madness and the NFL have switched places

Once upon a time — not so long ago — sports fans watched professional football and college basketball on television. That may not sound so different from today, but before the internet took over the world the way we were presented with these two sports was just a little bit different.

In the past, if you wanted to watch March Madness, you tuned your television to CBS. There it would stay, from around noon on the first Thursday of the NCAA Tournament until whenever the nets got cut down in celebration… or you ran out of beer… or had to eat. There was no channel hopping. All the games were on CBS, even if not all the games were televised since many of them overlap in time. The people who ran CBS would pick what they thought the best game would be and go with that. As the day went on, they reserved the right to switch from one game to another if the other was more exciting. As games neared their end, sometimes simultaneously, this resulted in a frantic back-and-forth telecast, that at its best was more exciting than watching a single game. Certainly part of what made March Madness so great — and specifically the first round of March Madness with its 32 games in 48 hours so great — was its overlapping, buzzer-beater-every-fifteen-minutes, relentless nature.

If you wanted to watch professional football, you had lots of options each Sunday during the fall, but they were heavily constrained by where you lived. Over the years, games were televised on every major broadcast network, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, plus cable channels like TNT and ESPN. Games were on at 1 p.m. ET and 4:30 p.m. ET every Sunday — usually about seven games at the earlier time and three or four in the later time-slot. The thing was, you only got access to one or sometimes two games at a time. No matter how bad the local team (and if you didn’t have a local team, you were assigned one) was, when they played that was the only game you could watch. When the local team was idle, the networks decided what game you had access to based on what they thought of the game and your geography.

Then, in 2009, everything changed for football viewers. The NFL launched a new cable channel called the NFL RedZone. From 1 p.m. ET to whenever the last 4:30 p.m. ET game ended, usually around 7:30 or 8 p.m. ET, the RedZone would show football, all the football, and nothing but the football. With one brilliant studio host, the RedZone captivated its audience, by steering them from game to game based on how exciting the game was; making sure they saw every score and almost every meaningful play. Watching the RedZone was an amazing experience and despite its ability to leave your brain spinning and your eyes aching, it was and still is incredibly popular. It changed the way people watch football. No more were they trapped watching a boring local game — no more were they even trapped watching a single game. The RedZone captured the exhilaration of those few frantic minutes of buzzer beaters in a March Madness broadcast and translated it to football viewers every Sunday.

Meanwhile, things were also changing in the world of college basketball. One of the tricky elements of March Madness for sports fans had always been how to watch the first round, given that much of it happened between noon and the end of work on a Thursday and Friday. In many offices, this meant widespread breakouts of bronchitis or ludicrously long lunch meetings. At some point though, some brilliant person at CBS realized that what most people have at work was not a television but a computer. CBS started streaming the games over the internet. Aside from the fact that early on, most places didn’t have the bandwidth to handle the sudden influx of people trying to stream video, the shift to internet created one vital difference in how people consumed March Madness: the curated channel experience that jumped the viewer from game to game was gone. In its place was a simple interface for you to choose which game you wanted to watch. Watching a blow-out? Want to check in on the other game? It was only a click (and usually the required viewing of an advertisement) away.

Within a couple years of this innovation, CBS made a similar shift in its television coverage. In 2010, CBS was forced to renegotiate their agreement with the NCAA to cover March Madness and as part of that negotiation, they agreed to share the rights with Turner Broadcasting System. Instead of using one channel to cover multiple games, they now used multiple channels simultaneously. When games overlapped, they were simply televised on different channels: CBS and TNT, TBS, or TruTV. The television experience now mimicked the online experience. The games were all available but you had to manage your experience by flipping from one game to another yourself.

These parallel evolutions in how professional football and the NCAA Basketball Tournament are presented to viewers each have their benefits and their disadvantages. Critics of the RedZone channel would say that the pace and narrative consistency of watching one football game at a time has been lost; that people no longer care about what team wins, just about individual plays and players. Proponents of the RedZone may point out that old-fashioned game-based television is still as available as it ever was and that the RedZone allows people to watch teams they could never (or less frequently) have seen in the past. Proponents of the multi-channel approach to March Madness will argue for its obvious superiority by saying that it has made every minute of every game available to viewers who otherwise would not have had a say in what they were watching; that it has democratized the viewing of college basketball. Critics of the multi-channel reality may argue that availability without curation simply cannot create the gasp-inducing thrill of the old way; that having to manage your own viewing experience in this way is like going to a restaurant and being forced to choose the ingredients for your dish instead of relying on the expertise of a chef.

What all sides should be able to agree on is that it’s curious how technology and time have popularized a curated experience in football while simultaneously eradicating a similar experience in college basketball. The moral of the story is that progress rarely moves in a straight line but usually twists and turns and doubles back on itself. What’s old is new and what’s new is old more frequently than not.

The End… for now.

What happened to Jeremy Lin?

Dear Sports Fan,

What happened to our incredible Jeremy Lin? What is he up to these days?

Thanks,
Jeehae

Dear Jeehae,

Jeremy Lin is still chugging along, playing basketball in the National Basketball Association (NBA), currently with the Los Angeles Lakers. He’s a solid NBA player but has never regained the spectacular play that made him a cultural phenomenon in 2012 when he played with the New York Knicks. Those crazy days of stardom which came to be known as “Linsanity” are now just a memory to be treasured or deconstructed.

For those of us who don’t remember or who never really knew what Linsanity was all about, here’s a short recap. At the start of 2012, Jeremy Lin was one of the dozens of people hovering around the fringes of NBA teams, good enough to have been signed by a team but not quite good enough to be a regular member of that team. Lin played his college basketball at Harvard where he played for four years and grew as a player each year. In his senior season, Lin was voted unanimously to the All-Ivy League First Team and received several other college honors as well. All-Ivy League First team is great, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into having a professional career. The Ivy League is a much weaker conference than the conferences most prospective NBA players play in. Indeed, Lin was not drafted by any of the 30 teams in the 2010 NBA draft but, after a decent showing in the NBA’s summer league, he was signed to a two-year contract by the Golden State Warriors. This seemed like a great fin. The Warriors were Lin’s favorite team, having grown up nearby, and as the first Chinese or Taiwanese-American player in the NBA, Lin was disproportionately popular for an unheralded rookie, especially among the Warriors already large Asian-American fan base. After one year with the Warriors, Lin was waived or released from the team. This isn’t unusual for a player of his stature in the league, and Lin wouldn’t have to wait long for a second and third chance. The first team to pick him up was the Houston Rockets but Lin could not break through the three more established players that team already had at his position. The Rockets cut him as well. After several weeks without a team, the New York Knicks claimed Lin.

Even though the New York Knicks signed Lin, he was no sure thing to succeed there, or even to play. He needed a little bit of luck just to get onto the court. He found that luck in January, after a particularly bad game from the Knicks starters prompted then Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni to turn to Lin in desperation (and perhaps to instill some competitive fear in the rest of the team.) Lin took off. For a couple weeks, it seemed like he could do no wrong on the basketball court. He set records for performance in his first handful of starts. He averaged over 20 points and seven assists in his first five games and made a couple memorable buzzer beaters. Lin got famous in a hurry. After the season was over, the Knicks were expected to give a long term contract to their new most popular player. It wasn’t meant to be. Lin was a restricted free agent, which means other teams were able to make contract offers to him, but the Knicks could match their offers and keep Lin if they wanted. The Houston Rockets, perhaps feeling regret over having had Lin on their team and then releasing him, made Lin an offer he couldn’t refuse and the Knicks couldn’t match. All of a sudden, Lin was a Rocket and Linsanity in New York was just a memory.

Since then, the Knicks have never recaptured the city or the world’s attention the way they had it when Lin was a thing, nor have they been very successful as a basketball team. Lin too has never been as good as he was in those first days in New York. He struggled for two seasons in Houston before being traded to Los Angeles in a move that was more about Houston releasing themselves from the financial obligation of paying him than it was about basketball. In Los Angeles this year, Lin has been a part of one of the worst teams in the league. Still, he’s in the NBA and shows no signs of leaving, which is actually more of an achievement than you might think. The NBA is an amazingly shallow league — there simply aren’t that many jobs for basketball players and each year between 30 and 60 new, young, players come out of college or Europe to compete for jobs. Lin should be proud of simply staying in the league.

How should we evaluate Linsanity with the benefit of hindsight? It was truly a remarkable performance from a relatively unknown player but the phenomenon of Linsanity was also aided by two important factors: Lin’s unique backstory as the first Asian-American NBA player and the fact that he was playing for the New York Knicks, a marquee franchise because of its history and location. Streaks of impressive play by newcomers do happen. Any player who is skilled enough to make the NBA is skilled enough to put together a string of seemingly unlikely statistical performances but they don’t always become cultural stars. A good comparison is the case of Hasaan Whiteside. Whiteside was almost a complete unknown before this year. He had played college basketball at Marshall University in West Virginia and, unlike Lin, was actually drafted by an NBA team. Before long though, he was out of the league and played in the NBA Development League, Lebanon, and China, before being welcomed back into the NBA by the Miami Heat. When he broke into their lineup this January, he quickly became a basketball revelation of similar proportions to Lin. Whiteside is an athletic seven-foot tall player who puts up remarkable scoring, rebounding, and blocking statistics. As famous as he rapidly became in basketball circles, he never broke out of the sports section and onto the news pages. Whiteside is not notable from a personal interest or historical standpoint and Miami, without LeBron James to make them notorious, is not as interesting a team as the New York Knicks are (even when they’re terrible.)

Linsanity was a special time and Lin is a good NBA player but he’ll probably never be as good again as he was in his first games with the Knicks.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

Sports Forecast for Sunday, March 21, 2015 – March Madness Edition

We’re interrupting our normal daily sports forecasts to concentrate on March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and American cultural obsession. We’ll run you through the games each day and give you a little flavor for each one.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #7 Michigan State Spartans vs. #2 Virginia Cavaliers, 12:10 p.m. ET on CBS.

The first game of the day could easily be the best game of the weekend. The Cavaliers make it hard for teams they play against by playing strong, physical, smothering defense and slow but effective offense. Michigan State is a chameleon of a team that may not mind playing Virginia’s type of game.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #8 San Diego State Aztecs vs. #1 Duke Blue Devils, 2:40 p.m. ET on CBS.

With Villanova losing last night, we’re down to three 1 seeds left in the tournament. Most of America will be rooting for San Diego State to reduce that number by another but I doubt they’ll be able to beat Duke to do it.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #7 Wichita Shockers vs. #2 Kansas Jayhawks, 5:15 p.m. ET on CBS.

This battle of Kansas has been highly anticipated from the moment the bracket was released. These two teams, despite being neighbors, have not actually played a game against each other since 1993. Kansas is the traditional basketball power in the state but Vegas has this game as almost a dead even matchup.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #11 Dayton Flyers vs. #3 Oklahoma Sooners, 6:10 p.m. ET on TNT.

With UAB and Georgia State losing yesterday, Dayton became one of the few remaining teams that could seriously be called underdogs. Oklahoma had a reasonably easy first game against Albany while Dayton has had to play two tough, close games. Watch for Dayton to show its fatigue in down moments of this game.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #7 Iowa Hawkeyes vs. #2 Gonzaga Bulldogs, 7:10 p.m. ET on TBS.

Both these teams had an unexpectedly easy time in their first round matchups. Because they won so easily, it feels like we don’t know what to expect in this game.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #8 Oregon Ducks vs. #1 Wisconsin Badgers, 7:45 p.m. ET on TRU.

These schools have totally oppositional characters when it comes to sports teams. Oregon is futuristic and sleek, Wisconsin, traditional and a little stodgy. Their characters are not always directly exhibited in how they play, more in how we observe them. This Wisconsin basketball team has a little more playfulness in their games than one would expect of a Wisconsin team.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #5 West Virginia Mountaineers vs. #4 Maryland Terrapins, 8:40 p.m. ET on TNT.

These well-matched teams will be competing for the opportunity to play against still-unbeaten Kentucky in the next round. Of the two teams, it seems like Maryland would have a better shot at upsetting Kentucky, so let’s root for them.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #5 University of Northern Iowa Panthers vs. #4 Louisville Cardinals, 9:40 p.m. ET on TBS.

Louisville broke my heart when they beat the UC Irvine Anteaters in a close game on Friday. Just for that, I’m hoping that the University of Northern Iowa and their star player Seth Tuttle make short work of the Cardinals today.

Sports Forecast for Saturday, March 20, 2015 – March Madness Edition

We’re interrupting our normal daily sports forecasts to concentrate on March Madness, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and American cultural obsession. We’ll run you through the games each day and give you a little flavor for each one.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #14 UAB Blazers vs. #11 UCLA Bruins, 12:10 p.m. ET on CBS.

This is a real glass-half-full, glass-half-empty game. On one hand, it’s impossible for both of these teams who provided us with exciting upsets in their first games to advance to the Sweet Sixteen. On the other hand, one of them surely will. Although their seeds are not so different, their history as basketball schools could not be more different. UAB is a true underdog. UCLA is an overdog fallen on hard times masquerading as an underdog. Because of that, I’ll be rooting for UAB.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #8 Cincinnati Bearcats vs. #1 Kentucky Wildcats, 2:40 p.m. ET on CBS.

“What happens when a bearcat meets a wildcat” sounds like the start of a joke my friends and I would have told in middle school. What’s likely to happen here is that the Wildcats will win but one thing is for sure, they’re not going to escape a game with Cincinnati without a few bumps and bruises.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #10 Ohio State Buckeyes vs. #2 Arizona Wildcats, 5:15 p.m. ET on CBS.

Ohio State needed overtime to get by VCU. Arizona waltzed by Texas Southern. Still, if Ohio State point guard D’Angelo Russell has enough in his tank after playing 44 minutes on Thursday, I could see Arizona having a tough time winning this game. Russell was one of the most impressive players I’ve seen so far in the tournament.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #14 Georgia State Panthers vs. #6 Xavier Musketeers, 6:10 p.m. ET on TNT.

Georgia State is the underdog everyone loves to love this year. Their star player is the coach’s son. Their coach tore his achilles celebrating with the team and seems determined to break something else as he continues to celebrate. Xavier should win this game but the entire world will be pulling for Georgia State.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #8 North Carolina State Wolfpack vs. #1 Villanova Wildcats, 7:10 p.m. ET on TBS.

Villanova was thought to be the weakest of the four 1 seeds coming into the tournament. The fact that this game is on TBS shows a continued lack of respect. The fun thing about sports is that we’ll get a clear signal from the outcome of the game about whether the disrespect was merited.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #5 Utah Utes vs. #4 Georgetown Hoyas, 7:45 p.m. ET on CBS.

Georgetown fans were breathing a sigh of relief after their team won its first game in the tournament. In recent years, the Hoyas have been prone to being upset by lower seeded teams early in the tournament. Losing this game wouldn’t be an upset. Utah and Georgetown are a pretty even matchup. Perhaps the most even of the day.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #5 Arkansas Razerbacks vs. #4 North Carolina Tarheels, 8:40 p.m. ET on TNT.

Both these teams just barely escaped being upset in the first round, North Carolina to Harvard and Arkansas to Woffard. Neither one looked very impressive but one of them will be moving on. I wonder if we’ll be more impressed with the teams in this game or equally nonplussed.

NCAA Men’s Basketball – #6 Butler Bulldogs vs. #3 Notre Dame Fighting Irish, 9:40 p.m. ET on TBS.

It seems like ages ago that Notre Dame opened the tournament with a close win over Northeastern. In real-time it was only Thursday afternoon. Butler beat a disjointed Texas team but one of their best players went down with a knee injury. They’ll need him playing at least at three-quarters strength in order to challenge Notre Dame.

Which March Madness region was most mad in the first round?

Yesterday, I introduced a new metric to the world of college sports, the Madness Metric. By subtracting the expected sum of the two seeds in each round, assuming only favorites win, from the sum of the seeds of the teams that are actually playing, we can get a fairly good sense of just how mad March Madness has really been. Now that the first round (the round of 64, which is officially called the second round but which everyone reasonable calls the first round) is done, I thought it would  be a good idea to check in on our new metric and calculate it for the first time. We’ll do it by region or quarter of the overall field. Each region has teams ranked or seeded from 1-16. In the first round, 1 plays 16, 2 plays 15, and so on. In the second round, starting today, if all the favorites had won, 1 would play 8, 2 would play 7, 3 would play 6, and 4 would play 5. As you know from watching the last couple days of basketball, that’s not exactly how it worked out. The Madness Metric will tell us just how far off we are:

East (+5): Thanks to 11 seed Dayton beating 6 seed Providence. Many people feel like this wasn’t exactly fair because Dayton played their first game, the play-in game in their home stadium, and then this game nearby. Every other favorite in this region won their games.

Midwest (0): Not mad at all! All the favorites won.

West (+11): 10 seed Ohio State University beat 7 seeded VCU, but most of the +11 is due to the darlings of the tournament so far, 14 seed Georgia State which beat 3 seed Baylor, sending themselves to the round of 32 and their coach to the floor.

South (+16): This is the craziest of the regions and all its lunacy will be concentrated into one round of 32 game between 11 seed UCLA and 14 seed UAB. One of these Cinderella teams will be going to the sweet sixteen at least.

Total (+32): This is the first time I’ve ever calculated this metric, so I’m not sure about its history, but this doesn’t seem as crazy overall as one would have expected given that the first day was said to have been the craziest day ever. I’d have to do some historical analysis to figure this out.

As the tournament goes on, I’ll keep you posted about just how crazy it is. Thanks for reading.

 

March Madness mathematical musings

It’s March Madness time again, which means everyone is wandering around looking at print-outs or electronic versions of a bracket. The bracket shows a tournament with 64 teams divided into four groups of 16 each. Within each group of 16, the teams are ranked or seeded from 1 to 16. In the first round of the tournament, represented on the outside of the bracket, 1 plays 16, 2 plays 15, 3 plays 14, and so on until you reach the 8 vs. 9 game. Many of these pairs of numbers are instantly recognizable to most sports fans. We all know that a 16 has never beaten a 1, that 12 seeds seem to upset 5 seeds more frequently than one would expect, and that once you get to an 8 vs. 9 or a 7 vs. 10 game, the teams are so evenly matched that you can’t call it an upset when the 9 or 10 seed wins. It occurred to me yesterday (this is a pretty obvious realization, but cut me some slack, I did have a fever) that if you add the two seed numbers, every matchup in the first round adds up to 17.

Cool! Now I know lots of ways to add to 17. I wasn’t sure how this was going to help me in life but I kept thinking. 17… 17 is one more than 16. 16 is the number of teams in each quarter of the tournament. So, the seed numbers add up to one more than the number of teams left in each quarter of the bracket. Does that work for later rounds too? Well, let’s assume there are no upsets in the first round. Seeds 1-8 advance, seeds 9-16 lose. 1 plays 8, 2 plays 7, 3 plays 6, and 4 plays 5 in the next round. All of those numbers add up to nine, which is one more than eight. Eight is the number of teams left in that side of the bracket! If you keep going with this logic, again with no upsets, it keeps working for a while. The next round would have 1 playing 4 and 2 playing 3. 1 beats 4, 2 beats 3, and then 1 and 2 play for the right to represent this quarter of the overall tournament in the… Final Four! That’s when the four groups of 16 teams merge and become a single tournament. This is where the logic breaks down, because you would expect all four 1 seeds to make it, so that round’s sum would be two even though there are four teams left and the same would be true for the final game when there are only two teams left.

I might have lost you there for a minute (or maybe forever) but I’m about to bring it back to reality a little. We know that the favorites don’t always win during March Madness. Yesterday it seemed like the favorites were barely going to win at all! Already we’ve had 14 seeds beat 3 seeds, 11 beating 6, and 9 beating 8. This means that things won’t work so nicely in the second round. For example, instead of 3 seed Iowa State playing 6 seed SMU (adds up to 9) in the next round, we’re going to have 14 seed UAB playing 11 seed UCLA. 14 plus 11 is 25 not 9. The sum trick only works if the favorites always win.

Once I realized this, I was disappointed for a few minutes. Being disappointed because upsets ruin my little math trick is silly, of course. Upsets are what make March Madness so great. They’re what puts the Madness in March Madness. Then I had a (minuscule) Eureka moment. We can quantify exactly how “mad” each quarter of the bracket is by adding up the seed numbers of the teams that advance and subtracting the number we would have gotten if all the favorites had won. Call it the Madness Metric™. Using that same example of UAB and UCLA advancing instead of Iowa State and SMU, you would take their seeds, 14 and 11, add them to get 25 and then subtract 9 (the expected seed sum for the next round of the tournament) to get 14. 14 is pretty mad!

It’s not an advanced metric by any means, but it is a fun way to compare the regions (each quarter of the tournament is called a region because it’s played in one spot, not because the teams are from one place) to see which one is the maddest of them all! I’ll report back at the end of each round on this metric.