It's That Time of Year Again!

Greetings fellow NCAA Basketball Bracketology fans and nerds.  It's that time of year again.  That time when College Basketball fans start turning their attention to the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, and start to try and figure out which teams are on their way to a bid in the big dance, which ones are on the bubble to get in, and where they may ultimately get seeded should they get in.

This has become an annual endeavor for me dating back to the 2006-07 season.  It all started for me when I was becoming increasing frustrated as a Wisconsin Badger Fan by projections of a team that looked to me when watching them to be worthy of the programs first #1 seed continuing to get projected as a #2 or #3 by pundits and prognosticators leading up to selection Sunday.  So I opened up EXCEL, starting plugging data of what were generally considered to be the top 16-20 teams into a spreadsheet, and started analyzing the data to see what in the world I was missing.  The more I analyzed, and tried to develop algorithms and formulas for sorting and ranking, the more teams I kept adding to the spreadsheet, until I found myself trying to figure out not just where Wisconsin would get seeded, but which teams would get in, which ones would be left out, and what I thought the seeds of those teams should be.  I did miserably, as I recall.  I know I still felt like going into the Selection Show that Wisconsin had earned a #1 seed, and they wound up a #2.  I was convinced the committee had completely blown it ... at least until Wisconsin was upset in the Round of 32 by #7 Seed UNLV.

That exercise hooked me though.  From that point on, every year (except 2018) I have gone about the same exercise, and a few years ago, started sharing my projections on this site, and submitting to the The Bracket Project as a way of measuring my projections against other geeks like me across the county.  Generally speaking, its something I have slowly gotten better at with each passing season (though my results last year suggest regression).  I'm no expert, and don't claim to be.  However, I would argue I'm as good most years as the Joe Lunardi's and Jerry Palm's of the world who are paraded out every day in March on ESPN and CBS Sports respectively as the resident experts on who is going to get in, who is going to get left out, and who's going to be seeded where.  It's actually not something to brag about ... those guys are outperformed consistently year in and year out by dozens of people at the bracket project.  But, I would argue you can get just as good analysis from me most years as you can from them.

So thanks for stopping in, or stopping back, and checking things out as we get ready to embark on another season of this.  I hope you find the content interesting and thought provoking.