March_24_7 vs the Bracketology World - 2012 Edition

Here are the results of some of the Bracketologists that you might know:

This was a very good year for March_24_7. As you can see, I beat Joe Lunardi of ESPN (yet again) as well as almost every other nationally known bracketologist. Out of over 100 brackets posted at the Bracket Project, March_24_7 came in 8th.

The following table shows a breakdown of all the big misses (3 seed lines or more). As you can see, BYU was a big surprise to fall to a 14 seed. Creighton was a bit of a surprise to fall to an 8 seed, and on the other end of the spectrum, a few bracketologists were projecting Southern Miss much closer to the bubble than they actually were.

This was the first year that the Selection Committee released their full 1-68 "S-Curve" rankings. This is the order that they ranked each of the 68 teams prior to placing them in the bracket. Due to the multitude of rules for bracketing (avoiding early matchups between schools from same conference, avoiding re-matches from the non-conference season, etc.) the Selection Committee is always forced to make some "adjustments" to this initial S-Curve. The biggest adjustment this year seems to be BYU who was originally slotted as a 12 seed but fell all the way to a 14 in order to fit all the pieces together. Without having been a part of the Committee, it is hard to comment on this move, but it does seem at first glance to be a rather large shift, and Marquette can't be happy with the potential of facing a #14 seed BYU while other #3 seeds will be getting a much easier first round matchup. At the very least, we can conclude that most bracketologists were right to have BYU seeded as an 11 or 12 as forseeing adjustments to the initial S-Curve is almost impossible from an outsiders perspective.

Stay tuned for more analysis of the specifics of this year's brackets. I will once again be writting a "letter to the committee" where I will outline the good and bad I saw in this year's bracket. It should be posted in the next couple days.

Once the games begin, I will be keeping track of conference performances relative to expectations. This will allow us to get a look at which conferences might have been over/underrated based on their total number of qualifying teams as well as the seeding of those teams.

Finally, I am excited to announce a new feature that will begin once the 2012 Tournament comes to a close. Starting in April, I will be building a list of the best and worst NCAA teams based on performance relative to expectations. It will be a way to see just which teams over the last 2 decades have overperformed their seeds and which teams have been most likely to be upset early. My plan is to add 1-2 teams a week to the list so that it is complete sometime around the start of the 2012-2013 season.