The Day the Bracket Died

And then there were four…

Today, I am going to analyze my bracket and how we got to this point where mine is no longer in serious contention. I used to make multiple brackets as a kid, but then concluded that I couldn’t be authentic with my predictions if I had various iterations. Thus, here it is:

With how strong the 1-seeds were (and the 2s also separated themselves from the 3s), I knew this was going to be a chalky year. I tried to differentiate with some early-round upsets before it was mostly the best teams further in the bracket, but to no avail. I had six protected seeds lose before the Sweet 16 (Texas A&M, Iowa State, Houston, Purdue, Kentucky, and St. John’s). Half of them ended up falling in the Round of 32, but I failed to predict the team who would actually reach the Sweet 16 in all of those scenarios.

In hindsight, there isn’t anything major I would change. I could have bought into Drake being undefeated in Q1/2 and effectively slowing games down against better teams. I should have realized that my anti-BYU bias was probably a result of a freak awful shooting game last year against Duquesne for a team that was otherwise primed to make a run. I’m also fine with my Houston stand, for they had an extremely tough road from an analytical perspective. The biggest thing I would’ve changed is having Gonzaga beat Clemson in the Sweet 16. If I was already making the bet that Gonzaga would beat Houston, that probably meant they were a true top 10 team in the country. I was also not aware of how much Dillon Hunter’s injury impacted the Tigers, further reducing my faith in them.

Still, an awful opening round doesn’t spell doom for brackets as long as none of the core pieces are eliminated. With one Elite 8 and a few Sweet 16 teams already gone, it was a truly bad bracket at the time, but still capable of winning a pool. I just had to be nearly perfect the rest of the way.

And, for the most part, I was. Even though Wisconsin, Gonzaga, and Illinois bowed out a round earlier than I had them in my bracket, my remaining seven Elite 8 teams all survived to the Sweet 16. Fast forward to the Elite 8, and I nailed all of them except Houston. Most importantly, my entire Final Four was still alive. I just needed to hit on a couple of 2-over-1 upsets.

You see, the problem with such a chalky NCAA Tournament is that EVERYONE has a pretty good bracket. With all of the favorites making it to the Elite 8 (who were also the top eight KenPom teams entering March Madness), we would have expected to see one or two of the one seeds lose in this round. It looked like there would finally be an upset with Texas Tech up 10 over Florida late, but the Gators stormed back, aided by a couple missed front-ends of a 1-and-1 by the red-raiders, to punch their ticket to the Final Four. Combined with an easy Duke victory, Sunday was setting up to be make or break for my bracket.

Now, you may be asking why I had Tennessee and Michigan State instead of Houston and Auburn. Although I love college ball and follow it closely, my predictions are very unscientific. Tennessee in my Final Four was more a byproduct of thinking Houston had a “region of death” with Gonzaga and Clemson, and that the Vols were strong enough on offense to supplement their suffocating defense. Once Houston and Tennessee squared off, however, I was very concerned that the Vols would be one-dimensional on offense and rely too heavily on Zakai Ziegler and/or Chaz Lanier. That is exactly what happened, and Houston cruised to victory.

As for Sparty, it was really a gut feeling that Izzo would outcoach Bruce Pearl and buying some belief that people had figured out how to keep Auburn in check. I thought both of them had quite easy paths to the Elite 8, and was a bit concerned that having three 1s and a 2 would be too chalky, even for this year’s landscape. As a result, I had Michigan State in my Final Four. I don’t really have much else to offer other than that Auburn was the more talented team and Sparty failed to capitalize whenever the door was a little bit open.

In theory, my bracket shouldn’t be done: I still have my champion and finalists remaining. The problem is that there are other people with the exact same matchup and victor as me who performed better in the earlier rounds. Differentiating with 2-seeds caused my downfall. It’s an unfortunate way to go out, but I was never going to predict 14 consecutive games where the favorite wins, or 19 of the past 20. After all, it’s March. Yes, having a relatively chalky bracket is the best way to be successful. I acknowledge that. Mine just had a few deviations here and there. Since the field expanded to 64 teams, the average sum of the Final Four teams’ seeds was about 12. My bracket understood that we should observe a value below 12 as mine added up to only six. At the time, I felt I was striking a balance between realistic and boring. Clearly, it wasn’t boring enough.

I expect there to be fewer upsets going forward. With NIL and an open transfer portal giving top teams more opportunity to pay players to come there, the Cinderellas of old may not stick around for much longer. I don’t anticipate seeing 1-seeds this strong year in and year out, but the landscape of college basketball should become more top-heavy. In a way, the men’s bracket will begin to look more like the women’s bracket. I think we’ll see a larger cluster of teams at the top, giving way for talented teams seeded in the 4-6 range to continue to make deep runs, but the sport is forever changed. For now, though, we have three incredible games to finish off the pinnacle of college sports. Let’s just sit down and enjoy them.