bukie

On the bright side, that combination would set you a record for the fastest complete implosion of the bracket. It was dead before the games even started.

Crawford playing absolutely out of his mind today to keep Kentucky in it.

That's not so much moving the seed line as an entirely different bracket, which was likely ready well ahead of time just in case. The committee likely had to have 4 separate brackets ready depending on the results of Sunday's games (one with Illinois/Georgia both losing, one with Illinois/Georgia both winning, one with Illinois winning/Georgia losing, and one with Illinois losing/Georgia winning). That affects the S-curve itself, not the individual seed-line moves. More often than not, there are very few seed-line moves, only used in cases where a conference team HAS to move to the other half of a bracket (i.e. Marquette this year). The only conferences where seed-line moves would have been forced to come into play would be the Big East with 8 teams, and the Pac 10 and Big 12 with 6 teams each. More often, the committee will move teams along the same seed line to a different matchup within the same seed-line (for example, say Notre Dame and Villanova were matched up with each other on the S-curve...easy enough to shift Villanova over to another 5-12 matchup and move a small conference team into that slot with ND). This is why I am inclined to believe the seed difference is at least as significant as it looks. The closest matchups are things like the worst 2 seed against the best 3 seed (and so-on down with 4-5 and 8-9 matchups).

That is awful. I hope Hill is working on some pitch he has never thrown before. A strike? (kidding)

Teams get moved by seed line, yes, but often to account for conference conflicts. So, obviously teams don't get moved from the 8 line to the 9 line, or vice versa, since that doesn't do anything. Same with 4 to 5 and 2 to 3, which are the only other seed lines that are consecutively expected to be played. 1 seeds are never moved off the 1 seed line (since the whole bracket is built around those 1 seeds). If anything, the gap between a 2 and 3, a 4 and 5, or an 8 and 9 is smaller than it should be as the result of teams moving seed lines. The only team this year which obviously appeared to be moved down a line was Marquette (since there were already 4 BE teams in the 4/5/12/13 bracket in Pitt, UConn, ND and Villanova).

Why the .5's? The way I see it: Purdue - 6 seed - 1 win Michigan State - 5 seed - 1 win Wisconsin - 3 seed - 2 wins Indiana - 8 seed - 1 win Which comes out to 5 expected wins. Despite how consecutive-seed games may seem like toss-ups, the higher seed is still the expected favorite.

This morning I got this: Hey, he apologized and promised to correct it on the air. That's much more than I'd expect of any broadcaster, especially one of an opposing team.

Actually, the only lower seeds I have winning in games today are Kansas State, Arizona and Texas A&M (I'm high on the Big 12 and Pac-10 this year...).

I have chalk in all 4 of these games too, with Marquette the strongest 6 seed and Kentucky arguably the weakest 11 seed. Actually, the game I am most concerned about is Pitt/ORU, because I'm worried Pitt spent all their mojo/karma/good luck on the BE tourney.

That was a bit of a non-sequitur...

I'm confused...what did you do with Tim, SanClementeFan? SCF is Tim's non-admin account so he can check on the site from that vantage point. Although Tim no longer lives in San Clemente. [-X Bah, I was going to make up some corporate excuse, like as part of the CBS deal, the CIO of CBS sports is now the administrator, and Tim was given a nice severance package. :)

I've got UCLA, Texas (although I'm not happy with this pick), Louisville and Wisconsin in the Final Four. UCLA over Wisconsin in the final.

To me, that lineup looks like Pujols-Glaus and pray for walks.

John Gasaway does a bracket breakdown based on efficiency margin. Kansas was stupidly efficient this year.

I'm in as throwing darts blindfolded, since I might as well try it to pick a decent bracket.

Wow, the Giants are bad. And the Reds and Cardinals make me smile, for now.

If the Roberts trade is made, suddenly DeRosa is the new Cintron/Cedeno/Patterson. And DeRosa certainly has a leg up on the lot of them.

This just feels like one of those years where 10-12 teams are significantly better than everyone else. UNC, Kansas, Memphis, UCLA, Duke, Texas, Tennessee, Louisville, Georgetown, Xavier, Wisconsin...all of them feel like easy picks to the Sweet 16. My bracket currently has all 4 1's to the Elite Eight, against two 2's and two 3's. Although I have a 1, a 2, and two 3's in the FF.

Wisconsin is a very good, consistent team, and could be very dangerous if they make it to Detroit especially. According to efficiency ratings, USC is worse than their first round opponent, Kansas State, although KSU is extremely inconsistent. I'd be hard pressed to see USC winning 2 games.

Wait, so the argument against Wood being the closer is that he hasn't been the closer before? If anyone actually applied that argument, the closer position would simply disappear over the next 10 years.

i mean, maybe they got screwed, but they'd lose in the first or second round anyway. that's why i really don't feel too bad for bubble teams that don't get in. That brings up a good point, has a 11, 12 or 13 seed at large team ever made the Final Four? Off the top of my head, both LSU (1986) and George Mason (2006) made the Final Four as 11-seeds. but George Mason wasn't an at large, right? UNC Wilmington won the auto bid that year for the Colonial.

Bayless was back for the conference tournament, where Arizona crushed OSU by 40 and lost a close one to Stanford. The actual RPI number makes very little difference. 12-4 in a BCS conference is still 12-4 in a BCS conference, and the 4th best conference by RPI. There's just no ignoring that, and the crazy situation of the conference tournament basically destroys the importance of it, aside from Georgia getting the auto bid. Essentially, since January, Kentucky has been, by far, the better team.

I'll try to get an answer to each question: 1) 10 conference wins is something, but 12 is something else. I mean, 12-4 is 12-4. There's just no precedent, and I definitely agree that the situation for the conference tournament put the committee in a no-win situation with Kentucky, as leaving them out would give them the best argument ever for being slighted. 2) Arizona was without their two best players for the end of the conference season. Like Sheehan said, you can either make the argument that those 2 ASU wins over Arizona were good for ASU, or not bad for Arizona, but you can't make both arguments. The committee apparently took into account the injury to Bayless and discounted that bad portion of the season. 3) The RPI mostly counts in these ways: Good wins (vs. top 50/100), bad losses (vs. >200), and overall records vs. those groups. RPI is more a measure of what a team has accomplished during the year than a measure of how good a team is or will play going forward. It appears that the committee puts a team in the field based on what they accomplished during the year, and then seeds them based on how good they are or will play going forward. This is why an Indiana gets an 8 seed, or a Butler gets a 7. Syracuse was a top seed in the NIT, so it would appear they weren't that far out from being selected. Although I am still surprised that Illinois State didn't get selected, for having a very good year in a very good league.

Here's BP's reasoning on some of the "bubble" teams: Kentucky: Illinois State: Arizona: Baylor: Kansas State: Virginia Tech: Syracuse: Oregon: Arizona State:

BP actually picked every team right. A good set of reasoning as to each pick, and narrowing down the bubble.