2023 March Madness - A 9, Two 5s and a 4

I’m sure you all have heard it.  The conventional wisdom for these brackets is to pick a #1 to win it all, or at least make the Final 4.  It’s also considered smart to pick a 12 to beat a 5.  12s are usually the best of the small conference schools, and the 5s are often times fading major conference schools.  This year could not have gone any more against conventional wisdom.

Two #5 seeds and 0 #1, #2 or #3 seeds made the Final 4.  Other than Connecticut, none of the other 3 teams had EVER made a Final 4.  I’d like to think it’s a bit of a changing of the guard in college basketball.  I mean, blue blood teams like North Carolina, Villanova, Michigan and Wisconsin didn’t even make the field.  Other teams like Kentucky, Duke, Purdue and Kansas were long gone by the time the Sweet 16 rolled around.  It’s just a strange set of teams this Final 4, and having gone to at least 2 Final 4s when they were held in Houston, I had to pick this year to NOT go.  D’oh!

3 of the 4 teams in the Final 4 made it there as underdogs if you go by the seeds.  The only non-underdog: SDSU.  I also see that they are installed as a 1.5 point favorite.  Seeing them make the Championship game would be amazing.  I think San Diego will be a pretty fun place to be in the next week or so (I mean, it usually is, but you know what I mean).

If you look at the South region, the far away winner was Charlotte N.  She wound up getting 28/32 points out of this region.  The second best was 22.  The only 3 games she missed were Virginia over Furman, and Arizona winning 2 games.  That’s it.  She had SDSU beating Creighton in the Regional final.  The average number of points won in this region was 9.05, so if you are wondering why she’s so high up in the standings, there are 2 things going for her: she still has options going forward and she racked up a lot of points up until now.  Impressive.

As for the Midwest bracket, there was another clear winner.  Alyssa B. finished with 27/32 points.  She was 3 clear of the #2 bracket in this region.  The only games she missed were Iowa State over Pitt in the 1^st round, and Xavier over Texas in the Sweet 16.  That’s it.  Unfortunately for her, she was totally knocked out of the pool with the UCLA loss, so probably has no idea she did that.

I’m getting the idea that it might be fun to offer some prizes for people that win these regions.  Maybe something like $50 if you win a region.  I could run numbers from the opening weekend if I did that.  The overall prize money would be lower, but it might keep more people interested.  I’ll give it some thought.  It’s more work for me, but it would also be really fun.  I’ll think about it.

We are down to 12 people that are still alive for something.  Only 4 people can win it all, which shouldn’t be all that surprising given the last game counts for 32 points.  What is amazing is that 2 of those 4 people that can still win had Purdue winning it all.  Just goes to show that you should never give up on your bracket until you are officially eliminated.  A big chunk of that reason is because no one picked Miami-Florida or Florida Atlantic to win the whole thing.  If they win, it goes to whoever had the most points going into the finals.  No one had Florida Atlantic in the Final 4, much less the finals.  Only one person had Miami-Florida in the Finals, but he only has 56 points right now, and 16 extra points would not vault him into the lead (Hack a Zach has 77).  That’s pretty rough.

There are 3 people that can finish in the money, including Hack a Zach, who can still win that can not get any more points.  They need chaos to happen, but given the tournament so far, chaos seems totally possible.

Charlotte N. solidified her hold on finishing in the money, and is now sitting at 75% and is still the only person that get all remaining points.  Hack a Zach is kind of the opposite.  He has a 62.5% chance to finish in the money, but he can’t get any more points.  Everyone else falls in between.

I was also hoping that tie-breakers wouldn’t be needed, but we have not been able to eliminate them entirely.  As a matter of fact, in 5 of the 8 remaining scenarios, 4^th place ends in some kind of tie.  There is still a scenario where 4^th place ends in a 3-way tie, and 2 of the 3 places will get nothing.  I hope that doesn’t happen, but that’s why the percentages look a little weird.  If there were no ties, all the odds would be multiples of 12.5%.

Here is the Matrix:

Name	1st Place	2nd Place	3rd Place	4th Place
Charlotte N. - Connecticut	31.2500%	16.6667%	16.6667%	10.4167%
Hack a Zach (Dave F.) - Purdue	31.2500%	10.4167%	10.4167%	10.4167%
Steve D. #1 - Purdue	Creighton	25.0000%	12.5000%	Kansas St.
Rob I. #1 - San Diego State	25.0000%	Gonzaga	Princeton	4.1667%
Chun W. #3 - Texas	Texas	Texas	12.5000%	16.6667%
Noah N. - Alabama	Creighton	Texas	12.5000%	16.6667%
CAAT #4 (Adam O.) - Connecticut	Texas	Texas	25.0000%	Creighton
Harrell R. #2 - Connecticut	UCLA	Texas	Texas	25.0000%
Mustard (Nikolajs B.) - San Diego State	Xavier	18.7500%	6.2500%	Gonzaga
Pete J. #4 - Connecticut	Creighton	25.0000%	Creighton	Texas
Ryan W. - Purdue	12.5000%	Creighton	Kansas St.	12.5000%
Emily T. - Alabama	Houston	4.1667%	4.1667%	4.1667%

Good luck to everyone that is left.  It’s been really fun, and I hope you can contain your excitement for another week.  I’ll be back later with a breakdown of the first semi-final game.

Good Luck!!!!!