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We are back tonight with more basketball. I hope you all got to look at the previous posts, as they do a good job at breaking down just where everyone stands and what needs to happen for all the people still alive for 1st place.
For anyone that had 100% listed next to a team in the Sweet
16 posting, you HAVE to have that team win in order to stay alive. If that team loses, you don’t have any path
to winning the pool. You want as few of
those teams as possible. The more of
those teams you have, the harder it is for you.
I’ll use my only remaining entry as an example. I have 5 teams that MUST win for me to stay
alive. All but one of those teams is
favored to win their game, and the one
that isn’t is Xavier over Texas (ironic given my hatred for Xavier this
tournament). I went to gambling site to
see what kind of odds I could get for placing a bet that all 5 teams would
win. What I got was that if I bet $10 on
this outcome, I would get paid out $112.30, so the odds are about 11-1 that I
will get eliminated before the weekend. Ouch…. That’s the penalty for doing poorly in the
first few rounds.
Here’s the breakdown for the first two games tonight:
Game 49
Kansas State v Michigan State
Vegas Line: Michigan State -1
Picks for Kansas State: 50
Picks for Michigan State: 15
Picks for Other: 167
If you add up the remaining seeds, you might think this was the
wacky bracket, but the appearance of Princeton in the South region gives it
that honor. This is the bracket with the
highest best remaining seed – and that best seeded team isn’t even favored to
win it’s next game. Kansas State is the
favorite by the seeds as a 3. Michigan
State is a 7. I think Vegas liked the
Izzo magic, and I don’t see a great reason to go against that. I will say that Kansas State was better than
Michigan State for virtually the entire season.
Every team that is alive right now is playing well, so that kind of evens
out. I am better served having MSU win,
so I’m going to root for that (I probably would root for it anyway).
I was curious about how many people had this matchup picked
correctly. Only 30 people had Michigan
State v Kansas State here. There are 2
pairings in this round that are currently by the seeds, so if you managed to
get any of those pairings right, you are doing pretty well.
Game 50
Connecticut / Arkansas
Vegas Line: Connecticut -3.5
Picks for Connecticut: 73
Picks for Arkansas: 10
Picks for Other: 149
If you picked Arkansas to beat Kansas, you may as well pick
them to beat Connecticut, right? I would
argue this is one of the top mistakes people make in these pools. They pick a few upsets, but then can’t figure
out when to stop picking upsets. I think
it’s one of the hardest skills to master.
Knowing to pick an upset, but having the wherewithal to then pick that
upset team to lose in the next round. It’s
so hard to do, but it’s so important to doing well.
I have no idea if Arkansas will win or not, so I am just
assuming too much here. It’s hard to
know if a team is primed to go on a run (a la VCU, George Mason, Wichita State,
Loyola-Chicago or St. Peter’s) or just score one upset and then flame out in
the next game (like Lehigh, or Norfolk State or Arkansas last year).
Even though there aren’t a lot of points at stake here, I
know this game is critical to a lot of people.
For a lot of you that picked Kansas to win this game, losing another 4
points to people with Connecticut would be catastrophic.
Game 51
Tennessee / Florida Atlantic
Vegas Line: Tennessee -5
Picks for Tennessee: 19
Picks for Florida Atlantic: 1
This is probably the most irrelevant game of the day. Only 20 people can conceivably get points
from this game. It may make some
difference on the margins. Given the
games that are going to go off around the same time (Ark/UConn &
Gonzaga/UCLA), I’d be shocked if too many people actually watched this game.
Something I’ve noticed about a game like this. Since not many people actually picked this
game (only 4 people had both teams here), the people it really affects are the
people with really low percent chances to win.
For people like that, a lot of the time they have any chance is if what
they picked actually happens, but total chaos breaks out everywhere else. For example, if you had Houston over Purdue
in the finals, you may still technically be alive, but the only scenarios where
you can win are Houston beating one of Creighton, Princeton or Florida Atlantic
in the finals. If one of those teams loses
before that, you are out. It’s fun to root
for, but the odds of those scenarios actually happening is pretty low. If I even get enough computing power, I’d
like to generate a weighted probability, but that’s a little out of reach right
now.
Game 52
Gonzaga / UCLA
Vegas Line: UCLA -1
Picks for UCLA: 100
Picks for Gonzaga: 117
Picks for Other: 15
Here it is! It’s the
biggest matchup of the night. This game
is HUGE. I can overstate this. This is absolutely a make-or-break game for a
ton of people. If I had to guess, this
game will kick more people out of the pool than any other in the tournament.
Gonzaga came in as the post-hype sleeper, and prior to some
injuries, countless people were picking
UCLA to win it all. The only way this
game could be better is if both teams were at full strength. Still, UCLA is slightly favored, even with
the injuries. I can’t wait for this
one. The only downside for me will be
figuring out all the eliminations of each team winning. It promises to be massive. Sit back and enjoy!!!!
Good luck everyone!!!!
I will be back between games with an updated matrix and the eliminations
for the last 2 games of the day.
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