NCAA tournament predictions
Posted by: Peter Abraham - Posted in Misc on Mar 19, 2009 
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It always seems strange to be at spring training when the NCAA tournament starts. Having covered college basketball for so long in Connecticut, this was the busiest, most exciting time of the season. Now I’m watching games that don’t count as players “get their work in.”
The fun with baseball comes later on. But at least there are NCAA games to have fun watching and wagering on. The final count is four bracket pools and two box pools. I also expect at least two buddies to have Sweet 16 draw pools.
I changed a few picks here and there but my Final Four is Oklahoma, Michigan State, Pittsburgh and Missouri. I like Oklahoma beating Michigan State in the final. But even the top seeds have flaws this season. It wouldn’t be stunning if some low seed made its way to Detroit for the Final Four.
I will be rooting for North Carolina (my favorite team as a kid), UConn (because I know a lot of the people there) and Michigan (because I have money on them at 80-1).
It looks like several hundred of us are playing in the two Yahoo pools formed by blog readers. The Journal News also had roughly 1,200 folks sign up for its Perfect Bracket contest. So thanks to everybody who participated.
It’ll be 95 percent baseball here on the blog during March Madness. But there will be a post or two about the tournament.
Enjoy the games.
Jeter talks to Reynolds
http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com.....7-74641070
This really is a exciting time of year, the beauty of March Madness is you never know in one game what will happen and the upsets. Baseball for us is still the best and we crave that spring training information so im glad it will mostly be baseball but im sure most of us are in pools and paying attention to the tournament.
UNC
Wake Forest
Memphis
Pittsburgh
UNC over Pitt
Memphis over Wake
UNC over Memphis
U-U-U-UUUUUCOOOOONNNN!!!!!!!!
Looks like Pudge signed too early maybe Mets now need a catcher with Schneider out indefinitely with a calf strain are there any catchers still available??
Enough with the NCAA. Isn’t this supposed to be a Yankees blog?
OK, actually read the post now. 95% baseball… still feels more like 50/50 lately.
man – if I’m scott proctor i’m ready to do damage to joe torre..
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/s.....rlins.html
Tar Heels all day!
Hey JT, go start your own blog and you can do with it what you want. Better hope Mommy keeps paying for the ‘net in the basement.
Billy, troll much? I make 75K a year and live in my own place in Manhattan. “Mommy” pays for nothing. Can you say the same? Worry about your own life. At least my comment was about the article. Have a nice day.
“The odds of you picking a perfect March Madness bracket are not just horrible, they’re almost impossibly bad. You have a substantially better shot at winning the Powerball than you do at picking a perfect bracket.
There are a total of 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 possible bracket outcomes, making the odds of a perfect bracket over 9.2-quintillion-to-1. In fact, the odds are so bad that, according to RJ Bell at Pregame.com, if every individual alive in the world completed a bracket, the odds are a billion-to-one against any of them being perfect.”
So good luck in the Perfect Bracket contest. As for picking a winner this year, as Pete said, all the top teams have had their flaws already exposed so I really don’t know who to pick.
$75k a year in Manhattan. You are rolling it brother. lol
I love your site Pete but your Oklahoma pick is crazy. Oklahoma can’t handle any kind of pressure defense, they never could, and Griffin is the most overrated and laziest defender in America. They’ll be out by the time they hit Syracuse. Jason Whitlock called Jeff Capel one of the worst coaches in America because of his inability to get Griffin the ball. I’d have to agree. If only Capel had been able to corral Kelvin Sampson’s departing class when he hit the road. Damion James (TX) at power forward and Scottie Reynolds (Villanova) at point guard would have been scary. OU has no shot.
Greg Oden for me. Read about him during his junior year and been following his career ever since. Unfortunately it has been very disappointing.
M-I-Z-Z-O-U!!!!
Ok, I know we have only a slight glimpse of hope, even the President has us losing to Memphis. :/
But who cares, right? My brackets are still perfect so far. And my boss allowed me to live stream from CBS at work. What else could I ask for??? Most people aren’t this lucky, see this video:
http://www.newsy.com/videos/ma.....istraction
@Vermilion:
I agree that filling out a perfect bracket is incredibly unlikely, but those odds suggest that people will fill out their brackets entirely at random. But this obviously isn’t right. Many trillions of possible outcomes can be ruled out out of hand. Since the vast majority of people on earth will be guessing withing certain constraints, the chances of one of them striking gold are much better than you suggest.