Saturday, January 14, 2006
Hello fellow college basketball fans!
I've been playing around making with mock brackets for quite a long time now. I felt it was finally time to put my offerings on the web, if only to see how they compared to the real experts out there. I get to watch a lot of games thanks to Full Court and Fox College Sports, so I've seen far more teams play than the usual fan. (Being single and having no life helps with that as well.) Now that we have quite a few games under our belt, I've come up with my first bracket for the season (and first ever on the web).
Bracket projection for Saturday, 14 January 2006.
Here's the breakdown of a few key things I used in my projection.
Last Four In
LSU
UAB
Michigan
UNC-Wilmington
First Four Out
Boston College
Oklahoma State
Oklahoma
Colorado State
Next Four Out
There are a ton of mediocre teams who could fit in this class right now.
Conference-by-Conference
Big East (8)
Big Ten (7)
ACC (5)
SEC (5)
Pac-10 (4)
Missouri Valley (4)
Big 12 (3)
Mountain West, WAC, C-USA (2 each)
Dobber-Dribbles
Lots...especially since my three favorite teams play a back-to-back tonight. (This is what you call a good transition, folks...we get right to my biases).
Milwaukee at UW-Green Bay at 4
Auburn at Florida at 6
Syracuse at Cincinnati at 8
I have broadcasting and poli sci bachelor's from Florida and a master's in poli sci from Milwaukee (aka UW-Milwaukee). I grew up wanting to go to Syracuse, but a lackluster scholarship offer killed that. Also, I may be the only SEC alum who actively likes the Pac-10.
Comments are more than welcome. I'll post intermittently this week as I'm traveling to the Miami area to help train some trainers Monday and Tuesday. I will have another projection next Saturday at about this time.
I've been playing around making with mock brackets for quite a long time now. I felt it was finally time to put my offerings on the web, if only to see how they compared to the real experts out there. I get to watch a lot of games thanks to Full Court and Fox College Sports, so I've seen far more teams play than the usual fan. (Being single and having no life helps with that as well.) Now that we have quite a few games under our belt, I've come up with my first bracket for the season (and first ever on the web).
Bracket projection for Saturday, 14 January 2006.
Here's the breakdown of a few key things I used in my projection.
Last Four In
LSU
UAB
Michigan
UNC-Wilmington
First Four Out
Boston College
Oklahoma State
Oklahoma
Colorado State
Next Four Out
There are a ton of mediocre teams who could fit in this class right now.
Conference-by-Conference
Big East (8)
Big Ten (7)
ACC (5)
SEC (5)
Pac-10 (4)
Missouri Valley (4)
Big 12 (3)
Mountain West, WAC, C-USA (2 each)
Dobber-Dribbles
- There may be two more at-large bids out there based on this bracket. When determining each conferences automatic qualifier, I take the team with the best league record at the time of my projection, not the team with the best RPI. Therefore, Louisiana Tech gets the current auto bid from the WAC and UNLV gets the one from the Mountain West. In due time, Nevada and Air Force may be able to take the top spot in their respective leagues, but there's a lot of basketball to be played.
- Similarly, my rule for determining automatic qualifiers gives us a couple of surprises out of the mid-major conferences. Cal State-Sacramento has the auto bid from the Big Sky (not Montana), Samford has the one for the Ohio Valley (as opposed to Murray State), Cal-Irvine has the Big West's (instead of Pacific), and Harvard has the Ivy's (not Penn). Again these will change and are frankly useless projections, as the conference tournaments could render many of these auto-bid projections useless. Well, except for the case of the Ancient Eight, where there is no conference tournament and the chances of one bad night killing a league leader is greatly diminished.
Lots...especially since my three favorite teams play a back-to-back tonight. (This is what you call a good transition, folks...we get right to my biases).
Milwaukee at UW-Green Bay at 4
Auburn at Florida at 6
Syracuse at Cincinnati at 8
I have broadcasting and poli sci bachelor's from Florida and a master's in poli sci from Milwaukee (aka UW-Milwaukee). I grew up wanting to go to Syracuse, but a lackluster scholarship offer killed that. Also, I may be the only SEC alum who actively likes the Pac-10.
Comments are more than welcome. I'll post intermittently this week as I'm traveling to the Miami area to help train some trainers Monday and Tuesday. I will have another projection next Saturday at about this time.
