A Mega-Analysis of What Went Wrong for Me and My Bracket

One day, I would like to have a perfect bracket. I don’t know what it is about brackets, but for whatever reason my brain has decided that it is the ultimate test of predicting sports. If you can conquer The Bracket, then you can conquer anything nature can throw at you.

But here’s the thing: making a perfect bracket seems impossible, and it very well may be. The amount of luck needed would require eighteen Lucky Charms cereal boxes to fit into. And I’m talking the Jumbo-size mega ones.

Still, I think I can do it. I watch a ton of college basketball, and I have a brain. I think with those two things, I can get far in this world. Only one problem: I’ve sucked at brackets my whole life.

OK, that’s not entirely true. The most glorious moment of my life my bracket career was when I correctly predicted that Virginia would win the National Championship in 2019. They might have gotten ridiculously lucky on the way there, but still, I called it.

Other than that, though, there’s not much to sneeze at. I remember I had a bracket where I picked Arizona to win it all the year they lost to Buffalo in the first round. I also picked Lonzo Ball’s UCLA team to cut down the nets, and I can’t remember exactly where they lost, but that’s the point. If I had to guess, my success rate in picking Final Four teams is something like 5 percent.

But things are about to change, because I’m starting to learn what makes these brackets tick. I’m getting inside the bracket and tinkering with its organs. Wherever the bracket goes, I’m only a car’s length behind it. The bracket can’t look left, right, up, or down without seeing me in its peripheral vision.

And I want to share some things I’ve learned this year in blog form, because I think it would be a good idea to document my knowledge in order to use it for future brackets. After all, you don’t make a perfect bracket overnight. It will probably take years, if not decades, to achieve my ultimate goal, or even get close to it. So here we go, in no particular order, some things that I’ve learned about the almighty bracket:

Conferences Hardly Matter

A quick preface: I can only draw conclusions from what I saw this year, because I have never really critically thought about the bracket before. I’m usually too busy pouting over how terrible my bracket was, so this year was really just a trial run of deep thinking. Therefore, I’m not claiming to already be an expert on brackets. This is just information that I’ve gathered from this particular year and trying to apply it generally to future years.

But yes, I think what conference the team is from hardly matters in picking a winner. I choose this as my numero uno piece of knowledge because I was counting on the exact opposite going into the tournament. After watching the Big Ten teams battle each other all season, and then complete a tremendous conference tournament (in Indianapolis by the way) I thought that they would have the upper hand going in.

Using that presumption, I picked Illinois as my winner, and also had Michigan and Ohio St in the Final Four. I was wrong, and here’s why: CONFERENCES HARDLY MATTER. Illinois, who won the Big Ten Tournament, was playing the best basketball of anyone in the country and still lost to Loyola-Chicago in the second round. Ohio St lost to Oral Roberts in the first round, and the Buckeyes battled tooth-and-nail with that Illinois team in the title game. Yup, that’s enough to convince me. Conferences hardly matter.

It’s The Journey, Not the Destination

Sticking with my Illinois prediction, I made a fatal mistake in choosing them to go all the way: I pre-decided it before the bracket even came out. As I’ve learned, that’s a major no-no. Do not pick a winner before you see that team’s region and path. I repeat: Do not pick a winner before you say that team’s region and path.

In Illinois’ case, they got screwed. Loyola-Chicago, a team ranked 17th in the final AP Poll, got slotted into an 8 seed. Right off the bat, it should have seemed way too risky to have Illinois go all the way when I should have known that Loyola could have won that game. I still think that I never would have flipped and gone with the Ramblers, but a prime upset opportunity in the second round should have necessitated more caution on my end.

However, I fell in love with Illinois. Batman Ayo Dosunmu looked so cool in his mask, it looked like no one could stop Kofi Cockburn, and they had enough shooting on the outside (plus the electric freshman point guard, Andre Curbelo, coming off the bench) and they seemed unstoppable. But here’s another thing I think I’ve learned: once we get into March, good teams are just good teams. It doesn’t matter what conference you played in, and, in this case, it didn’t matter what seed you had been given. Loyola-Chicago was way better than an 8-seed, and Illinois had the unfortunate pleasure of playing them before they could even get warmed up.

Beware the Teams That Are Playing A Little Too Well

To continue with Illinois, they had won something like 19 of 20 games heading into the NCAA Tournament. They had, more or less, run through the Big Ten Tournament looking like world beaters. They had overtaken Baylor for the #2 in the polls. And yet I repeat: they still lost to Loyola-Chicago in the second round.

Another mistake I made was thinking that their success at the end of the season would carry over into the tournament. I don’t think it quite works that way. Sure, if you’re playing well at the end of the season, then you’re more likely to play well in the tournament. But it doesn’t guarantee a deep run. Some other examples: Oklahoma St was en fuego and lost to Oregon St in the second round. Texas had just won the Big 12 Tournament and they lost to Abilene Christian in the first round (more on that later). Remember that magical run Georgetown had in the Big East tournament? They got SQUASHED by Colorado in the first game of the second day.

The point of this section is this: how well the team is playing matters MUCH LESS than the specific matchups in the first and second round. In March, good teams are good teams. More or less, everyone is playing well, especially the mid-major teams that won their conference tournaments. Most of them just had to win three or four games in a row to make it.

Another huge yet underrated factor is the break between when teams play their last conference tournament game and when they tip off their first game of the NCAA Tournament. I think it only makes sense that the time off neutralizes any hot streaks (bad for teams like Illinois and Oklahoma St) and allows teams like Villanova and Creighton to get back on track. I don’t know, that could just be too much second-guessing and hindsight, but again: I’m not claiming to be an expert. I just want to make educated guesses that I can refine and build off in the years to come. I do know this: the break between the end of the conference tournaments and the NCAA Tournament matters at least a little bit.

Another point I want to make: I think it makes more sense to treat the conference tournaments as a culmination of the regular season rather than a preview for March Madness. Sure, teams go to neutral floors and play equal competition, but they are playing the same teams they’ve played all season long. Once you get into the tournament, it’s a whole new group of opponents who also had to fight their way into the big dance. Don’t overrate a team’s performance in the conference tournament, or at least don’t let those thoughts trump any thoughts about a specific matchup.

I certainly learned my lesson with Illinois: Don’t try to cram your opinion about a team into the last week of the season. Look at the whole body of work, and don’t get caught up in any crazy hot streaks. If I had done more thinking, I would have realized that I wasn’t that impressed with Illinois until the Big Ten Tournament. Going forward, I hope I will recognize that as a red flag for those types of teams.

How A Genius Would Have Looked at the Bracket: Gonzaga Region

OK, I think that’s all I have for general rules. What I want to do now is go through the bracket from scratch and try to figure out where and why I went wrong. I think I’m also starting to develop a strategy for the best way to fill out a bracket, so I’ll share those tips as well.

Alright, I’ll start at the top left corner. If you want to follow along, I suggest bringing up a bracket to look at.

I think the best strategy when filling out a bracket is to look at each region in sections of four, and trying to pick the team that will make the Sweet Sixteen from each one. Starting with the Gonzaga-Norfolk St and Oklahoma-Missouri matchups, it was obvious that Gonzaga had a cakewalk to the Sweet Sixteen, especially after it came out that Harmon was out for Oklahoma. I was a little scared of Missouri just because they had beaten Illinois early in the season and had their moments, but they had done very little of late, so I ended up getting these three games exactly right: I correctly predicted Gonzaga-Oklahoma, and had Gonzaga in the second round. Still, there’s no reason to hate yourself if you had Missouri. Either one of them was losing to Gonzaga, so it didn’t really matter who you picked. Personally, I hate Missouri, so I picked Oklahoma.

Oh, one thing quickly: The reason I do this method for filling out the bracket is that I’ve realized that the first round is the most important round. Why? Well, it’s because the first round is the only matchups that you know are going to happen for sure. If you get one wrong, then you automatically put yourself at a disadvantage for the second round, and so on. But it all starts with the first round. Of course, you need to be aware of the teams you think could make a deep run before the bracket gets revealed. But it may not matter if they get bad matchups in their region (ahem, Illinois, ahem).

Looking at the next group of four, things aren’t as clear as the last one. In my opinion, any four of these teams could have made the Sweet Sixteen. Creighton and Virginia as the higher seeds were both limping in, Creighton after getting blown out by Georgetown in the Big East Final, and Virginia not even arriving in Indianapolis until the day before the game because of COVID issues. Really, both of these games were a coin flip, and that ended up being the case, with both of them coming down to the wire. I ended up getting both wrong. I picked UCSB to beat Creighton and Virginia to beat Ohio. I thought that the Greg McDermott plantation factor would give Creighton some bad juju, and I couldn’t bring myself to take out the defending champions in the first round, especially after I had correctly predicted it two years ago. However, UCSB missed a buzzer beater and the Jason Preston/Ben Vander Plas combo was too much for Virginia, who missed like 5 wide open shots in the final few minutes. Still, I don’t regret the UCSB pick. They were a made layup at the buzzer away from winning. I do regret not picking Ohio, though, because I then had UCSB beating Virginia to advance to the Sweet 16. That makes no sense on my part. If I thought that UCSB was going to beat Virginia, then why not just pick Ohio to beat Virginia if I thought the game was going to be pretty close. Plus, I think it was pretty clear that Gonzaga was going to steamroll this half of the region anyway, so why not get a little frisky in the first two rounds. Well, I did, I just picked the wrong team in UCSB. It turns out Creighton recovered enough to start playing more like themselves, and ended up advancing. Still, the only thing I regret is not picking Ohio. If UCSB makes that buzzer beater, then they easily could have been the ones to beat Ohio and then my pick would have been correct. Remember: just because a pick was incorrect doesn’t mean that the logic used to make that pick was incorrect. When games are close, then it really does come down to an unpredictable coin flip. Creighton won the coin flip, and if you picked them correctly to make the Sweet 16, then luck was the major factor in your success.

Alright, I’m starting to realize this is going to take awhile. But whatever, this is pretty much only for my eyes, so please feel free to leave if you have something better to do. But just know that this is the first step in what will one day be a perfect bracket. Once I have the knowledge, it’s only going to be a matter of time before I get lucky one year.

OK, next group of four: USC, Drake, Kansas, Eastern Washington. This was another mini-section of the bracket that I got totally right. I had USC over Drake, and then Kansas over EWU. Drake was dealing with too many injuries, and in my opinion really didn’t deserve to make it into the field. But they beat Wichita St in the First Four, so hey, good for them. USC still owned them, though. And believe it or not, I did strongly consider picking EWU, just because they looked great in the Big Sky Tournament, they have two baller brothers on their team, and plus Kansas was also dealing with COVID issues. And the Eagles came out flying, they had a lead in the second half, but the skill of Kansas was just too much. It then made total sense, however, to pick USC to beat Kansas in the second round. I just couldn’t bet on a COVID team to make the Sweet 16. And while we’re on the topic of picking 14 seeds, here’s something I’ve learned: never pick any 14, 15, or 16 seed to win a game. As you’ll see later, I tried to call a couple of those and fell flat on my face. You just won’t succeed trying to do something like that. No one knows hardly anything about those teams because the only game worth watching them play is their conference tournament championship, and they’re playing against teams seeded 1-3 that are much better than them. It’s just not worth it. You might be right every once in a while, like Joe Lunardi and Oral Roberts, but you’ll be wrong a whole lot more.

The final group of four for this region: Oregon, VCU, Iowa, and Grand Canyon. Oregon ended up advancing to the second round due to a COVID no-contest, but I think the Ducks would have won anyway. Then they beat Iowa in the next round, a pick I wish I would have made. I hated watching Iowa all season, and Oregon is one of my favorite teams to root for. Plus, the coaching mismatch between Dana Altman and Fran McCaffrey was astronomical. I never got Iowa all season: either play a post-up offense with Luka Garza, or go up-tempo with all those shooters. Trying to do both was like squeezing a square peg in a round hole. Luka Garza might be an OK three-point shooter, but that isn’t his game. He’s as slow as cement. He couldn’t keep up with Wieskmap or Bohanon or the rest of their team. They had to wait on offense as Old Man Garza lumbered up the floor and got down into the post. Meanwhile, all those shooters had to hear about how great Luka Garza was, plus they had to deal with Fran McCaffrey, the most short-tempered coach this side of the Atlantic. That coaching style might have worked in the Bobby Knight era, but not anymore. And it’s not like Iowa couldn’t have made a deep run, but the matchup didn’t line up. Iowa was primed for an upset if they faced the wrong team, and Oregon was one of those teams. I’m just mad I didn’t see it, but that was because I don’t think I watched a full Oregon game all season. They had that lengthy COVID pause, and I just couldn’t trust something I didn’t see. But as soon as that game tipped off, you could tell. Oregon should have been the pick.

Before moving to the Sweet Sixteen of this region, I want to share something else I think will be valuable moving forward: it makes sense to separate your bracket into four sections, not just vertically like I did above, but also horizontally as well, because there will be crucial four days breaks in between each section. Between Selection Sunday and the Round of 64, that’s when I believe the red-hot teams cool down a little bit. Between the Round of 32 and Sweet Sixteen, the Cinderella teams start to lose some of their glass slipper magic. It’s just impossible not to wear off when you have a four day break, and higher seeds are higher seeds for a reason: they are better at scouting opponents, have better coaches, and better players who are more used to sustaining excellence over a longer period of time. And then finally, between the Elite 8 and Final Four, that’s when any remaining teams higher than, say, a four or five seed should finally start to lose steam, if they’ve even made it that far. Of course this is not an exact science, but I think it will serve as a useful tiebreaker in any matchups you’re having a hard time predicting.

So looking at my original bracket, I had Gonzaga vs. UCSB and Iowa vs. USC. Believe it or not, I think this was my best region in terms of Sweet Sixteen matchups. As you’ll see later, things got ugly on the other side of the bracket. At this point, Gonzaga was a lock, and I ended up picking Iowa because I didn’t trust USC to make it as far as the Elite 8. I didn’t think they were that good. But here, I thought too far ahead and way too chalky. I didn’t want to put Iowa into the Elite 8, but I didn’t see the Oregon upset because, again, I couldn’t have named more than 2 or 3 of their players before the tournament began.

If I had a do-over, I still would have picked UCSB to make the Sweet 16, but I’m kicking myself for not having the USC-Oregon matchup, which is what actually happened in real life. Instead, I picked a team I hated to make the Elite 8 (Iowa) and suffered the consequences. At that point, I might have even picked Oregon to beat USC since, as I said, I didn’t love USC, but it doesn’t really matter. Picking any team other than Gonzaga to come out of this region made no sense, so at least I got that much right. And as I’m writing this before the upcoming Final Four this weekend, that’s exactly what happened: Gonzaga breezed through their path and will be playing UCLA for a spot in the championship. I might as well call that game, so I say the Zags easily handle the Bruins, using my theory about the four-day breaks to guess that UCLA will finally wear down. However, they did just break that theory by beating Michigan, albeit in a close game, which again are coin flips that you need luck to get right. The key is figuring out which games are going to be close and which ones aren’t.

Michigan Region

Starting off with the four-team groups, we have Michigan, Texas Southern, LSU, and St. Bonaventure. Of course I had Michigan, but I erred in picking the Bonnies to beat the Tigers. I’m not that beat up about it since Michigan ended up advancing to the Sweet 16 and that’s what I picked, but I severely underrated LSU. The Tigers ended up playing pretty close with Michigan, as well, and if those teams played 10 times then LSU might have won 2 or 3. I just can’t stand their top scorer, Cam Thomas, who never touched a ball he didn’t shoot. I figured his selfish ball hogging play would doom them against a more fundamentally sound St. Bonaventure team, but LSU just out-physicaled them, dominated them on the offensive glass, and carried over some success from their SEC Tournament runner-up performance. Still, it’s not a huge deal. Michigan was the easy pick out of this group.

As for the next group, this is one of the only points of the bracket where I’m proud of myself for getting it exactly right. At first, I figured Georgetown would parlay their magical run into a 12 over 5 upset of Colorado. But then I remembered that Georgetown sucked for most of the season and was lucky to be there. Right before the brackets were locked, I switched to Colorado. As it turned out, the Hoyas got their doors blown off, and the Buffaloes advanced to play Florida St. I then seriously considered switching again and picking Colorado to win one more game against the Seminoles, who were to my confusion getting Final Four buzz, but I stuck with FSU, and that ended up working out as well. I also want to use this space to make fun of Seth Greenberg, who I think is mediocre at best, god-awful at worst at his job. I’m just going to say it: I hate his raspy voice, I think he’s corny as hell, and he also said that Florida St was “Final Four good” before the bracket even came out. That’s where I learned that he’s stupid, and also that it’s stupid to try to predict what round a team is going to make before the bracket even comes out. That way, you feel like you need to justify your take by sending them that far even if their path deems that prediction completely bogus. But I’m one to talk, I did the exact same thing with Illinois.

Now moving from one of my prouder sections of the bracket to my most regrettable. You’re not going to believe this. Well, you probably will, and you probably don’t care because this only affects me, but I’m going to share anyway. My blog, my rules. When the bracket first came out, I actually had Abilene Christian over Texas. I knew in my heart that Texas was vulnerable, with their three guards clearly unbalanced in their chemistry, and plus I just didn’t think they were that good. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but considering Shaka Smart immediately bolted to Marquette last week, I think something was going on with that team. I don’t know what, but something was fishy. Anyway, I committed one of my no-nos and picked a 14-seed to beat a 3-seed, and the main reason why was because I thought Michigan St had a real chance to make the Elite 8. Similar to Texas, I had no idea why, but I just loved Michigan St. I thought they would beat BYU, and would beat Texas in a potential matchup, so I figured hey, what the hell, let’s go with Abilene Christian. They play awesome defense apparently, Texas is fishy, let’s do this. But then the First Four happened, and UCLA beat Michigan St. At that point, I figured my opinion of Michigan St was way overinflated, I guess they weren’t that good after all, so I picked BYU to beat UCLA and then I switched to picking Texas over ACU, because now I didn’t think that Michigan St was the best team in this group of four, because they had been sent home. You can’t be the best team in a group of four if you’re not even in the group of four. But we all know what happened next: Abilene Christian does end up beating Texas, and UCLA has won four straight games and could be playing for a title next Monday. Crazy. I guess I should have known that a team that beat a team I thought had a chance to make the Elite 8 should have been given more respect, but I just knew nothing about UCLA. I chalked up their win to a flukey hot game and poor judgement on my part of the Spartans. I was THIS close to a very impressive prediction. Instead, I had a Texas-BYU matchup that probably didn’t even happen in an alternate universe. Then I picked fishy Texas to make the Sweet 16, a move that I will never forget in how much it disappointed me. Thems the breaks I guess. And if I can use it to move me forward on my quest for a perfect bracket, then at least it did some good.

Other than that last group of four, however, I did a pretty good job on this region. I correctly called Maryland over UConn, figuring that the defensive-minded Terrapin backcourt would shut down UConn’s only hope of victory, James Bouknight, which they did. And by the way, I think these types of matchups, 6 vs. 11, 7 vs. 10, and 8 vs. 9, that’s when you can use the conference they play in as a tiebreaker. In this case, with Maryland being from the Big Ten, making them a 10 seed to UConn’s 7 seed is not an accurate representation of the actual skill level of those two teams. Maryland was the better team, and that’s why they won. Sometimes the committee just gets the seeding totally wrong. Then, after Alabama survived a Rick Pitino upset special, they advanced to the Sweet 16 by beating Maryland, which I also had. I considered picking Maryland because I just didn’t trust Alabama to make threes come tournament time, but I didn’t think Maryland was that good. Plus, the key equalizer for Alabama was Herb Jones. He was the X-factor as the only guy on their team whose main strength wasn’t just hoisting three balls. Side note: I think Herb Jones is going to be great in the NBA.

For the Sweet 16 in this bracket, I actually had 3 out of the 4 teams right. The only problem was that the one team I didn’t have ended up winning the whole region. But Michigan over Florida St just made sense to me. I never really got a spark from FSU all season, and they came out lifeless against Michigan, who had been more or less dominant for the entire season. Then, as I said earlier, I wanted to have Michigan St here to beat Alabama, who I didn’t trust to make it far, but instead I had Texas, who I trusted even less. So I went with Alabama, who ended up losing to UCLA. Boo-hoo, poor me. As for the Elite 8, I thought this game was a coin flip, but I ended up picking Michigan since they were the one seed. As it turned out, the game was extremely close, came down to the wire, and UCLA pulled it out. Again: luck is a major factor. If Franz Wagner makes that buzzer beater (or doesn’t shoot 1-11, or if Michigan and Alabama didn’t combine to shoot 17-36 from the free throw line in two razor-thin games) then UCLA’s run ends short. Instead, with a little bit of luck and getting hot at the right time, they’re one win away from playing for a championship. However, like I said, I think Gonzaga creams ’em. We’ll see.

Baylor Region

It was kinda fun doing those last two sections. I got some picks wrong, I got some picks right, and I nearly had both of the Final Four teams correct. I had some understandable miscues, and if Michigan St had beaten UCLA, I might have even had a near-perfect Elite 8. Who knows.

But this is where my bracket got destroyed. I mangled these two regions so bad their mothers can’t even identify them. Let’s just get into it…

Right off the bat with the first group of four: Baylor, Hartford, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. I will never look at any of these four teams the same way again, except maybe Hartford. After Baylor looked lethargic in the Big 12 Tournament, barely beating Kansas St and then falling to Oklahoma St, I had them chalked up for a second round upset. Big mistake. Terrible mistake. Looking back, I think I made the decision before the bracket even came out, which is a major no-no as I’ve said multiple times. Before even knowing who their second round opponent would be, I decided that my major zig from the crowd in this year’s bracket would be knocking Baylor out early. Boy was I wrong.

And not only was I wrong about picking Baylor to lose early, but I was also wrong about the team I picked to beat them: North Carolina. I kind of liked how North Carolina was peaking at the right time, and they had been playing well and nearly beat Florida St to advance to the ACC Championship Game. Also, Roy Williams had never lost a first round game. But I wrote the story before it happened without considering the facts: I picked UNC to make it to the Sweet 16, which made sense if what I thought was true was true, but it wasn’t. North Carolina, was a young team that couldn’t shoot. Yes, they were big, but so was Wisconsin, who also had five seniors in the starting lineup and could shoot. Right from jump, the Tar Heels had no chance. Blowout city. And as it turned out, that lethargy from Baylor after their three-week COVID pause might not have been due to COVID. Sure, that first game back losing to Kansas might have resulted from some time off, but after watching Baylor advance to the Final Four with relative ease, I think they were just waiting for the real tournament to begin before turning it on. They could care less about winning the Big 12 Tournament, let big old stupid Texas do that. Who cares. They were after the big prize, the national title, and right now I believe they’re gonna do it. And I had them out in the second round. What a joke. I’m ashamed, and not just for the pick itself, but because Baylor was one of my favorite teams to watch all season. They’re SO fun. And I let them down by picking NORTH CAROLINA to beat them. I let a few games of average play get in the way of a season-long trek of dominance, and I have no one to blame but myself.

Moving forward, it doesn’t get much better: Villanova, Winthrop, Purdue, and North Texas. I actually did pick Villanova, but only because everyone was picking Winthrop and I figured there had to be at least one game that made no sense. But also, if you remember on the Selection Show, Seth Davis immediately said that Winthrop was going to win, as if Villanova had no chance. What an idiotic thing to say on national television. Sure, Villanova was battered without Colin Gillespie and Winthrop had only lost one game all season. But Villanova has won championships, their coach is Jay Wright, and Winthrop plays in the Big South for chrissakes. I mean, Winthrop definitely could have won, it was a pretty close game, but I just didn’t like how everyone was acting like this was a 3 vs. 14 matchup, and Winthrop was the 3 seed. It’s still Villanova with Samuels and Robinson-Earl. Good for them for winning, and it must have been gratifying to advance all the way to the Sweet 16, where they even had a lead against Baylor before running out of steam, and also Baylor flipped a switch like no one ever has. That was one of the highlights of the tournament for me so far. But anyway, I of course had Purdue beating North Texas, then I had Purdue beating Villanova, and then beating North Carolina (ugh) to advance to the Elite 8. I fell in love with Trevion Williams, and I also way overrated the Big Ten. I take full responsibility for that. And thinking about the Purdue-North Texas game and also my Loyola-Illinois personal nightmare, I think there’s something to be said for really good defensive teams being able to take a low post big man out of the game. North Texas shut down both Williams and Edy, and Loyola made Kofi Cockburn a virtual non-factor. It’s only a sample size of two, but it may be useful moving forward in future brackets.

Moving on, another frustrating section for me was Arkansas, Colgate, Texas Tech, and Utah St. Here was where I tried to get cute by picking Colgate over Arkansas, and it backfired. What’s even more frustrating is that Colgate had a 14-point lead in the first half, and I thought I was on to something. But I wasn’t. Arkansas won. And then what’s even MORE frustrating is that I had Texas Tech in the Sweet 16, but they missed a layup in the final seconds against Arkansas that would have sent the game into overtime. Not fun times at all. And what’s the MOST frustrating is that I couldn’t even enjoy the quality basketball because I was so worried about whether my bracket was right. And that feels dirty and selfish, because at the same time you’re rooting for everybody else’s bracket to be wrong, and it’s like all of a sudden everybody who picked Arkansas to go far in the bracket is your enemy. Or at least that’s what it’s like for me.

I also want to say that I just really dislike Eric Musselman. Nothing personal, but he has been on the bad end (for me) of two catastrophic bracket busts. There was this year where he led Arkansas out of this half of the region (and didn’t even have the decency to blow out Oral Roberts on the way there) but that’s nothing compared to 2018, when Musselman was coaching at Nevada and they came back from down 18 in the second half to beat Cincinnati, who I had picked to win the whole thing. And if Cincinnati had won that game, they would have played Loyola-Chicago in the Sweet 16, who Nevada only lost to by one point. It might have been predestined for Sister Jean and the Ramblers that year, but Cincinnati could have won if Nevada came that close. And even worse, Kansas St would have been the matchup in the Elite 8, because UMBC beat Virginia, Buffalo had beaten DeAndre Ayton and Arizona, and then Kansas St upset Kentucky. That was the perfect storm of all perfect storms for Loyola, but that run may have ended in the Sweet 16 if stupid Cincinnati and Mick Cronin (who I’m also not a big fan of because of that loss, obviously, but now coaching this UCLA team that beat Michigan St and ruined another part of my bracket) didn’t blow an 18-point lead. Oh, the possibilities. And just to conclude, the genius pick for this group would have been Arkansas over Colgate, and Texas Tech over Utah St. Texas Tech-Arkansas was a coin flip, and I never would have picked Arkansas because I don’t want to root for Musselman.

The trail of excrement continues with Florida, Virginia Tech, Ohio St, and Oral Roberts. It’ll take me awhile to forget this sequence of events. By knocking out Baylor in the second round, Ohio St was my pick to make the Final Four out of this region, mainly because of the Big Ten factor, which was absolutely the wrong move. It’s not like I should have seen Oral Roberts coming, but Ohio St never felt like a Final Four team. I think a Sweet 16 exit to Texas Tech or Arkansas would have been the best bet going into the tournament. The only problem, however, is that Ohio St’s path to the Sweet 16 was SO EASY if they could have just taken care of Oral Roberts. Florida and Virginia Tech were probably the two most blah teams in the whole field, and they were playing each other (and, for some reason, was the first game of the tournament so everyone was forced to watch it for 30 minutes until another game started). As witnessed in the Florida-Oral Roberts game, Florida sucks. Well they don’t suck, they’re just pretty average, and I knew heading in that game that Oral Roberts had a pretty equal chance of winning. But going back to Ohio St, shame on them for tricking us all and losing in the first round. Duane Washington should never play basketball again as far as I’m concerned, taking selfish shot after selfish shot even after missing everything he threw up there, and then missing a wide open three at the buzzer in overtime. I hope that guy realizes how dumb he played in that game. If CJ Walker was the starting point guard and they brought Washington off the bench instead, that team was way better. But Walker, being mature, probably realized that Washington would pout if he had to come off the bench, so he gallantly accepted the diminished role. A very mature and humble move, but the tradeoff is that it could lead to a selfish off-night from Washington where he thinks he’s Kevin Durant or something, and all of a sudden you go home in the first round.

Now to the Sweet 16, where I got a grand total of zero teams right in this region. My North Carolina-Purdue and Texas Tech-Ohio St matchups are probably doing the jig in hell right now. However, I still think that all of those teams besides North Carolina were the right pick. It just didn’t work out. The logic makes sense in each case. I don’t think many people saw North Texas coming, and picking either Villanova or Winthrop to make the Sweet 16 when both of those teams easily could have beaten each other was too risky. Texas Tech-Arkansas was a coin flip, and correctly picking Ohio St not to advance out of their four-team group probably means you’re the parent of someone on Oral Roberts, or you just got lucky.

But that’s also what makes the bracket so fun: not everything that you expect to happen will happen. It’s human beings playing the game, and anybody can play way below or above the standard they have all season. And it’s also the biggest roadblock in doing what I’m trying to do, which is create a perfect bracket. Even when all your picks make sense, something will happen that makes no sense and is literally impossible to see coming, like a bad call down the stretch or a really good player missing a shot at the buzzer. Using that logic, you could just say that a perfect bracket is impossible and there’s no use trying, but in response to that I say this: just because something is tremendously hard and also requires a lot of luck to complete doesn’t mean you should give up, as long as you have the determination. And it also just means that it’s most likely going to take many years and repeating of the process to get it right, because even when I acquire the maximum amount of logic and create a “perfect” bracket using the information I obtain, it still might not be “perfect” because of those coin flip games. But eventually, if you flip a coin long enough, you’ll correctly predict 10 coin flips in a row. That’s what me and anyone else trying to achieve a perfect bracket is attempting to do.

Going back to this section and sticking with the genius bracket, I think that you would have had to stick with Baylor over Purdue, just because they were much more likely to get to the Sweet 16. Then, either Arkansas-Ohio St or Texas Tech-Ohio St would have been a coin flip, but I would have went with Ohio St for the same reason: they were way more likely to make the Sweet 16 and you pretty much had a 50-50 chance of getting the Arkansas-TTU game right. Then, I would have gotten Baylor-Ohio St in the Elite 8, and the trend continues. Baylor is much more likely to get to the Elite 8, so they are the safer pick to come out of their region.

And I do also want to say this: most of these picks are grounded in my opinion based on what I watched during the regular season. That’s where the regular season comes in handy, knowing which teams are good, which teams are meh, and which teams have no chance of winning more than one game. The point of this exercise is just to analyze what I should have done given the information I had before the bracket, which is kind of hard to do after the fact, but I’m doing my best. Other people could have loved Arkansas beforehand, so maybe to them that matchup with Texas Tech wasn’t a coin flip. But personally, I thought Arkansas was a pretty average team, and a really young team that narrowly survived Texas Tech and was a buzzer-beater three away from losing to a 15-seed in the Sweet 16. They definitely could have lost to Colgate if Colgate didn’t self-destruct after going up double digits early. But then again, Arkansas also had a real chance against Baylor, nearly coming all the way back from an early deficit. My conclusion from that is that Arkansas, and perhaps Eric Musselman’s teams in general, play according to their competition, which can only get you so far in the tournament. If they had to play Ohio St after narrowly avoiding a loss to the Red Raiders, then Ohio St probably wins. But stupid Oral Roberts had other plans. That’s the beauty of March if you don’t do a bracket, but it’s the most frustrating part for true college basketball fans who want all the hours they spend watching games throughout the season to mean something come tournament time. But it really doesn’t matter as much as we think. Of course it matters a little bit, but as soon as conference tournaments end, then it’s almost like a whole nother season begins. And I can’t stress this enough: the most important factor is a given team’s path to the Final Four. It doesn’t matter so much if they’re good enough to get to the Final Four, plenty of teams have that ability, but whether the teams in their way have something to say about it.

Illinois Region

I already talked plenty about Illinois in the first few sections, so I’ll keep this brief: I fell in love with Illinois, and they broke my achy breaky heart. I still think picking them to beat Loyola-Chicago was the logical choice, but picking them to go all the way was really stupid. It wasn’t like they were that much better than everybody else. And even if they beat Loyola, they were probably going to have to play Oklahoma St (who ended up losing to Oregon St, however) and then either Houston or West Virginia, all three really good teams capable of beating them. But like I said, I pre-determined that I was going to pick Illinois, and then just hoped that they would get through an absolute gauntlet of a region to make the Final Four. Didn’t happen. But looking at this from a group of four level, I don’t think that it was out of the question that Georgia Tech could have beaten Loyola if they had had Moses Wright. And even without Wright, the Yellow Jackets still got out to an unbelievable start and hung around for most of the second half. That’s why picking Illinois to get to the Sweet 16 was probably the best/safest move, but having them go any further was too optimistic about their chances.

The next group of four is even more confusing looking back. Oklahoma St, who was playing like a number two seed in the few weeks before the tournament, got put at number four, which seemed way too low, but it actually might have been too high. I know Cade Cunningham is getting a lot of hype, and he probably will be half-decent in the NBA, but I just don’t see it. I think he was expecting to be “the guy” at Oklahoma St, then it turned out they were actually a pretty good team overall, so he couldn’t be as selfish as he wanted, and that was their Achilles’ heel. He was terrible in the Oregon St game, and frankly I thought he was pretty bad in most of the big games they played all season. Of course he had his moments, but he’s still a freshman after all. And he said all the right things about being team first and all that, Lord knows Fran Fraschilla said it about a billion times during the regular season, but his actions spoke otherwise. He still wanted to be the hero, and sometimes he was, but most of the time he missed the big shot or it was someone else, like Avery Anderson or Isaac Likele, who made the big play. In my opinion, Cunningham should come back for another year because he’s not quite ready for the NBA. But economically, egotistically, and mathematically it would make no sense. Everyone is saying he’s going to be the number one pick, and he probably will be, so his stock could only get worse. But if what he cared about most of all was becoming the best basketball player possible, he would come back to Oklahoma St for one more year, like Ayo Dosunmnu at Illinois, and learn under Mike Boynton, one of the best coaches in college basketball. Instead, in my opinion, he’s going to be the next Andrew Wiggins.

But getting back to the bracket, Oregon St came out of absolutely nowhere, at least to me. They had the magical run in the Pac-12 tournament, but it felt like they and Georgetown were just going to go out quietly and leave the winning to the adults. But they and the Pac-12 proved everyone wrong, as the Beavers went on to beat Tennessee, Oklahoma St, Loyola-Chicago, and then nearly had a magical comeback win over Houston in the Elite 8. I had them out in the first round, which I will admit was the wrong pick, because Tennessee was terrible. But never in a million years would I have picked them to beat Oklahoma St, so I guess that shows how much I knew about them before the tournament started. But how about the Pac-12, though? Was there just legend-level basketball going on over there all season and no one picked up on it? I guess Bill Walton was right for once. Conference of Champions. Maybe we should listen to him more.

In the next group of four, I once again made the fatal error of trying to predict a 14-seed over a 3. As great as Morehead St looked against Belmont in the OVC Championship, they hadn’t played a game in almost two weeks by the time they played West Virginia in the first round. Too much time off. Not enough of that spark carried over, and they bowed out pretty weakly, although they did take a brief lead early in the second half. Then with San Diego St and Syracuse, I was just totally wrong. This was probably the game I spent the least time thinking about, and now I regret it. For whatever reason, I just assumed that San Diego St would win. I didn’t really have a reason. I just kind of picked them and focused on the rest of the bracket. But, as it turned out, it was a Syracuse year. I’m still not exactly sure when it is a Syracuse year and when it’s not, but that’s something I can try to figure out as I move forward in my quest for a perfect bracket. That is if Jim Boeheim lives long enough for me to figure it out. But I do know this: either Syracuse or San Diego St could have beaten West Virginia. The Mountaineers were vulnerable. Somewhere in mid-February, Derek Culver completely ran out of steam and Bob Huggins had to rely on extremely undersized centers to take his minutes. Culver was unplayable, and even though Gabe Osabuohien is really fun to watch he just can’t score. That left too much burden on the shoulders of Miles McBride, Taz Sherman, and Sean McNeil, who nearly led them back against Syracuse, but came up short. Without Culver, they became way too reliant on the jump shot. Meanwhile Buddy Boeheim for Syracuse lit it up. I just figured it was going to be San Diego St in the Sweet Sixteen insead of them, but again I really had no reason. I knew almost nothing about San Diego St, and you probably shouldn’t put a team you know very little about in the Sweet 16.

And now, finally, we get to the last group of four in the bracket: Clemson, Rutgers, Houston, and Cleveland St. And we end with an easy one that I got right, the only Sweet 16 team I got right on this whole half of the bracket. I correctly picked Rutgers against Clemson, and to me that was just an average Big Ten team being better than an average ACC team. And yeah, I think that’s the only place where the conference will make a difference, when you have two OK teams from each conference. When you’re talking about the best from each, though, it really doesn’t matter. They’re both really good. This section of the bracket felt a lot like the Ohio St section, the only difference being that this one actually followed the rules and made sense. Although I definitely underestimated Rutgers. They nearly knocked off Houston, leading by eight points pretty late into that game and only losing by one. Still, Houston advanced as my only correct Sweet 16 representative in both the Baylor and Illinois regions. I know I already said it, but it’s just too unbelievable not to repeat. Just when you think you know college basketball…

Looking at the Sweet 16, I’m still holding true that Illinois-Oklahoma St was the correct prediction, at least with the knowledge that I had beforehand, only I should have picked Oklahoma St to win. Like I said earlier, Illinois was too big of a risk with the potential Loyola matchup and Oklahoma St having an apparent cakewalk to the Sweet 16, with Tennessee being an incredibly weak 5-seed and the Cowboys being a seemingly overqualified four seed. But Oregon St mucked all of that up. Then in the other Sweet 16 matchup, I still don’t hate that I had San Diego St, but I guess Syracuse was the better pick because San Diego St looked absolutely garbage. The answer to the Aztec riddle I never found, apparently. But I don’t think West Virginia was the smartest choice. They were too weak. No matter which way you pick though, Houston was by far the safest pick to make the Elite 8, given their easy path to the Sweet 16.

In the Elite 8, that would have left with me with Oklahoma St and Houston. And with Houston being much more likely to get there, they would be the smart pick. That’s another huge part about brackets: sometimes you have to factor in how likely a team is to get to a given round instead of focusing on the literal matchup, especially so deep into the bracket. In a weird way, the only way to get a perfect bracket is to not try to be perfect, and just hope that the probabilities bounce your way. Like for example, there’s very little point in analyzing Houston’s offensive rebounding against Oklahoma St’s big men, or trying to figure out how Houston would guard Cade Cunningham. The odds of those two teams matching up are still pretty low, even if that would have been the smartest pick. Illinois-Houston still would have been a pretty good bet, as would Loyola-Houston if you were really high on the Ramblers, or if your name is Sister Jean. It’s just about using your personal opinion of teams the right way, and trying to be as objective as possible about each team’s chances. I was way too subjective with Illinois just because I loved how dominant Cockburn was and Curbelo is probably the most fun individual player in college basketball. Those things are still cool, but they should only be used as tiebreakers, not the main reason why that team is going to win. I’ve said it a few times already: it’s all about the path. But I’ll add something else: it’s also about figuring out which teams are good and which ones aren’t. I was correct in my assessment of teams like West Virginia and Kansas, but I was dead wrong about Baylor and Illinois, among many others. And it’s OK to admit that. That’s how you learn.

Final Four/Conclusion

If I could go back and change my original bracket, then I still would have only gotten three out of the four Final Four teams right. And even that could be too optimistic, because I am almost certainly using too much hindsight and knowledge that I only got from watching the tournament games to decide how I should have filled out my bracket. Still, I did my best, and I ended up with Gonzaga vs. Michigan and Baylor vs. Houston. Not bad. And if I had to guess, I’m sure some years make more sense than others, and, using the knowledge I now have about brackets, some years I’ll be red-hot and get all four teams correct, but other years will be more random and I might only get one or two teams. However, by doing this exercise and thinking critically, I think I have dramatically raised my worst-case scenario for brackets, and I hope that anyone reading this also has a much better understanding about how the bracket works. Of course, not everything I presented in this blog is perfect. I would probably have to do this each year for five, ten, maybe twenty years to refine it perfectly. And even then there will still be coin flip games where all you can do is pray that the team you picked to win comes through. However, unlike before, I think I have started on the path of decreasing the potential amount of games I see as coin flips, and that just comes from watching during the regular season and thinking about why your picks were incorrect. As long as I don’t overthink it next year and remember to re-read this blog, then I should be well on my way to my goal of perfection.

But one final disclaimer on perfection: you can’t expect to have a perfect bracket. Either I will have it one day, or I will not. All I’m doing now is trying to think of everything in my power that I can know leading up to that first day of games. Before, I treated the bracket as a pretty random tournament and my filling out of it was the equivalent of scratching off a lottery ticket. But, as I’ve learned, the bracket is not like the lottery. There is of course an element of luck, but there are clear and definable rules about why certain teams win and certain teams don’t. As I continue to watch each year, I hope that my knowledge will only continue to build, and that one day I can be lucky enough to be perfect. I’ll certainly do everything in my power to put myself in the best position, I don’t doubt that.

But who knows. After all, most of what I “learned” from this year’s bracket could only apply to this year. Next year could be completely different. We’ll see. But if it is, then I’ll figure out why and just add that knowledge to this year’s. Then, eventually, I should have enough to make the logical pick each time. Then, maybe, I’ll get the right bounces.

I guess there’s nothing left to do now but wait until next year. See you then, bracket.