Amazing how things can get away from you. I’ve never been to good at keeping up with basketball but this year, the season seemed to slip me by. I watched as many games as I could and I can think of at least 10 posts I intended to write. Since becoming a self-employed entrepreneur (by necessity) other projects have kept me from the blog as of late. All that aside and since I’ve managed to work in those three self-serving links, let’s get to it.
Mandatory Bracket Complaint
The Buckeyes finished out the season going 9-10 and sweeping the Big 10 Tourney to get the top #2 seed. So where does that land them, in the same bracket as the top #1 seed. Makes sense to me. This of course means that the Buckeyes could potentially face Georgia Tech, Georgetown and top # one seed Kansas just to get to the final four. What’s with that?
The Winning Bracket Right Here
Again, seeing as I haven’t followed basketball as much as I’d like and I’ve got brackets to fill, I headed out into the internets to make sense of this years’ tournament. In doing so, I stumbled across the Pomerory Ratings. In case you’re not familiar with basketball blogger Ken Pomeroy, he has devised a fairly complex formula that ranks college basketball teams. I’m not going to go into details here on how he comes up with the numbers (because it is way beyond my mathematical abilities) but let’s just say it’s got something to do with baseball.
Pomeroy’s formula ranks the top ten teams as:
- Kansas
- Duke
- Wisconsin
- Ohio State
- Syracuse
- Kentucky
- Kansas St.
- BYU
- WVU
- Maryland
I know what you’re saying right about now…Wisconsin?! Yeah, I hear you. It’s a mathematical thing. If you dig a little deeper, he’s got a number labeled “Cons/Rnk” that has something to do with correlated bell curves and gaussian mathematics. I don’t understand it either but a high ranking in this column might signal an overrated placement in the rankings. Wisconsin has a consistency ranking of 332 which might explain the high placement. They are also ranked #7 in the defensive column which can play well come tourney time.
Ohio State is consistency ranking is 331 but we Turner’s on a hot streak so that doesn’t count.
If we look at the Pomeroy Ranked top ten teams and the brackets, we see that the teams are evenly distributed through the brackets with three top-10 teams in each bracket. Except for the South. Down there in the right corner of your bracket sits Duke, all alone as the only top 10 P-Ranked team.
Take it to the top 20 teams and things look a little bit harder in the South adding four more teams to the mix. Midwest and West each add a team and the East, now with four more teams, ends up with 7 of the top 20 ranked teams.
To put this in perspective, if we just go with straight rankings where the top Pomeroy Ranked team wins, Winsconsin not only makes it out of the East, they play lose to Kansas in the big game.
Of course, non of this matters. All the Buckeyes need to worry about and all that matters is that the Buckeyes keep winning, take it one game at a time and be there to take on Wisconsin in that final match in Wisconsin.
And there you have it folks, proudly donning my Big Ten shades, I’m predicting an all Big Ten championship game between Ohio State and Wisconsin. Kansas and Duke are the only two standing in the way and lets be honest folks, Kansas and Duke in the final? One of them has to trip somewhere. How about Baylor trips up Duke and Buckeyes take down Kansas.
The Buckeyes, riding an amazing hot streak, make Wisconsin feel like Minnesota did and cut down the nets in Indy.
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I have Ohio State beating WVU in a rematch of the matchup from earlier this year. I think that the Buckeyes have a legitimate shot if they can get past Kansas in the Elite 8
Kansas is the one. If the Buckeyes (especially Turner) are on, they can do it.
They get by Kansas and it’s ours to loose. I like the WVU matchup. Would love to see Duke get knocked out also but I’m not sure who’s going to do it.
Still wearing my Big Ten sunglasses, Purdue takes out Duke in the 16, Minnesota finds their Big Ten semifinal magic and storms past Xavier and Pittsburgh. Rolling on an incredible wave of adrenalin and Cinderella magic they stomp KSU/BYU (who really cares which one) to meet Ohio State in the Final Four.
That gives us the all Big Ten Final Four with Wisconsin taking on Purdue and Ohio State meeting a bitter Minnesota. In an even more humiliating dashing of hopes, the Buckeyes stomp Minnesota to meet Purdue in the grudge match to end all grudge matches.
Turner, having gone this far in the tourney, knows this is his last college game and with the scouts watching puts on the performance of his life. Buford, Lighty and Diebler can’t help but respond to the energy created by Turner and the Buckeyes put 100+ points on the board.
Purdue plays well considering the situation and walks away with a respectable 65 points.
(Did I mention that my Big Ten sunglasses have this really nice Scarlett tint)
Well that Gtown loss makes the Buckeyes trip to the Elite 8 that much easier.