My potentially most stupid pick from the complete bracket below, could come from the movie World War Z, in which an Israeli official explains the “10th Man Theory” to Brad Pitt. The officer’s job was to contradict the opinions of nine other offices to believe that zombies were invading India.
Gonzaga and UNC won Final Four games Saturday to set up the championship game predicted by Breitbart Sports on March 14, meaning if you simply filled out all 62 lines as instructed in that post you find yourself in the 99th percentile of the 18 million brackets submitted to ESPN and very likely in first place in your office pool.
If you followed all 63 www.valueaddbasketball.com bracket picks posted on Breitbart prior to the tournament, a Gonzaga-over-UNC championship is almost sure to make you the winner of your pool. Both won this weekend and will be favored over South Carolina, featuring the No. 1 Value Add player in the country in Sindarius Thornwell, and Oregon in Saturday semifinals, respectively.
The brackets were not the only thing Breitbart Sports did right. Breitbart’s March 11 announcement that relative unknown Sindarius Thornwell of South Carolina ranks as the best player in the country garners national notice.
The theory of Value Add Basketball is to calculate the number of points each player is worth to his team above a replacement player, and so far applying it to this year’s bracket correctly predicted 28 of 32 first round games, good for the 99th percentile of all brackets submitted to ESPN (see all picks posted March 14).
The following table lists the teams in the order in which they appear on 2017 March Madness brackets. Brackets must be in by Thursday morning on March 16 before the games start, but some leagues may have an earlier deadline. If you simply want to fill out your bracket and be done with it, you can just count the lines below and turn in your bracket to get it off your step.
Villanova’s Josh Hart passed Kansas’ Frank Mason in what looked like a two-way race for the Value Add Basketball Most Valuable player, only to have Sindarius Thornwell pass them both for No. 1 after single-handedly putting South Carolina in the NCAA tournament. In filling out your brackets be aware Virginia Tech, Xavier and Creighton must overcome the toughest injuries.
“Baracketology,” became an annual thing at ESPN over the last eight years. Featuring then Commander in Chief Barack Obama, a white board, a sharpie, and Andy Katz as Obama made his NCAA Championship picks during March Madness.
Nate Silver and I had two of the only brackets with Oklahoma winning today, as they kick off the “Best Non-ACC Elite 8” against Oregon shortly after 6 p.m. Eastern. Kansas plays Villanova after that game. Then the second “ACC Tournament” continues Sunday with North Carolina vs. Notre Dame and Syracuse vs. Virginia and top 10 Value Add player Malcolm Brogdon.
John Pudner outlines the elite eight teams who will advance from the Sweet Sixteen.
President Obama and his stat guru Nate Silver can only hope for Hillary Clinton’s coin flip luck to save the last Barack-etology. The Breitbart Sports All-American bracket’s domination means Obama would need to be correct on all nine of the remaining games on which the two disagree.
In February Thomas Walkup passed Buddy Hield as the most valuable player in the country according to Value Add Basketball. Friday he scored 33 points to lead Stephen F. Austin’s upset of West Virginia to make the Breitbart All-American bracket 26-6 and in the 99th percentile according to ESPN’s calculations.
If you went with the better seed in all 16 games Thursday you are now 9-7. If you went with the teams with the most Breitbart All-Americans and All-Conference players you are 15-1.
Forcing Indiana to play Kentucky in the second round punishes Indiana, and the winner getting UNC is even worse.
If you follow the Bracket Ratings below you get another Michigan State over Virginia tournament game, but this is the one bracket that is so balanced we are going to risk being called crazy by going against our numbers on Butler, Seton Hall, and Syracuse.
Oregon destroyed Utah 88-57 in the Pac-12 Championship for their 8th straight win, while Cincinnati sweated a tournament bid after a 65-foot jump shot was banked in against them. But if the Bearcats can win a tough one against St. Joseph’s they could shock the Ducks.
The top NBA talent is packed into the East (Kentucky vs. UNC) and the South (potential Kansas vs. Maryland or Cal). Kansas has been better, is hotter now, has more experienced guards – but Maryland can erase it all with one huge upset.
College basketball Christmas remains more than two months away. But there’s no harm in predicting what teams might find themselves on the NCAA Tournament’s “nice” list come March.
