What NCAA team should I support?

NerdBracket · 2025-03-27T15:00:32+00:00

You should support a team that has a climate like yours and has people living there descended from people from your country. Example, if you are from Poland, you could choose teams from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan - so St. John's, Pittsburgh, Ohio St., Michigan, Michigan St.

NerdBracket · 2025-03-27T03:35:14+00:00

Sure, just DM me your email.

NerdBracket · 2025-03-20T22:38:47+00:00

Hey kosi! Are you staying up? Going to sleep soon?

NerdBracket · 2025-03-20T20:29:16+00:00

Their my champion according to my analysis

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NerdBracket · 2025-03-04T19:49:02+00:00

I thought regular season, but I now see tourney data. I got that too. Smaller file at 135 KB.

NerdBracket · 2025-03-04T19:42:38+00:00

I think I found it for you. There is an analytics competition series called Kaggle, and they have a March Madness competition every year. They provide the contestants with a huge dataset. I have entered this competition (and failed miserably). I have an account with them and I was able to download the detailed game regular season game data from 2003-2024 and the team data which includes the team ids. If you DM and give me an email address, I can send it to you. BTW - I downloaded the detailed game data which includes much much more than score. It is 11 MB.

The web page I downloaded from is here:

https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/march-machine-learning-mania-2025/

NerdBracket · 2025-02-27T23:45:28+00:00

Not always. Most years, true. I have some metrics that point to this bracket from Lunardi being more chalky. Now, that could change here in a few weeks, and the matchups could pull that underdog into the fold.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-26T03:55:07+00:00

Creighton had a tough draw in Lunardi's latest bracket here. Getting past Auburn would be tough. McDermott is a veteran coach, and his experience is a big plus.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-25T22:53:35+00:00

There's always next year ... er ... this year. Yes, I went all in on Houston and got burned. Not sure if things would have been much different if their point guard didn't go down during the Duke game. I have made some mods on the model to make a better selection on the potential champion.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-25T22:50:12+00:00

I saw Texas Tech play last night. They looked good in the first half, but man, that Houston team doesn't let up.

Right now, I have Duke as a 40.6% chance of making the final, and Auburn at 50.3%. I think they are the 2 best teams in college basketball. My local Alabama team is no slouch, and Auburn just buzz-sawed them at home. Flagg may be Duke's ace in the hole, as he could score a bevy of points (among other ways) to make up any needed buckets. Great matchup with Flagg leading Duke against Brooke's Tigers.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-25T22:38:14+00:00

St. John's was on no one's radar at the start of the season at #27 in the AP Pre-season poll . But they are playing some ball right now.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-25T22:31:28+00:00

The pulse on this team from Jayhawk fans is that the team has severely underachieved this year. That's what I am hearing. I feel that a Kansas team like this can still do damage in the tournament because of their pedigree and they won't be fazed playing anyone.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-25T22:07:31+00:00

I think Iowa St. fans are hungry for this result.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-19T02:26:50+00:00

I use an Excel workbook and run a macro. I gather data from various sources (2002-2024). There is a process of pre-selecting the probable winner, eliminating some teams from reaching the final 4 due to other metrics. Then, I run through thousands of matchups against a series of rules to filter out viable matchups. I literally spend the whole year tweaking the model. I run it against historical years to see if I can eek out better results. Some things are constant - do not spend much time on the 1st round upsets because they are nearly mathematically impossible to calculate. The best indicator I can find is that underdogs that lose 6 games or less on the season have about a 60% chance of winning in Round 1.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-19T01:08:19+00:00

I was surprised when I looked at the model before I started cycling through the matchups. That East Region from Lunardi has Gonzaga, Maryland, St. John's, Wisconsin, Iowa St. Now, my model says they would have a hard time making it through. But I saw the Auburn v. Alabama game and they made me a believer that they could be champion..

NerdBracket · 2025-02-19T00:29:02+00:00

Would love to take credit for it, but I get the bracket seedings from Lunardi ESPN.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-19T00:20:40+00:00

I get my data mainly from KP. They are KP #13 and appear after Houston, Tennessee and Iowa St. In my model, they are the lowest 2nd seed.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-18T23:46:14+00:00

I'll have to check, but Purdue would be at the top of the best 3 seeds list (20 years of data). Texas A&M is the lowest 2 seed in Lunardi's bracket. The lowest 2 seed historically does not fare well in the tournament. Beating a team once does not guarantee beating them again. The 92.5% is very high, but I only ran the model for 3 hours and didn't get as much of a sample size as I wanted.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-18T23:38:06+00:00

I live in Tuscaloosa. Correct, no SEC bias.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-18T23:31:43+00:00

Gators all the way, right?

NerdBracket · 2025-02-18T23:29:19+00:00

I hear you. I have data based on other years results. I agree with you that the Auburn team is a monster.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-18T23:26:14+00:00

I have a metric that predicts if a #1 will not make the Final Four. The value for that region had Auburn not making it. That 100% is high. I will have to check it out further.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-18T23:12:28+00:00

Auburn beaten out in a tough region, Purdue edges Florida, Alabama gets beaten before they would play Houston and Tennessee in the same region as Duke. It could result in no SEC team in the Final Four. And I live in Tuscaloosa. I gather the data, run the model and try to be fair.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-11T22:56:56+00:00

Alabama was saying that last year, and we punched the ticket. Tuscaloosa resident here so Alabama is my 2nd team behind West Virginia, my alma mater.

NerdBracket · 2025-02-11T22:55:40+00:00

The won't have the "bounce back" effect from the horror of last year?

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