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Yahoo Fantasy Bracket Madness - join the Orange & Blue News group

bucshon
Take the court with Yahoo Bracket Madness and try your luck at picking the winners of each game in this year's NCAA men's college basketball tournament bracket. Once you’ve signed up, create up to 10 brackets and enter each one in a max of 15 groups.

Join the Orange and Blue News group (ID# 15177) in Bracket Madness and put your bracket up against other Fighting Illini fans. Registration is currently open.

Once the teams are selected for the NCAA tournament on Sunday, March 17, you'll be able to fill in your bracket. March 21 is eadline for creating brackets, making picks, creating a group, joining a group or changing group scoring settings.

Scores and standings are updated as games finish and are reflected no later than the morning after a game is played.

The current Orange and Blue News subscriber with the best score wins 6 months free on the site.


CLICK HERE TO JOIN OUR GROUP


Default Scoring (Points by Round)
RoundPoints Per Correct PickPoints PossibleBest Possible Score
Round of 641 point32 points32 points
Round of 322 points32 points64 points
Sweet 164 points32 points96 points
Elite Eight8 points32 points128 points
Final Four16 points32 points160 points
Championship32 points32 points192 points


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A couple of my March Madness theories

I
I have two pet theories that I wanted to run past all of you.

First theory is that you can use the preseason AP poll to pick teams. It doesn't mean that preseason #1 should be your championship pick, but it is a marker for which teams have the raw talent. The theory is that talent rises to the top in the NCAA Tournament. You like teams with NBA prospects and overall stacked rosters to have the higher ceilings and potentially put it all together. I did a bracket where I always picked the higher AP preseason team and it served me pretty well.

Second theory (just thought of it) is that teams from the #1 KenPom conference (with a possible exception of the conference champion) are more likely to underachieve in the NCAA Tournament. The logic is that you get an "overrating" effect where teams are living off their November/December performances within their conference and then when they are mixed back in with the other conferences they struggle. This may correspond to some of the recent struggles of the Big Ten and Big 12 in the NCAA Tournament.

These are incredibly self-serving theories as both BYU and Iowa State were unranked in the preseason and are the beneficiaries of being in the #1 KenPom conference this year. (I did not look for weaknesses of teams with very strong offenses compared to their defense, for example, as that might have made us look bad.)

A couple bonus thoughts:
  • At-large play-in teams collectively do better than non play-in teams on the same seed line. This is obvious when you think about it.
  • Corollary to my theory #2 is that mid-major teams with good KenPom numbers might be big trouble. Think Loyola 2021 and Houston 2022. New Mexico as an 11 seed jumps off the page to me.
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