But lots of them had Duke in the Final Four.
So are you betting the house on Arizona this year or are you going to use your brain to process what you've seen over the course of the season?
Pitt lost three games on buzzer beaters this year, what does that tell us? That we should continue to see Pitt lose on buzzer beaters moving forward?
That Pitt should play better defense at the buzzer? Is this really that hard?
It's one thing if TN played a killer schedule and in a tough league. They didn't and they still lost TWELVE games.
Sorry REAL world RESULTS matter far more than any computer hypotheticals.
But lots of them had Duke in the Final Four.
So are you betting the house on Arizona this year or are you going to use your brain to process what you've seen over the course of the season?
Arizona is number one overall in almost every metric besides the bracket.
Arizona is number one overall in almost every metric besides the bracket.
Pitt is actually a really good example of close games impacting your seeding and people's perception.
If Pitt played San Diego State right now on a neutral court they would be favored in Vegas. Pitt is a 9 seed and SDSU is a 4 seed. I don't really have an issue with this because Pitt did lose nine games, but every single loss except the Duke game was a single digit game, and every loss was to a team who made the tournament except for FSU. Moral of the story: I don't want to play Pitt in the 8 v. 9 game and I sure as hell don't want them as a one seed in the second round.
So you're picking Arizona to win it all? I mean they are 25 thousandths of a point better than Louisville.
So losing at home to NC State with the season on the line is a positive in your book. Okay.
The Arizona thing is also interesting. Arizona is likely the single most likely team to win the tournament (number one in most rankings, probably has the easiest bracket) so if you're going to pick one team to win it all, it should probably be Arizona, but of course Arizona has a lower chance of winning the whole thing than any other team does at large. So when Arizona loses, if they do, people will say "I guess Arizona wasn't the favorite after all." Well no, they're still the single team who has the best shot of winning it, but those chances are still pretty low.
It's the same thing with the NBA lottery. Teams who have the first shot only have a 25% chance of winning the lottery, but when they inevitably do not win it, people always say it's rigged. No, you just had a 25% chance to win it and a 75% chance to lose it. The fact that the team with the 3% chance to win it got the top pick doesn't mean that it's rigged, it just means that they were lucky that time in that the 75% chance came up and then the 3% team happened to win it.
But lots of them had Duke in the Final Four.
So are you betting the house on Arizona this year or are you going to use your brain to process what you've seen over the course of the season?
So march madness = NBA lottery?
los:
So march madness = NBA lottery?
los:
Where did I say it was a positive? I said Pittsburgh lost a lot of close games (fact) and was seeded relatively low because of it (also a fact). My overall point is that losing close games has no impact on predictive value. It's not that it has little impact on it, it literally has no impact on predictive value.
What about the fact that they lose games like that? A seven point loss on your home court, in March, to an obviously inferior team, when you really need a win? Does that provide you with any sort of predictive value? Or is that just another data point?