Well, I gotta say. This March Madness is something else. I’m an artist. Not an NCAA basketball fan. (although there could be some who fit into that Venn diagram—I do not). I usually always finish near last in March Madness, but this year I finished 1st in a pool of over 50 big NCAA basketball fans.
On Yahoo, my bracket finished 239th out of 629,399.
That’s the top 0.03797% in the country. Better than the top 1%. Better than the top 0.5%. Think of it this way, if I were in a pool of 2633 people, my bracket would still come out as #1.
That’s insane. Do I possess some incredible March Madness insight? No. I don’t. Exactly the opposite. Think of my background in college sports as a blank wall. Actually, more like a blank wall that has sunk into the ground.
I never would have in a million years ever expected to win the March Madness pool of over 50 people, with people who know NCAA basketball. I’ve found, yeah, there is some luck in making picks. But there’s also a lot of expertise in making picks and knowing how to look beyond the seeds.
I do not have any expertise.
The source for making my picks
Ok, first let me explain how I made my picks, so I don’t come off as some sort of person who has some sort of special knowledge of college basketball. My picks were based 100% on Nate Silver’s Elo ratings from March 17th.
Why am I willing to give up my source?
One, I’m open to sharing any knowledge I have.
Two, I don’t think MY sources are necessarily the best or special in some way.
Although I do think Nate Silver does a fantastic job. But it’s not like I’m out there scouting out other NCAA systems that do predictions and comparing them. Remember, I don’t really know anything about NCAA. I prefer to spend my time deep-diving into MLB stats. I grew up in a house that didn’t follow any college sports at all. I went to a college that is what, do you call it? Tier three? The tier that doesn’t really get press. I wasn’t ever really aware when sporting events went on at my school. Other than getting handed a PSA to read on my radio show on how a particular IWU team won something or other.
Now, I don’t want to peux-peux on college basketball. I love the energy of it. I love how localized it is. I love how personal it is for people to follow their college. In some ways, I wish MLB had these aspects.
I love to participate in brackets for the social aspect to connect with people. And also to be part of the zeitgeist.
It’s just that my part of this zeitgeist is always finishing in the bottom 20%. And I’m completely ok with that. In fact, this whole thing of doing well is rather odd for me and my persona. My schtick is being the guy who doesn’t know anything about this. I like being a newbie. I like being the one who hangs out in the corner of the court, listening while everyone talks in the NCAA lingo of coach legacies and university rivalries, all being completely perplexed by it.
(And aside, years ago, when I went to Park Community Church in my early 30s. At parties, people would always talk about college sports, and I felt so alienated by it, because I knew really nothing of it, and I really didn’t have any grounding in it, so I couldn’t really participate in these conversations. And it felt like the conversations were 100% college sports. People would go on and on about how this team defeated that team ten years ago, and how they would never forget it. In retrospect, I wonder if people feel the same way when I talk about how it’s amazing that Cy Twombly, the modern painter, was the son of the 1921 White Sox pitcher Cy Twombly. And how he stopped Ty Cobb from reaching .400 in that game, Cobb would remain below the elusive .400 for the rest of the season.)
It was only last year (or the year prior) that I learned in the NCAA there are different, what do you call them, leagues? Not leagues. Conferences. I just thought ALL the top schools played each other, and someone figured out the schedule somehow.
I took my unknowledge of college sports and simply stuck with being the unknowledged, and being ok with that. Everyone has their own things. Mine would be finishing near last place every year.
How I made my picks different this year
Ok, so back to how I made my picks. Every year for as long as I could remember, I used FiveThirtyEight’s predictions. Nate Silver founded 538. His claim to fame is correctly guessing all 538 delegates in the 2008 presidential election (or something like that). He uses fancy statistics in his predictions, so yeah, I’ll use FiveThirtyEight.
But every year, I used their predictions, I never went straight-up with the predictions. I had a technique. Every year, I think it’s brilliant. If FiveThirtyEight predicted that the winner in a matchup had less than 60% of winning, I would pick the underdog. Every time. (and if the winner had a 60% or greater chance of winning, then I’d pick the predicted winner). I did that for years. And it never worked. Bottom 20% every year.
However, this year I did things differently. I figured, meh, this year, let’s just go straight up with fivethirtyeight. BUT. Disney/ABC killed FiveThirtyEight earlier this year. No predictions.
The founder of FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver, left a couple of years ago. And now he published his own predictions. There’s a free Elo version and a Bayesian version that is paywalled. I really don’t know the difference between Elo and Bayesian, other than one is free and the other is not free. Thus, I went with the free version.
I tried to go back online and find the exact webpage, but my browser history doesn’t show the exact page. Or maybe the exact page has different updated rankings. As mentioned earlier, I pulled his rankings from March 17th. Heh, maybe that’s part of the reason why I don’t mind revealing my source—it’s not really available anymore, and it’s not possible to repeat it!
Right before the tournament started, his updated ratings were:
1. Houston
2. Duke
3. Florida
4. Auburn
5. Alabama
My picks were different. So somehow, I managed to use an old version of his rankings that performed better in the end. Go figure.
Here’s a scan of all the team’s ratings when I was filling out my bracket.
Disjointed
It all still feels a bit disjointed for me. I’m supposed to be in the bottom 20%. Not in the top 20%, pigs would fly if I were in the top 10%. But to win it? That’s madness.
In fact, the name I used in the group was Matt Anacouluthon Maldre. An anacoluthon is an unexpected discontinuity in the expression of ideas within a sentence. When making my bracket, that name fit perfectly. My picks are always disjointed. As the March Madness phrase goes, my bracket is always broken. Or wait. “Busted.” My bracket is always busted, so yeah, a good name would be Anacouluthon.
Now the disjointed meaning behind my bracket’s name is a weird feeling that I have finishing as the… I can’t type the W word in this case. Um, the person who got the most points? That feels weird, too. How about the person who was really lucky that all the number one seeds got to the Final Four?
Looking back at that unusual feat, I read somewhere that with the Player Portal, players can easily change schools [Correction: “Transfer Portal”]. And how all the best young freshman/sophomore talent leaves the smaller schools and goes to the powerhouse teams. So you have these powerhouse teams with incredible talent. Which is a bit of a bummer, you don’t have as many upsets, because these powerhouse teams just plough through. There are fewer unexpected things that happen. But you do get to see more talent on the floor in the final games.
Soo all that with the recent Player Portal stuff, it makes sense these powerhouse teams would be more likely to get to the Final Four. And thus, my choice of going purely based on some elo rating system worked—for this year. It just so happened to coincide that I decided to use a system that said all the #1 teams were the best 1, 2, 3, and 4 teams in the tournament.
So here I am, the unlikely c… h… a… m… pion (I can’t get myself to type the actual word) with a strategy based on Nate Silver’s rankings. Perhaps there’s a lesson here about sometimes just trusting the experts instead of overthinking things. While I may not know much about college basketball, I’ve certainly gained a new appreciation for the excitement and community that March Madness brings.
I found myself watching the final game, partly wanting Florida to win (because it makes for a fun story), but also partly wanting Houston to win because it would keep my non-winning legacy intact. It was fun legitimately rooting for both teams to win the final game.
I’m looking forward to next year’s tournament already, though I make no promises about repeating this miraculous performance.
Until then, I’m just enjoying this unexpected moment in the basketball spotlight!
For the historical record (and for those curious), here’s a screenshot of my completed bracket.
What’s up with that Shinkū Gijutsu name? Didn’t I say I use Anacouluthon? Ok, so on CBS I use Anacouluthon. On Yahoo I use Shinkū Gijutsu. I’ve been using Shinkū Gijutsu for years on Yahoo since 2013. I wanted a new name that meant “Art Vacuum.” I looked up “art thief” on Google Translate, and it gave me shinkū gijutsu.
Well, years later, Google Translate would improve, and I would find out that shinkū gijutsu doesn’t actually mean “art vacuum.” (“art vacuum” is Āto zōjiki.)
Here’s the real meaning of shinkū gijutsu
- “shinkū” (真空) means the real empty void
- “gijutsu” (技術) means skill/technique
Thus, Shinkū Gijutsu means the skill of the void. That’s pretty rad.