Dad. Sportswriter for Bleacher Report. Co-host of the Unnamed Bracketology Podcast. Cigar aficionado. Numbers geek. Corgi lover. KerranceJames at Gmail
Extra special episode of the Unnamed Bracketology Podcast with
@GrahamDoeren
. Had my daughter fill out a bracket. Graham's son makes a cameo appearance. Gotta love the all double-digit seeds Final Four.
You guys. I did a thing. I might be better than Michelangelo's David. It might be worse than Frankenstein's Monster.
IT'S THE DEFINITIVE BRACKET OF ROTHSTEINISMS!
Prepare your voting fingers to crown the champion of Rothstein-ology.
Raftery is such a national treasure. Fantastic game and he’s out here randomly poking fun at Jay Wright and calling himself old enough to have voted for James Madison for president.
There are now 13 teams with at least 6 Quadrant 1 wins and no Quadrant 3 or Quadrant 4 losses:
12 of them (UVA, Duke, UK, KU, MSU, UNC, Michigan, Wisconsin, Marquette, MD, Miss St. and Kansas St.) are VERY comfortably in the field.
And then there's Indiana....
Heartbroken to hear of Bill Walton’s passing, but you know damn well he wouldn’t want us mourning. Go ride your bike, smoke something, eat a lit cupcake and try to live one day as fully as Walton always did. RIP to a legend.
The winning score in Bracket Matrix this year was 355. That would have been good for 151st out of 229 last year.
Kind of says all you need to know about this year’s committee.
🚨 Feb. 12 Bracketology Whiteboard Update 🚨
4 categories in the initial post simply wasn’t enough. Gotta go to 6.
The Pac-12 no longer merits having its own section.
THAT BIG EAST BUBBLE THO
Neemias Queta became the second player in NCAA tournament history with at least 6 points, 6 rebounds, 6 blocks and 5 assists in a single game. The other was Anthony Davis in the 2012 national championship. Just unforgivable for Utah State to lose that game.
Welcome to Whiteboard SZN 2024.
Might be a little aggressive in putting Butler, Indiana State and UVA in the second column, but it is good idea and I stand by.
You cover a sport where people openly wondered last fall if Texas A&M would pay $95 million to fire Jimbo Fisher, but a guy getting a promotion from FDU to Iona is bizarre.
The fans have spoken, and the best Rothsteinism of the 2018-19 season is...
"West Virginia Basketball. Tougher than a long weekend at your in-laws."
@JonRothstein
I think "This is March." and "BOBBY ******* HURLEY" got robbed, but the WVU and Rutgers fans just wanted it more.
So, if there is no NCAA tournament, how f***ing dope would it be if CBS/TBS/TNT/truTV just kept those slots in place and decided to re-televise the 32 best first-round games, the 16 best second-round games, etc. from the past decade? I WILL WATCH UNI-TEXAS A&M AGAIN PLEASE!
I know there's a lot of truth to it, but I'm getting tired of hearing the "No one wanted to play us" narrative from every mid-major with 25+ wins and a terrible SOS.
JMU and Samford could've played each other instead of beating the hell out of Keystone and LaGrange on Dec. 3.
In the 3 full seasons since the switch to NET (2019, 2022, 2023) there have been 69 teams with at least five Q1 wins and a winning record vs. Q1/Q2.
All 69 made the tournament, and the only one that didn't receive a single digit seed was 2019 Seton Hall as a 10.
Sup, Texas A&M?
I've been saying this for a while now. Glad it's catching on.
I hope it results in a couple of bubbly Big 12 teams missing the dance, because if beating the hell out of Q4 teams continues to get rewarded, say goodbye to at least half of the November/December games worth watching
I caught a lot of crap for saying I thought the Big XII had gamed the system.
These aren't baseless claims. I don't think the league is as good as it has been this season.
The reason? They haven't played anyone at all during the nonconference, beat the life out of teams ranked
As we argue Seton Hall, St. John's, Providence, Pittsburgh and Virginia for that final spot or two in the field, Indiana State just looks more and more attractive.....
You know what would be an awesome season-opening Multi-Team Event? George Mason, VCU, FGCU, Oral Roberts, St. Peter's, Davidson, Butler and Loyola-Chicago at a TBD Cinderella-themed venue.
Bring back as many of the alums as possible.
Also, championship game ends at midnight.
It's so ridiculous that we can't get the 1 vs. 8/9 game of the MVC tournament on national TV.
Y'all know that's a key Friday afternoon game every year, yet it's relegated to ESPN+ in favor of the McAfee Show on ESPN, a re-airing of First Take on ESPN 2 and some SEC BS on ESPNU.
Boise State, Colorado State, San Diego State and Utah State have gone a collective 25-0 against the rest of the MWC and have not yet lost a game to a team outside the NET Top 100 or KenPom Top 100. Just might be a 4-bid league if that trend continues another month.
@madeformarch
Houston is on its 5th straight Sweet 16 and has only played one team seeded better than
#9
in the first weekend. That includes that 2021 run where it didn’t play a single-digit seed until the Final Four.
Don’t know how anyone can still be opposed to the Elam Ending after a game tied at 74 with a target score of 76 just ended on a walk-off steal and dunk.
Several tough calls here, including moving Wisconsin to a lock despite the fact that all they do is lose lose lose no matter what.
Florida, Nevada, Utah State and Dayton are very close to locks. And I don’t know why I haven’t erased LSU yet.
Just think, we could've had Robbie Avila and a potent Indiana State offense in the NCAA tournament. Instead, we have to watch Virginia on Tuesday.
Fuuuuuuuuuuck that
Alabama is three minutes away from having losses to Iona, Memphis and Davidson on a resume that also includes wins over Gonzaga and Houston. Sure why not
The person who won does not appear to have a Twitter account, had a laughably bad 5-year average in the rankings, and their link on Bracket Matrix goes to a WordPress that had not been posted on in 5 years prior to Sunday. Gotta love the Matrix...
Of 226 brackets posted and scored on Bracket Matrix, here is where the three major networks' Bracketologists finished.
Fox, Mike DeCoursey: T-54th
ESPN, Joe Lunardi: T-166th
CBS, Jerry Palm: T-213th
Those are the three most-viewed brackets.
54.
166.
213.
Kansas and Arizona now have oddly similar resumes.
Each has 4 superb wins (KU over UConn, Houston, Tennessee and Kentucky; Zona over Wisconsin, Alabama, Duke and Mich State) and 3 WTF road losses in league play.
Think the Duke W being the only true road game of the bunch is key
If there's any coach who should be going viral right now for hating on bracketology, it's Thad Matta.
Butler has road wins over Creighton and Marquette on its 15-11 record against maybe the toughest schedule in the nation. Not a single even remotely bad loss...
This is absurd: Prior to hitting that stone-cold three-pointer to win the game, Furman's JP Pegues had missed 15 consecutive three-point attempts dating back to the first half of the SoCon semis.
Schedule releases by sport:
NBA/MLB/NFL/NHL - entire league announced at once, followed by all sorts of rapid analysis.
College football - nonconference games agreed to 17 years into the future.
College basketball - Check Jon Rothstein’s Twitter for updates daily for 6 months.
After Edey's last bucket, he stared down Hurley like "what are you gonna do about it?"
And then as Hurley is yelling at the refs about what he felt was an Edey's moving screen, he started yelling at Edey, too.
Shit's getting real.
3P% and average made 3s per game:
Utah State - 38.7, 9.3
Charleston - 33.1, 9.9
Furman - 34.4, 9.4
Alabama - 33.5, 9.9
Creighton - 35.8, 8.8
Those five offenses against San Diego State in the past three weeks: 16.9, 4.0
National Tight Ends Day has gotten too commercial. I choose to celebrate it at home with my family, in the traditional fashion: by gathering around the table for a delicious home-cooked meal, and burning the flesh of a sacrificial calf on our massive Alge Crumpler shrine.
There's "Down Bad" and then there's, "Well, listen, if you don't count Louisville, Notre Dame and Georgia Tech against us, we would clean the fuck up against Wyoming, San Jose State and Air Force."
If you did a ACC-MWC Challenge and pitted the 11 MWC teams against the top 11 ACC teams in Haslam Metrics order and used their automated game preview section, the ACC wins 9-2.
Not even 50% of the Matrix has New Mexico in the field. And a win over a consensus
#8
seed makes them a lock? Are you kidding me?
I would love to see the Lobos get in. But this rush to crown teams as locks has gotten completely out of control.
With 9:20 to go against UCLA, Villanova led by 10.
With 9:30 to go against Purdue, Villanova led by 11.
Tough to go 40 minutes against super deep teams with a six-man rotation, but Nova is a damn good two-loss squad.
All I'll say about the "How can anyone possibly beat UConn?!?" talk right now is this game feels a whole lot like Kentucky-West Virginia in 2015, which the Wildcats won 78-39, leaving us to feel exactly how we feel now about the seemingly inevitable champion.
Fun with NET: By losing at home to Pitt last night, Duke turned its previous road win over Pitt into a Quad 1 result, as the Panthers jumped from 82 to 68 overnight.
This 6-day stretch of the season—where I check scores and for >50% of leagues have no clue if it's regular season or conference tournament—is total anarchy.
Periodic reminder that Rothstein, Bilas, Davis, etc. are not bracketologists, and their willingness to speak in absolutes about things that are anything but set in stone only reaffirms it.
Conference record is not supposed to be a consideration in selecting the NCAA tournament field. But, my God, suffering 10 losses against THIS Pac-12 has to matter, right?
Hey
@dandakich
you could just hit RT instead of borrowing my research. And I know you didn't look it up yourself today because Utah State got an extra Q1 win after my tweet.
Kiddo got off the bus today and said “I have something in my folder for you!” Made this at school. She thinks it’s great that there are 2 TVs in the office for watching basketball now. Might have to frame this.
ESPN2 just showed Iowa State’s “tournament resume.”
It was just BPI, NET, SOS and record. Nothing about Quadrants. No results-based metrics. No NCSOS.
The equivalent of asking “should this QB be drafted
#1
?” and then showing his Wonderlic score and his favorite Applebee’s dish.
Teams with at least 12 wins against D1 opponents:
Connecticut, Purdue, Houston, Miami
...and
@FordhamMBB
Without their leading scorer, Rams win in OT and survive a scare from VMI to improve to 12-1.
Time to start talking about Fordham.
An understated great part of this MWC season has been the commentators. Everyone calling a Mountain West game seems to be having the time of their life. As they should be.
As always when "John Calipari hot seat" talk bubbles up, all I'll say is you better be damn sure about who's next in line for that throne.
It can go from "being let down in March too many times" to "remember when we used to at least make the tournament?" in a hurry.
Tuesday night in college hoops always delivers.
Saturdays are almost TOO much. Mondays and Fridays are always lacking. Thursdays are mostly irrelevant (GEE THANKS PAC-12).
But we've had like 8 straight Tuesdays with 10-15 solid games for a "first Thursday of the tourney" vibe.
I don't care what the rankings say, Lunardi is the fucking GOAT. He does projections all season long, then spends the entirety of Champ Week on camera, able to coherently explain why he makes the decisions he does. Then 100 yahoos swoop in at the last minute and post 1 seed list.
Unless UAB pulls off an unbelievable comeback, we're going to end up without a single bid thief. In a year where the bubble is about as crowded as ever. Go easy on us when we all miss at least 2 teams, especially if the committee throws us a New Mexico/Wisconsin curveball.
In program history, San Diego State has been a
#5
seed or better 4 times.
2011 - Lost in Sweet 16 to UConn (UConn wins title)
2014 - Lost in Sweet 16 to Arizona (UConn wins title)
2023 - Lost in natty to UConn (UConn wins title)
2024 - Lost in Sweet 16 to UConn (TBD)
The year is 2037.
John Calipari, Bill Self, Mark Few and Tom Izzo have all retired.
Jim Boeheim is still coaching Syracuse, from a literal coffin - paid for with NIL money - as it plays in the 8/9 game in Greensboro.
If Indiana, Texas A&M and Virginia Tech all lose today, I suspect you're going to see a lot of bracketologists missing multiple teams this year. There is like no consensus whatsoever among the last 5 teams in.
I don’t know why Bill Walton is the most polarizing announcer in the world, but I’m a proud long-time member of the pole that enjoys life and laughter. If you seriously can’t enjoy a basketball game because he’s on the mic, I feel sorry for you.
There are currently four NET top 40 teams with a BPI rank at least 10 spots below their KenPom rank.
They are all in the Mountain West.
Colorado State (25 KP, 62 BPI)
San Diego State (21 KP, 41 BPI)
New Mexico (40 KP, 59 BPI)
Utah State (43 KP, 56 BPI)
Arizona State game was canceled against FAMU because it’s facility has no water, no lights, no power, source told
@stadium
. Might be time for some upgrades in Tempe. People taking shots at Bobby Hurley, but went to 2 tourneys and was set to go to a third despite lack of support.
Through eight Big 12 games, Markquis Nowell is averaging 22.1 points, 8.1 assists and 2.9 steals.
When Jevon Carter was a consensus second-team All-American as a senior, he averaged 15.7 points, 6.6 assists and 2.4 steals in Big 12 play.
Man, if you think people love to move the goalposts in politics, say something nice about Gonzaga and watch people rebuke those facts. If they finally win a title this year, people might spontaneously combust with rage and denial.
Man, screw this committee for putting San Diego State at 14 in the reveal and then underseeding the entire Mountain West Conference. I did pretty good aside from that league haha
@3YearLetterman
My 4-year-old told me earlier this week that she learned her latest skill - putting her clothes into her hamper with her feet - from hanging out at Bulbasaur's house.
After beating
#10
Gonzaga,
#7
Tennessee and
#4
Marquette in the span of like 50 hours, Purdue is perfectly positioned to lose to a
#16
seed once again.
Should be the unanimous
#1
in the AP poll on Monday.
Not implying they didn’t put in a crazy number of hours, but just that there were a lot of inconsistencies, both from previous years and in how they felt about teams at various seed lines this year.