I shouldn’t say they’ll underperform every tournament. But I think they have a better chance of laying an egg against a far inferior team than a faster paced elite team does because the game is shortened.

This year they were really freaking good and the record bore that out. Bit of a anomaly from previous years.

Virginia is definitely a good bracket pick from a game theory perspective. They are going to be underpicked vs. their skill level. Teams like Arizona, Kentucky, Duke, UNC, Michigan St. are going to be way overpicked in the brackets vs. their skill level.

Bracket sleepers to me seem like Purdue, Virginia, Cincy, whoever wins between Wichita St./WV, Florida. If you hit on some of that you are going to be miles ahead in your pools and if you miss well it still gave you a better chance than having to have the best UNC/Dook/Nova/Mich St. bracket of the 70% of the field who will have some combo of that and all chalk.

apparently st marys dodged everyone this year. even bought out of a road game at Grand Canyon who was ok. wouldnt play rhode island, nevada, or creighton.

can I get odds on Romeo to IU?

This is true to an extent but it also depends on size of your pool.

watching bracketology now. lol at vitale going hard in the paint on oklahoma st. they were 19-14 and the definition of mediocre major conference team. it wouldn't have been bad to have them in over any of the similar teams but fortunately there isn't room for everyone who goes 8-10

i was shocked how close stanford was. 3 seed in the NIT

ESPN average bracket going hard on UVA.

I think he’s mostly pissed that OU got in over them

I think it's stupid the committee now ignore last 10 games performance (as compared to the rest of the season). You don't want teams that are playing like absolute **** or have been solved to make the tourney and get instantly eliminated. Did anyone get hurt for OU? If not they have no excuse for sucking so much ass other then when teams figured out if you stop Young, you stop OU and OU can't play through anyone else.

I would be surprised if Virginia was in the top 5 in any bracket contest worth >50$. The mouthbreather crowd picking on ESPN with little to no consequence is not usually who you are competing against

I am sure you guys are tired of hearing it but it was dropped a long time ago in the mid 2000s when too many mid-majors were benefitting from this metric (because they played easier schedules down the stretch than major teams). Like almost everything over the last 10-15 years the emphasis has been on inviting almost all major teams as at larges so as to keep all of that sweet sweet NCAA tournament money at the top.

IIRC, in that 2014 game against MSU, Anthony Gill got hurt. He was the primary post scorer, so that was a big problem. That was the year MSU had everyone injured during the year, so they lost some games, but they got healthy for the tournament.

As you said, Anderson was hurt in 2015 and though he played, he wasn't the same.

Those two losses, while certainly disappointing, were standard losses to good teams. Sometimes you lose.

2016 was certainly a choke job late in the game, though Syracuse got crazy hot (I believe Richardson was hitting EVERYTHING) at the same time. Perfect storm in the last few minutes. That team should've made the Final Four.

Last year, the team was ok, but certainly not as good as the other teams. Wilkins was also ill (it took weeks/months for them to figure out what was wrong with him) and didn't play. The team was running on fumes - Perrantes was basically the only reliable player and he was exhausted from carrying the team. Florida was better and they whooped us.

So yeah, it's definitely disappointing that one of those teams couldn't make a Final Four, but two games were just standard, close losses to really good MSU teams and one was a blowout against a better team. It's hard to win a bunch of games in a row against NCAA tourney teams. The Cuse loss was painful, but credit Cuse for adjusting.

This year I'll certainly be sad if we can't go far, but who knows what will happen? One off night shooting or one hot night from the other team can sink you. Play Arizona and we get called for fouls every time we try to defend Ayton and that's it. Maybe he'll go off but his teammates will stink and we'll win. Maybe Kentucky will just out-athlete us, maybe we'll frustrate them and force terrible shots.

It's madness for a reason. I'm honestly so happy with how far this program has come under Bennett. It's one of those situations where fans can really be proud of the coach and the kids. It's cliche and lame, but it really feels like they have done it "the right way." This season, though, has been a dream. I never imagined something like this. For me, personally, it's even more special because I grew up in Wisconsin and cheered for Tony Bennett when he played at UWGB (I was in middle school and high school), so when he became coach of Virginia, I was so excited. It's been fun watching him coach and watching his system work (the Pack Line is actually a lot of fun to watch if you study it a little).

Now let's just hope they at least make it to the second weekend because I've already bought tickets for Atlanta.

Makes sense. They are the #1 overall. I would imagine that there are bazillions of people who just go chalk or close to it.

One more thing. I should add that I don't disagree that the slower pace Virginia plays does lend itself to being on the bad side of variance. Obviously, if Virginia goes cold or the other team gets really hot, the lack of possessions makes it harder to come back.

At the same time, the pace is what works for Virginia and, when combined with the discipline and skill on offense and defense, contributes to the team's success. They wouldn't be the same if they ran more. For them, the slower pace works better than chucking up ****tier shots so they can gain more possessions. The pace can also frustrate teams that are used to running and gunning.

The pace giveth and the pace taketh away. Fortunately, it giveth more often for Virginia.

This may be a stupid question or I'm stupid, but do players like to play that pace or that style under Bennett? It seems like that style wouldn't be very fun. What type of player is he recruiting?

UVA is recruiting low tier guys that want to be there for 4 years. They are 80th in the rankings this year and pretty awful last year but was 7th in 2016 and 62nd in 2015. Malcolm Brogdan was pretty good but the rest of the guys aren't all that amazing in the NBA.

It's trivial to create a Monte Carlo sim to show that there's virtually no benefit due to decreasing variance by increasing the number of possessions. The difference between the lowest and the highest paced teams just aren't that high to that dramatically change things, and there's increased variance aspects to playing at a high pace too (more chances for star players to get into foul trouble for example)

100% agree. I wouldn't expect them to play any differently.

just to compare, the fast pace of play teams are low-mid 70's in possessions per game, duke is 73, uva is dead last and averages 63 possessions per game. so that's 10 shots a game, 5 more shots per half. it is a smaller difference than it feels like when you're watching.

you understand that 1 shot = 1 possession is faulty thinking right?

also, should a 15.9% increase in regards to possessions in a cbb game be considered small?

edit: wahoo in case you haven't seen kenpom's equation to calculate possessions in a game, here it is:

FGAs - Orebs + TOs + (FTAs x 0.475) ... calculate for both teams and divide by 2

so a possession could have 0 shots. it could have 7 shots. it could have 3 shots and 2 fouls on the defense. etc.

Thinking something like Tennessee (or Cincinnati), Xavier (or Ohio State or Gonzaga), Purdue, and Kansas (or Clemson) for contrarian big pool final four.

Arizona, MSU, Villanova, UK, Virginia, UNC, Michigan, Duke, going to be too popular.

If I had to take a rough guess at big pool Final Four selections (let's assume like $20-50 buyin)

South: 70% UVA, 20% Arizona, 7% Cincinnati, 3% others
East: 60% Villanova, 30% Purdue, 5% Wichita, 3% Texas Tech, 2% Others
West: 30% Michigan, 30% UNC, 20% Gonzaga, 15% Xavier, 5% others
Midwest: 35% Kansas, 30% Duke, 30% Sparty, 5% others

.

UNC will be closer to 30.
Xavier 25-30. They are a 1. The public doesn’t know they are not that good .