2014 Men's tournament watch

http://games.espn.go.com/tournament-challenge-bracket/2014/en/entry?entryID=7240327

Obama continues his tradition of picking OU to get upset early in the tournament. Hopefully his tradition of being wrong continues.

 

Wow. That's noteworthy.

 

All he did was photocopy the ESPN consensus bracket. His bracket is essentially a play-by-play of ESPN talking points for the last 4-5 days.

 

He's good at continually going over the talking points.

 

Exactly my thoughts. If I remember right, the first bracket he did looked like he did it by himself, and it was absolutely horrible for the first round or two. Ever since then, it's tended to look almost exactly like the consensus bracket. I think he's having somebody fill out his bracket for him, and then puts his own little twists on (like picking OU to be upset). He had OU getting upset in the second round in our Elite 8 run.

 

I've heard several of the "analyst" pick OU to be upset round 1.

I haven't paid close enough attention to OU or anyone else this year to make an informed decision.

 

I think there is a little too much love for NDSU in the media. I watched some of the game they played against Notre Dame (which they won). OU should be able to handle these guys. I hope OU decides to play in full court mode and not just try to turn this into a 3 point shooting contest.

 

I think they're confusing their football upsets with their potential for basketball upsets. The fact that they have a goofy coach that the media loves doesn't help. Have you all seen his press conference quotes? They're very silly and quotable

 

The media wants to cite their win over Notre Dame as a big win, but Notre Dame wasn't that great this year. If this game were a match-up between a 11/6 or 13/4 I don't think NDSU would be the media favorite. Everyone wants to pick the 12/5 upset, and Harvard just took care of that (of course it can happen more than once, but I think folks were reaching when picking NDSU).

 

I think the media would like NDSU regardless. If I were to not look at the top 10 seeds, the three teams I would have picked as likely mid-major bracket busters it would have been:

1. SFA
2. Harvard
3. NDSU

I'm not huge on the 12/5 thing, though. I can't seem to get my hands on the statistics, but I think the numbers only slightly deviate from what's expected for the 12/5. 10/7 upsets are considerably more frequent, and 9/8 upsets are WAY more frequent. Those just don't register as "upsets." It makes sense that more 12 seeds win than 13 seeds, more 13 seeds win than 14 seeds, etc. If I remember right, 11 seeds do better in the first round than 12 seeds, but it's only slightly better, so I guess that does show some "magic," but not much.

I don't have the statistics in front of me, but I'd bet that there are more 12 seeds in the Sweet 16 than 9, 10, and 11 seeds. That's just a product of the bracket, though. The 8 seeds are better than the 12 seeds, but they get matched up against a 1 seed in the second round.

 

I just want to brag on myself for a second.

And now I'm going to come back to Earth. If NC State hadn't blown a double digit lead in the second half and lost in OT, all the 12 seeds would have won against the 5 seeds. Harvard beat Cincy, and SFA beat VCU.

 

Go Baylor and Iowa state? Why not, and throw in Hoffman's bears.

 

What I get from the first round, if nothing else, is the XII was overrated as a conference.

 

Lets see how texass, ku, baylor, and isu finish before we go that far.

 

I worried that we might get "exposed" in this tournament. We're deep, but with Embiid out, we don't have a single great team. Having said that, the first round went just about as planned. OSU and KSU lost, but they were expected to lose. OU is the only Big XII team that got upset. We went 4-1 in games where we were favored, so that's pretty good. KU, ISU, and Baylor all have winnable games, so we'll see how they go. 30% of a conference in the Sweet 16 would look pretty good.