It's tourney time again! After the cancelation last year due to the pandemic, we got our mid-day tournament basketball back! The favorite part of the tourney is to fill out a bracket and watching to see how your picks do. Everyone has their favorite strategy for filling out their bracket. Whether it's using heavy analytic tools to find the perfect upset or just pick the school mascot you like better. There's no wrong way to go about it. However, no matter what strategy you use, You'll probably see your final four picks lose to some mid-major you never heard of. (Looking at you University of Maryland, Baltimore County). Because of this, I decided to do a little experiment with my brackets. Below is my journey and results on my brackets based on various college rankings.
Methodology
For My Experiment, I took reviews of all the tournament teams off Niche. What's Niche? Basically, it's Yelp for Schools. Users can rate their school on various categories (Academics, Campus, Overall Experience, Party Scene, Housing, Food, Safety, Student Life, and Value). I decided to make brackets base on 5 of these categories: Overall Experience, Campus, Food, Housing, and Party Scene. The rules are simple the school with the higher score in each category advances in the bracket. Niche gives a rating from 1 to 5 stars. I then took those scores to find the arithmetic mean for each school in each category. I also gave each bracket a Chalk score (How many games on this bracket would be considered chalk) and an Upset score (Adding all seeds of the winner of each game, a low upset score means a more realistic bracket). In the 2019 bracket, the chalk score is 34 and an upset score of 270
Overall experience Bracket (Chalk 29, Upset score 399)
The College experience is an important part of most people's lives. It's where you make friends, find life partners, and help to figure out what you want to do in life. Where you go to college plays a major role in that. That being said this a very unrealistic bracket. Including a very unrealistic champion in #13 seed Liberty. People who went to Liberty REALLY like going to Liberty. Of the 2,004 reviews on Overall Experience, 1,365 (65%) were five stars this easily gave the Flames the highest score. To show you how unrealistic Liberty winning the actual tourney there odds are +20000 (bet $100 to 20,000). The worst MLB team, the Pittsburg Pirates, are +15000 to win the world series. So to say it's a longshot would be an understatement. There is some hope with this bracket with #1 Seed Michigan (4.45) getting to the Elite Eight.
Best in Overall Experince score: #13 Liberty (4.56) #6 USC (4.52) #10 Va. Tech (4.51) #6 BYU (4.51) #10 VCU (4.49) #2 Alabama (4.46) #1 Michigan. (4.45) #4 Florida St. (4.43)
Worst in Overall Experince score: #4 Creighton (4.07) #10 St. Bonaventure (4.05) #16 MTSM (4.05) #15 Clev. St (.4.03) #16 Texas So (4.03) #16 Drexel (3.92) #15 Iona (3.80) #16 Hartford (3.79)
Campus Bracket (Chalk Score 24 Upset Score 482)
A school's Campus has a major impact on one's decision to go to a school. For me, UT's downtown location and the Minarets were a major factor in me going there. However good campus doesn't translate to a good bracket because the Campus bracket is the most unrealistic out of all the categories. This bracket features #15 Seed Grand Canyon (4.12) winning it all (+30000), which there's no shot of actually happing. (Sorry Lopes fans you'd be lucky not to lose by 20 to Iowa in the first round. Also of note for some reason, GCU didn't have ratings on their food, housing, and Party scene so in those rounds I was forced to auto-advance GCU's opponent. Other major upsets in this bracket include #15 Cleveland St (3.41) over #2 Houston( 3.30) and features #13 seeds North Texas and Liberty making the Sweet Sixteen. With the Upset score of 482, I would only trust a few picks on this bracket.
Best in Campus score: #15 Grand Canyon (4.12) #12 UCSB (3.93) #3 Texas (3.85) #6 San Diego St (3.83) #5 Colorado (3.79) #6 USC (3.78) #11 UCLA (3.77) #4 Virginia (3.76)
Worst in Campus score: #5 Creighton (3.28) #7 UCONN (3.25) #16 Norfolk (3.23) #14 Morehead St.(3.23) #11 Syracuse (3.21) #16 Texas So (3.21) #16 MTSM (3.19) #16 Hartford (3.13)
Food Bracket (Chalk Score 29 Upset score 433)
The leading cause of the Freshman 15, Campus food can be hit or miss. Sometimes it can be a great meal in
the long hours of the night or the worst thing you have ever eaten. This Bracket has #10 Va Tech winning it all. with odds of +6000 (for reference the Red Sox are +5000 to win the WS). These odds aren't great but are still better than the 200 and 300 to 1 odds in earlier brackets. Big upsets in this bracket include another appearance by #13 Liberty (3.76) in the Final Four and only two single digits seeds made the Elite Eight #3 Kansas (3.81) and #1 Michigan (3.91). Also of note, the #11 play in-game features two strong teams with UCLA score of 4.10 and MSU of 3.91. After each play-in game has a winner I'll update the brackets for more accurate matchups.
Best in Food score: #10 Va. Tech (4.35) #11 UCLA (4.10) #3 Texas (3.94) #11 Michigan St (3.91) #1 Michigan (3.91) #5 Colorado (3.88) #2 Ohio St (3.85) #9 Wisconsin (3.84)
Worst in Food score: #15 Clev. St. (3.22) Hartford(3.22) Norfolk (3.21) St. Bona. (3.14) Texas So. (3.14) E Wash (3.14) Colgate (3.13) MTSM (2.96)
Housing Bracket (chalk score 29 Upset Score 451)
Housing can be a major headache of the college experience You often living in a small room with roommates you never met before. It can also cause a lot of stress not knowing where you are going to live year to year. Some dorms are better than others, and like the previous categories, this one is also very unrealistic. Also, interesting Housing produced the lowest scores with an average rating of 3.41. This bracket features the first repeat winner in #13 Liberty (3.92). See above on how much of an underdog the flames are. Other Upsets of note include #15 Oral Roberts (3.44) over #2 Ohio St. (3.41). This bracket also features a couple of upsets in the relatively chalky East region. #14 Ablinene Christian (3.57) over #3 Texas (3.48) and #13 UNC Greensboro (3.56) over #4 FSU (3.48). This bracket is up there with the campus as one of the worst.
Best in Housing score: #13 Liberty (3.92) #1 Michigan (3.86) #2 Alabama (3.81) #6 BYU (3.78) #11 Utah St (3.77) #11 Drake (3.77) #3 Arkansas (3.66) #10 Va. Tech (3.65)
Worst in Housing score: #2 Houston (3.24) #10 Maryland (3.23) #14 Colgate (3.22) #16 Drexel (3.16) #16 Hartford (3.14) #9 St. Bona.(3.09) #16 Texas So (3.00) #16 Norfolk (2.96)
Party Scene Bracket (chalk score 33 Upset score 360)
Peanut butter and Jelly, Macaroni and Cheese, the city of Atlanta, and Choking. Some things just go together. College and parties are no exception. Interestingly enough a school's party score actually produces a decent-looking bracket with only a few suspect picks. With an upset score 360, this is actually a decent bracket. The only major suspect pick is USCB in the final four. This bracket produces the only realistic champion in #3 Texas (4.20). Also features #1 Illinois as a final four seed. This bracket does also have some crazy upsets mainly due to Baylor's Extremely low party scene rating of 3.01. Overall Baylor has really low ratings on Niche ranking 51 of the 68 in teams in the field in average rating. This bracket also produces the highest chalk score helped by 1-4 seeds in the East all advancing to the sweet sixteen. This bracket is far from perfect but is way stronger than any other category.
Best in Party Sence score: #3 Texas (4.20) #12 UCSB ( 4.13) #4 Florida St. (4.12) #1 Illinois (4.12) #3 W. Virginia (4.10) #10 Wisconsin(4.09) #7 Iowa (4.07) #13 Ohio (4.02)
Worst in Party Scene score: #8 Loyola Chi (3.04) #11 Drake (3.04) #1 Baylor (3.01) #14 E Wash (2.96) #13 Liberty (2.93) #15 Iona (2.88) #14 Morehead St. (2.86) #14 Abilene Christian (2.76) #11 Wichita St (2.73) #16 MTSM (2.40)
Final Thoughts
Do any of these brackets have enough merit to win you your office pool? Absolutely not. They're way too much high seed advancing to make any of these brackets viable. None of these brackets have on Gonzaga getting past the round of 32 so don't trust them. After the tournament is over I'll write a follow-up article with the results from the tourney. To view all-tournament teams ranking click here
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