It was the numbers, not me

"The most valuable commodity I know of is information"... Gordon Gekko

The NCAA tournament is over. Luckily, Kansas fulfilled my expectations (barely, but Memphis had high numbers as well). Therefore I'm pretty satisfied.

After years of finishing in the bottom division of almost every pool I entered, this year I did well relying on my so-called "Point Value over Average" system of selection (although I finished with the most correct, I didn't win any money... if you've been following this saga, I accidentally entered a pool that put an absurd amount of weight on first round games. The winner in the pool picked Tennessee as his champion.).

In my pool I picked 47 correct games, for a 74.7% accuracy rate. That was the best correct out of 75 brackets entered, and four better, I believe, than the ESPN "national consensus" picks. I also chose the right champion when that team -- while not a bolt from the blue by any means -- was hardly a consensus choice (only 6% of my pool entrants took Kansas). And, I got the total score at the end of regulation pretty close (it was 132, I had 136). All in all, for a prognosticator who watched bits of maybe 4 college games all season, I'll take the results.

The funny thing is, the system I used, I thought, had some really glaring flaws. Chief among them: it did a poor job of evaluating mid-major teams on a schedule neutral basis. I'll have to work on that. But for now, drink the wine. KU, baby.

I'll leave you with an illustration of my previous methodology.

My brain: "Let's see, Duke versus Kentucky. Ok, I think I like Kentucky. Doesn't Kentucky have that one prospect everyone keeps mentioning? What's his name... Walters, Walker... something like that? Ok, I gotta ride Kentucky. Wait, I just remember Jay Bilas said Duke was on a mission this year. Ok, so its Duke. On the other hand, didn't I hear someone on Mike and Mike say Duke lacked confidence? Yeah, hmmm..."