Bracket - December 15

I've added a new page to the Bracket Project. The tracker will track a team's progress in the matrix over the course of the season.

Ohio State must have had arguably the best 3-game stretch of the season so far. Wins over Miami (FLA), Notre Dame, and Butler have vaulted them up my bracket to a 4 seed. Other teams making a move up are Arizona (with its upset win over Gonzaga. However, it'll take a bit more to get that disastrous UAB ending out of my end), Michigan (giant-killer), and Missouri (convincing wins over USC and Cal).

On the flip side, Kansas and Florida are looking a little weak so far this year after two losses for both teams (Kansas to UMass and Syracuse and Florida to Syracuse and Florida State) and they also share only one quality win over Washington. In addition, Wazzu just lost two straight at home, albeit to Baylor and Gonzaga. For now, they're out of the bracket.

http://bracketproject.50webs.com/PDFS/121508.pdf

BCS Again

A short detour to the BCS...last year, I described what I'd want to see in a playoff system in college football. While a playoff will happen at some point in our lives, the BCS is here to stay for the foreseeable future. So for my second alternative...a baby step toward a playoff: the plus-one.

Steps that should be taken:

1. Keep the 10-team format, but upgrade an existing bowl to BCS status. The Cotton Bowl, once a premier game, has faded in recent years. The move to the new Cowboys Stadium should kick-start excitement about the game and allow it to be a prime candidate to become a BCS game.

2. The highest non-BCS conference champion should qualify for the BCS system provided it is ranked higher than at least one BCS conference champion. If a BCS conference champion is ranked outside the BCS top 25, then the non-BCS qualifier need only to be ranked in the top 25.

3. Abolish the two-team maximum per conference. Last year, I said it was okay but after seeing Texas Tech, Texas, and Oklahoma tie for the top spot in the Big 12, all three were deserving to be part of the system.

4. After the conference champions have been selected, choose the highest ranked teams remaining to fill the remaining spots.

5. Extract the Big Ten/Pac 10 teams to play in the Rose Bowl. The top 4 remaining teams will play each other (1 vs. 4, 2 vs. 3). The bottom 4 teams will also play each other (5 vs. 6, 7 vs. 8). Determine the matchups first and then they will be assigned to the bowl with the highest ranked team's conference tie-in.

6. After the BCS games have been played, run the polls and computers one more time and determine two teams to play for the national championship.

How would this work?

This year, you have 6 conference champions (Oklahoma, Florida, USC, Penn State, Cincinnati, and Virginia Tech). Utah qualifies as the highest non-BCS qualifier. The remaining teams that qualify are Texas, Alabama and Texas Tech.

These matchups would be produced:
Rose: USC vs. Penn State
Fiesta: Oklahoma vs. Alabama
Sugar: Florida vs. Texas
Orange: Cincinnati vs. Virginia Tech
Cotton: Utah vs. Texas Tech

After you play the games, run the system again and produce a national championship matchup. This year, as a result, Texas would have gotten a chance to play for a national championship and Texas Tech would get to play in a big-money game.

Okay, back to basketball. A new bracket and matrix update comes December 15.

Bracket - December 1

A few weeks have passed in the regular season so it's time for another bracket. Losses by Louisville (to Western Kentucky) and UCLA (to Michigan) knock them out of the top line and replaced by Pittsburgh and Duke.

Gonzaga is a pleasant surprise for the first month of the season but its challenging schedule is far from over with games against Indiana, Arizona, Connecticut, and a rematch with Tennnessee still upcoming. Syracuse also looks pretty good with wins over Florida and Kansas. Two Big 10 teams made their way into the bracket as well with Michigan posting the big upset of UCLA and Illinois with good wins at Vanderbilt and against Kent State and Tulsa.

I knocked UNLV out of the bracket. Losing two at home to middle-of-the-road competition (Cal and Cincinnati) is a recipe for disaster. Without a road win at Louisville later this month, it'll be an uphill climb to earn an at-large bid. St. Mary's is also out, saddled by a loss to UTEP and a weak schedule all around. Wins against Kent State (away), San Diego State (neutral), Oregon (away), and of course Gonzaga will help its cause.

http://bracketproject.50webs.com/PDFS/120108.pdf

The 2008-09 Bracket Matrix Links

If you're a contributor, click here for some formatting information to make my life easier.

This list is now locked in for 2009. Sites which do not appear here but did in the past should email me to be included in the 2009 matrix.

As usual, brackets must have been updated within one week to appear in the matrix.

If I counted correctly, 78 sites are currently being tracked for The Bracket Matrix:

The Bracket Project (BP)
ESPN - Joe Lunardi
CBS Sportsline - Jerry Palm who can also be found at CollegeRPI.com
FOX Sports on MSN - Frank Burlison
Rivals - Mike Huguenin
Sporting News - Ryan Fagan
Sports Illustrated - Andy Glockner
Yahoo! Sports - Brad Evans

Baseline Stats - Brendon Desrochers
Basketball Predictions (BaP)
Beating the Experts (BtE)
Bleacher Report - Mike Alessandrini (BR-MA), Matt Browning (BR-MB), Marc Daley (BR-MD), Jameson Fleming (BR-JF), Jonathan Goodman (BR-JG), Curt Hogg (BR-CH), Gary Lloyd (BR-GL), Shaun Reilly (BR-SR), Jordan Schwartz (BR-JS), and Andy Thompson (BR-AT)
Blogging the Bracket (BtB)
The Bracketeer (TB)
The Bracketeer - Bluejay Basketball (TBBB)
Bracketology 65 (B65)
Bracketology 101 (B101)
Bracketville (BV)
Bracket Bash (BB)
The Bracket Board (TBB)
Bracket Dobber (BD)
Bracket Predictions (BrP)
The Bracket of Truth - Mike (BT-M) and Jacob (BT-J)
Bryce's Bracket Predictions
College Hoops Net - March Madness All Season (MMAS)
College Hoops Net - Shawn Siegel (CHN)
Cookin' Up College Hoops (Cook)
The Eclecticist (TE)
The HoopGroup's Facts & Bracks (F&B)
Howard Salwasser's Bracket Watch (BW)
Joey's Sports Blog
March Madness 09 (MM09)
Mike on Sports
New York Daily News - Hoops on Campus (NYDN)
New York Post - Brian Costello (NYP)
Nuge's Bracketology
Online Sports Fanatic - Daniel Evans (OSF-E), Hofstad (OSF-H), Schwader (OSF-S)
PHSports - Where Sport and Thought Intersect
Please...STFU
Rainmaker's Bracketology
Rock-M-tology
RoundTableSports (RTS)
Rush the Court - Zach Hayes
Schmolik 64
The Schoeneck Republic (TSR)
Storming the Floor
Washington Times' D1Scourse - Patrick Stevens (WT)

Beer's Bracket
Bracketography (Graph)
Bracket WAG
Collegesports-fans.com (CSF)
The Columbus Dispatch - Bill Rabinowitz (CD)
Coolpohle's Bracketology (CB) which can also be found at A10CollegeHoops.com
Crashing the Dance (CtD)
Feature Presentation Online - Breaking Down the Bracket (FPO)
The Hoops Report - Ryan Feldman (THR)
Jason's Bracketogoly (JB)
JuniorNoboa's Bracketology (JN)
Lobofan2003's Bracketology
Mackinder's Bracketography (Mac)
MAG NCAA Tournament Projections
Maize and Blue Matters (M&B)
NCAA Bracket (NB)
RPI Forecast
VanDongen Computer Rankings (VCR)
VTS Bracketmaker
Warren Nolan's Fully Sports (WN)

Pre-season Bracket

I don't like doing pre-season brackets. How do you know where anyone will end up when zero games have been played? But I will admit that the best columns writers write is when they look back and see how wrong they were. So clicking on the main page will take you to my starting point for the year. UNC, UConn, UCLA, and Louisville occupy the top spots while Oklahoma State, UAB and New Mexico are on the bubble.

The first matrix will be published Monday night and will be refreshed every Monday night until January when I'll move to a daily schedule. Pre-season brackets will be valid in the matrix until December 1, which coincides with my next bracket release.

http://bracketproject.50webs.com/PDFS/Preseason%20200809.pdf

2008-09 Schedule

Welcome back everyone.

The Bracket Matrix goes live November 10 with updates every Monday until January 5, when the updates will occur once a day everyday.

My own bracket projections will be updated as follows:

November 10
December 1, 15, 29
January 5, 12, 19, 26
February 2, 6, 9, 13, 16, 20, 23, 27
March 2, 6, 9, 13, 14, 15

Watching...waiting

The 2007-08 season is over and now it's time to get ready for the 2008-09 season. That won't start until November 1.

Join the newly created Facebook group and discuss the upcoming season.

Are you a bracketologist and would like to be a part of The Bracket Matrix this season? Please read the following:

1. You need to set up a web site to place your bracket that will be consistent throughout the season. A blog will do. A web site will most definitely do. A bracket posted on a message board will not do. The link will change frequently and will get lost in various discussions, making it difficult for the average reader to find it. (Exception: A message board devoted exclusively to bracketology.)

2. You have to tell me where your site is. I don't have a sixth sense when it comes to finding these things. I rely on you and readers like you to tell me what kind of sites to add to this page.

3. The NCAA sets up procedures and principles for building a bracket. Read them! A seriously flawed bracket won't be posted. However, if your seedings are out of the norm, I'll still most likely post it provided that the principles are followed and you have an explanation as to why you've built the bracket like you did. I reserve the right to not post a bracket with something like a winless team as a #1 seed.

4. Please date-stamp your bracket. Brackets of a certain age will be removed from the list, and if there's no date-stamp, obviously I can't tell when your bracket was updated.

5. To make it easier on me, please format your bracket so that at least half of it can be seen on the screen at any one time. You can make it even easier for me by publishing a seed list of your 65 teams. Only brackets that seed at least 48 teams will be listed in the matrix.

6. No new sites will be added to the 2009 page after March 1 unless you have appeared in previous versions of this page, in which case, you will be grandfathered in. In addition, no bracket will be accepted to the final matrix of the season after the beginning of the Selection Sunday show.

7. Your bracket will be updated in the matrix only once per day at a time of my choosing. Exceptions to this rule are brackets with a national following and the top 5 performers in the Bracket Matrix from the previous season according to the Paymon rubric. More details will be forthcoming in January.

8. I'm only one guy. If this could pay me what I get at my regular job, I'd update this site 24/7. That simply is not the case. If someone else can do this better, I'll gladly step aside, but from the looks of it, I'm the only (crazy) one. So if you don't see your site on here, an update hasn't been done for a while or I don't respond to you, I hope you'll understand why.