14 March 2012

Brackets final thoughts.

Value picking.

1) Find someone other than Kentucky to win it all (Ohio St, Kansas, North Carolina, Syracuse, in that order probably. Michigan State can get there, but plays too slow to be reliable). Over a third of all brackets have them winning it (and if I had to pick, they would be my pick too). Ohio State or Kansas are much higher value than UNC or Cuse for that matter. In a more local bracket (eg, Ohio), Kentucky or Ohio State probably account for a huge percentage of probable champs. They are not as dominating as an overrated Kentucky team a few years back (when Okafor/Gordon won with Connecticut) or the Kansas team that was potentially repeating a couple years ago, but they do look like the best team to a lot of people.
2) Avoid Florida State. Not much value in anyone in their bracket until OSU shows up, maybe Texas but they're terrible on the road.
3) Avoid Louisville. Lots of value in New Mexico.
4) Belmont is relatively high as a popular #3 upset, but still promising. As is BYU. 
5) Avoid Vanderbilt. Lots of value in Wisconsin.
6) Avoid Notre Dame.
7) People hate Duke for some reason. Exploiting their hatred is usually profitable. Not very much this year though.
8) UNLV looks interesting. So does Memphis (or St Louis).

Not much else. The fact that the top teams have a pretty big gap between them and the rest of the field hasn't been lost on the many, many people filling out brackets. Or rather, the fact that the top teams were clearly identified as seeded as top teams tends to cut against the prospect of people not identifying top teams in brackets because they are disguised as 3 or 4 seeds (Kentucky and UConn last year, Syracuse or Michigan when they won titles, etc). 

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