March 1st Is Almost Here

March 1st means one thing: 

March madness is under way and it’s almost time to win your office pool. Instead of filling out your bracket like the hot intern in your office by picking a team based on which mascot reminds her most of her cheerleading days in middle school, you’re going to want to keep your masculinity and pick based on actual sports “knowledge”.  Thankfully for the Eagles, this year there are 68 teams, which means BC has managed to stay on the bubble even while losing to two IVY league teams.  But aside from knowing not to pick BC to get out of the first round, or make the Elite 8 like I pick every year, here are some tips on how to choose a
winning bracket.

1)      Don’t try picking the trendy upset pick:  Teams with a 4+ seed
advantage wins 75% of the time.. Now that does leave room for some
upsets. Only select these Double digit seeds to get out of round 1 :
Princeton projected 13 seed right now (Because an Ivy league team has
made the sweet 16 every year since 2010) Richmond  projected 11 seed
right now (Because Kevin Anderson and Justin Harper are the two best
players you’ve never heard of  and they are the same team that was a 7
seed last year) Michigan St projected 10 seed right now (Michigan
State and final 4 goes together like TruTv covering the NCAA
Tournament first round: it is just bound to happen) While I was ready
to put Old Dominion in this category Joey” Brackets” Lunardi has them as
a 9 seed.

2)      BYU will not make the final 4. Even with all these years of preferential seeding because they refuse to play on a Sunday so they are the only team not ranked on the S curve, they have made the tournament 25 times without making the final 4. Yes that is a record. Teams from the same conference are blocked regionally, so BYU’s refusal to play on a Sunday will essentially affect SDSU’s seeding for the worse; this is basically karma for Steve Fisher cheating in Michigan all those years.  If you refuse to play on a Sunday you won’t make the

final 4 even if you have THE JIMMER.

3)      Teams don’t repeat. Unless you have Joakim Noah. And they only repeated because Tim Tebow was leading prayer sessions for the students before tournament games. But before Florida repeated you have to go way back to find the last repeat team was… who cares, I am too lazy to google it and Kyrie Irvingless Duke’s not repeating

4)      If an opposing team’s cheerleader tries to keep you in the game by
getting a technical in the closing seconds (see

and your star player tweets after losing “No way we should've lost to thembums smh..You will win the title. Take PITT in your office pool to win the tournament.

5)      None of this means anything or makes any sense until the actual bracket comes out.

First post from achemerinsky