Making Our Geo-Brackets
| March 15, 2012 | Posted by ReubenFB under Pointless |
On Tuesday we looked at which teams had the best and worst geographic draws in the NCAA tournament, a factor that could make the crucial difference in close games. But what if it was the only factor? Just for the hell of it, here’s a bracket we made based on one simple rule: the team closer to the site of the game will always win.
It didn’t turn out as terribly as I expected. Here’s a breakdown of the strengths, weaknesses, and really bad weaknesses of this bracket:
The Good:
- (1) Kentucky over (2) Kansas in the Final; seems legit.
- 5 out of 8 of the 1/2-seeds make the Elite Eight.
- Two 12-5 upsets picked, in my opinion probably the two most likely (USF over Temple, LBSU over New Mexico).
The Bad:
- Every single 7 seed loses. Every. single. one.
- (10) West Virginia to the Elite Eight with wins over (7) Gonzaga, (2) Ohio St., and (6) Cincy. Not impossible but pretty goofy.
- (13) Montana to the Sweet Sixteen with wins over (4) Wisconsin and (5) Vanderbilt. Both of those teams can be upset prone, but… not against Montana.
- No second-round upsets worse than a 13-4. This is probably correct, but boring.
The Ugly:
- Thanks to the lack of Western teams in the West region, (12) LBSU beats (1) Michigan State and (2) Missouri en route to the Final Four. This will not actually happen.
- (13) Ohio upsets (4) Michigan in the opening round and (1) UNC in the Sweet Sixteen to make it further in the tournament than (2) Ohio State.
- Not one, not two, but three 13-seeds upset the 4-seed in the opening round. Louisville, which has to travel the furthest of any 4-seed, survives, only because Davidson has to go coast-to-coast.
We created a second bracket that followed the more conservative rule that the higher-seeded team will always win, unless it’s more than 350 miles further away from the game site than its opponent. Our final, even more conservative bracket made one exception, allowing Michigan State to beat New Mexico in the Sweet Sixteen despite being 1,292 miles further away from Phoenix. This eventually sends Missouri to the Final Four.
