Elite 8 Recap

By now, I'm sure everybody has heard just how mad this March has been. The third time since 1979 that none of the 1-seeds made it into the Final Four, and the first time that none of the 2-seeds made it either--that's right, none of the top 8 teams going into the tournament made it to the final weekend. Brad Stevens might have legitimized Butler as the next Gonzaga, getting the Bulldogs to their second consecutive Final Four--an incredibly tough acheivement in this age of parity and talent throughout Division I basketball. What's interesting now is that we're left with four teams--UConn, Butler, Virginia Commonwealth, and Kentucky--that, prior to the tournament, didn't really have any arguments that they should be national champions. 

Calhoun leads an impressive quartet of coaches

UConn, even though they won the Maui Invitational in November (defeating Kentucky and Michigan State in the process), still finished only 9-9 in the Big East, including a 4-7 run in their final 11 games. Butler and Virginia Commonwealth had decent seasons out of mid-major conferences, but there's no way they could have any argument they deserved to be in the national title contender. Kentucky would have been in the top-5 had they had the services of big man Enes Kanter, but they didn't--and so they lost 6 conference road games. So now we're left with a Final Four without Duke, without Ohio State--even without North Carolina, Notre Dame, BYU, Florida, or Pitt, all of whom had national championship aspirations going into the tournament--but instead we'll see a team very few saw coming stand atop the podium to receive the trophy. The one thing that can't be said about these four teams is that they don't have good leadership. Jim Calhoun (above) is the oldest of the four, leading UConn back to the promised land, and he joins Brad Stevens (Butler), Shaka Smart (Virginia Commonwealth), and John Calipari (Kentucky). So what happened in the Elite 8 that saw these four teams get through? Let's take a look at the numbers.

Sweet 16 Recap (Day 1)

If you read my picks yesterday, then you'll already know I only went two-for-two: got the first two games right, got the second two games wrong. Someone commented on the preview post after I said that Duke beating Arizona was the "easiest pick" of the first round, and came to the conclusion that I know absolutely nothing about college basketball. To that person, I say--if you know anything about college basketball, you'll know that anything is also possible. For those of you who've read several of our pieces, you'll notice a theme that links them--the idea that people don't always understand what statistics mean, what they tell us, and how we can use them.

The idea here is to use previous data to try and guess what will happen. Duke was the 8th-best defensive team in the country this season, but they still let Arizona dominate them on the offensive side of the ball en route to scoring 93 points...it happens. Not that it makes the Cameron Crazies any happier, but this sport is so great because variation can run so high, and dealing with 18-22 year old kids playing basketball in such a pressure situation can always foul up even the most educated guessers. If you're looking for someone who makes the right picks every time, well then I wish you the best of luck. If you're looking for some information about the games that'll give you some fact-based  (and number-based) knowledge of what happened in those games, then hit the jump!