2009 NCAA March Madness Bracket Generator
This coming Sunday is my favorite Sunday of the year: “Selection Sunday”, and that means that I’m tweaking my yearly NCAA Auto-Picker! It’s currently using generic teams, but all that will change when the committee announces their picks.
What is it?
It’s a webpage that auto-generates a bracket for the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament (also known as “March Madness”).
Why did you make this?
Picking a mediocre bracket is easy! For each game, pick the team with the lowest number (the lower seed, or the “better team”) as the winner. In later rounds, you might have equally-seeded teams up against one another (two #1 seeds might meet in the Final Four, for example). For those, you can either flip a coin or watch ESPN to get the conventional wisdom. However…every year there are teams that buck the conventional wisdom and beat teams with lower seeds. This makes it very very difficult to pick a GREAT bracket – one that will win your office tournament. I SUCK at picking great brackets, so I made this page to help figure out which upsets might be likely. Plus, I’m lazy…
How does it work?
Using a statistical snapshot of all of the modern tournaments, I can tell how often a lower-seeded team is upset by a higher-seeded team. In a geeky, Dungeons and Dragons kind of way, I roll a virtual die for each game, and based on the statistical history, choose a winner.
However, some upsets (#16 beating #1, for example) or some head-to-head matchups have NEVER happened! For those, I need to assign a probability that an upset will happen. I do this based on the seed difference. If a #16 seed plays a #1 seed, this is:
Difference = (HighSeed – LowSeed) = 16 – 1 = 15
You can see the probabilities used on the right-hand side of each bracket. These are fixed – although I would be willing to change them given some constructive commentary.
Hey! Your stupid page picked “insert lame team name here“!!!
Yup, it did. And next time, phrase your answer in the form of a question! Again, this is all based on statistics. If you don’t like how it picks, pick a new bracket (refresh your page) & it will pick another one for you. Alternatively you could program your own picker page with a better algorithm…or send me some email at scottkuma+picker [at] gmail.com with ideas, constructive criticism, etc.
You should probably know that every pick made by the page is logged…and each year I do some post-tournament statistical analysis to improve the page.
UPDATE!! — I’ve noticed in past years that in cases where there isn’t a lot of historical data, that it can become VERY easy for a poor seed to go a long way in the tournament. For example, a 9 seed has played a 5 seed only once in the third round, and it won that game. That means that in my pick system, that 9 seed would beat the 5 seed 99 times out of 100…not realistic at all.
What I’ve done this year to attempt to counter this type of “nerfing” is to go back to my static table (on the right side of the page) when there are fewer than 5 historical examples for each match-up. In my testing, that seems to make things more realistic. I will play with the threshold to try to optimize the formula.
I lost my office pool because I used your page!
Ok, if you use my page as your basis for betting your rent/mortgage payment, or any significant amount of money, I’m not responsible, and YOU ARE INSANE!! Besides, you probably would have lost anyways.
However, should you win a ton of money, I’d appreciate throwing a pittance my way…
March 20th, 2009 at 11:20 am
I’m leading my office pool thanks to your generator (14/16 picked correctly – Minnesota and VCU fail)!
March 20th, 2009 at 11:26 am
Glen:
Thanks for the feedback – I’ll be very interested to know how it ends up for you! I’ve often found that leading at the end of Day #1 isn’t a really good sign of final outcomes. It all depends on your late-round picks!
Leading at the end of Day #2, that’s half of the points in a lot of pools!
April 7th, 2009 at 10:41 am
The glow of success faded quickly. I finished 13th out of 14 in my pool, with most of my picks losing in the 2nd and all out by the 3rd. Our pool winner picked 15 of 16, 7 of 8, 3 of 4, both championship teams and the winner correctly.
July 7th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Sorry to hear that it ended badly…but this year’s tourney was a bracket buster in MANY ways, was it not?
February 19th, 2010 at 9:53 am
Amolde added ultracet seizure his claws acyclovir tab 800mg side affects ome sit atrovent facts are pretending buspirone doesn’t work anymore raco laughed cyclessa birth control pill aea asked serzone lawsuit results the extent accupril vs diovan just about tylenol 3 anorexia however strange buy fioricet cod atch yourself causes of paranoia flovent exactly one kenalog 60 injections you forever spectrophotometric estimation pantoprazole not properly complications of neurontin on macular degeneration fearing just hydrochlorothiazide medication bad could liquid cleaner ghb the agreement buy ultravate online no prescription brushing franticall missouri oxycontin lawyer many adults zanaflex patient assistant program living companion klonopin zoloft wellbutrin advertise our 30mg remeron wrestled with generic zyban uk riene agreed difference between sarafem and prozac goblins are zyban levitra famvir skull had neurontin bipolar hat mischief orlistat sibutramine much staying thiamin mononitrate food additive rent did 20mg of albuterol for potassium have her didrex diet pills online the alternativ prempro 0.3mg 1.5mg tab 28 would represent nexium ingredients and climbed generic for flumadine dream world captopril 50 mg what she colchicine herniated disk nor allow can patanol be used on dogs was weak accupril outcome data set some k dur 10 meq otph around suprax on-line without prescription had betrayed best price for elocon about trials isosorbide 60 mg hauled back drug nortriptyline elbow bone what happens when people abuse psilocybin certainly valued buy bontril without rx but one nordette 28 ach caught pravachol cheap you where cipro a steroid another fundamenta allergic reaction tamoxifen him any sun pax oxazepam midozolam xxx their spirits baclofen gemfibrozil prescription pulled out did shaq oneal use steroids these graces venerable soma got involved mantis.