Sunday, March 14, 2010

NCAA March Madness 2010 Recap

After losing on points with Duke -7 in the final, I finished even-steven at 31-31-2 against the point spread in this year's March madness.

My modified Gibbs system regressed to the mean over 3 years. In 2008, I finished 37-27 or 58% against the spread. In 2009, I declined to 34-29-1 or 54%. Over 3 full years from 2008 through 2010, I am 102-87-3 or 53.9%. Good, but not great and we won't have enough data to know whether my modified Gibbs system is a statistically significant winner for another 10 years or so of NCAA tournaments. I wonder if I will still be as great-looking 10 years from now.

Before I get carried away with my good looks and basketball-picking prowess, I should admit that just by picking favourites in every NCAA tournament game for the past 3 years, you would have finished ahead of me every year and would be sporting a 108-81-3 or 57.03% record.

Lady G vs. President Obama

President Obama picks winners straight-up with no point line for each bracket and round.

http://games.espn.go.com/tcmen/en/entry?entryID=3288143

He had a tough time this year with none of his final 4 picks coming through. But, when he picked upsets in the early rounds, I could identify games where Lady Godiva and the Baracketer-in-Chief disagreed. Since Obama took office, I am 7-9 womano-a-mano against the Baracketer. I won 5-3 last year, but the President can at least boast that he defeated me 6-2 this year.

And, speaking of mano-a-womano, kudos to the President for picking the women's NCAA brackets this year.

http://games.espn.go.com/tcwomen/en/entry?entryID=125259

Lady G's System

I myself take no interest whatsoever in American college basketball, but toy boy fiancé Archibald can't get enough roundball. Every year he organizes a friendly, non-profit office pool for the NCAA men's tourney. Instead of picking bracket winners, the object of his pool is to pick winners against the point spread each and every day as the tournament unfolds. The winner of his winner-take-all pool is the contestant who picks the most winners against the spread over 64 matches. All matches are weighted equally starting with the play-in game to determine the 64th team.

To humour Archibald, I participate by relying on economists' studies showing that "heavy" underdogs win more than their fair share of college basketball games against the point spread, while "non-heavy" overdogs win slightly more than 50% (although this particular result is not statistically significant).

http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/print/179073423.html