#ICYMI: March Madness 2018: Bracketology

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… Can you sense that? It’s the madness descending upon us once more. It’s time for the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball tournament, a.k.a. March Madness. Join in as we gear up for the games with hosts Gary O’Reilly, Chuck Nice, and bracketologist Chris Dobbertean. (Updated for 2018!) Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Please subscribe to our channels on: Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360 TuneIn: tunein.com/playingwithscience GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjq SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-science Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-science NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/march-madness-2018/ Credit: NCAA.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:10Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 0:11Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Playing with Science. Today, I think, we'll go just a little crazy and join in with March Madness. And why not? It's the sports event that will turn your office upside down, lower national productivity, and make someone an awful lot of money. Just maybe not those who do their brackets.

• 0:29Chuck Nice?

  That's so true. So now you know March Madness is already in full swing. We're a little late to the party, but that makes it even more exciting because for three weeks, America just eats, drinks, and sleeps college basketball cheering on the giant killers, giving it up for the Cinderellas, and hoping that their college gets that fairy tale ending and is crowned NCAA basketball champions.

• 0:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, right. But none of this can take place, so it seems, without a bracket. And to help us through to our final four is bracketologist Chris Dobbertean from Blogging the Bracket.

• 1:03Chuck Nice?

  And keep an ear open as we just might be airing one of your questions throughout the show.

• 1:09Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm new to this. I'm new to the whole thing. I knew it existed, but I've never been around while it's happening. And I get it. I get the whole thing, the build-up, how colleges structure schedules so they can set themselves up to a better run-in to get invited to the big show.

• 1:27Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 1:27Gary O'Reilly?

  And all the buzz, bubble teams, Cinderellas, those, if you don't get invited, tough. You're not going. There's no appeals committee on this one.

• 1:35Chuck Nice?

  And it's all about the underdogs. I mean, everybody loves to see the upsets, you know? Unless that busts your bracket, that's all. But people just love this. You cannot walk by any bar in America during this time of year and not see college basketball up on the screen.

• 1:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Turn a TV on and not find a commercial for March Madness something or other.

• 1:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:56Gary O'Reilly?

  It is.

• 1:56Chuck Nice?

  I actually just did a Buffalo Wild Wings March Madness commercial. Look for it.

• 2:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Anyone else feeling hungry? It's never a good day to be a chicken.

• 2:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I promise.

• 2:06Gary O'Reilly?

  I meant for that.

• 2:07Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, that's funny. And I probably shouldn't have said that, because it's not like they, they already paid me. So why am I plugging them?

• 2:13Gary O'Reilly?

  You like buffalo wings?

• 2:14Chuck Nice?

  Ah, I do.

• 2:15Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go, that's why you said it.

• 2:16Chuck Nice?

  There you go, right.

• 2:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, time to bring on our first guest, Chris Dobbertean. Welcome, Chris, welcome to Playing with Science.

• 2:24Chuck Nice?

  Hey Chuck, hey Gary, thanks for having me. So before we go any further, let's let the people know that you are the resident bracketologist and editor of blogging the bracket. You also cover college basketball and bracket breakdowns and predictions for sbnation.com. And I have actually seen you in action. We did a live bracket show last year. And let me just say for everybody watching and listening, uh, this is not like BS for Chris. This is like a real thing. This is your life, am I right? Yeah, yeah, during, from January to March, this is pretty much it. Yeah, man, and I watched you go through a painstaking process of putting together a bracket.

• 3:09Chuck Nice?

  And I gotta be honest, um, it was not fun to watch. You guys are putting, I mean, you guys are really working when you do this.

• 3:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Bro.

• 3:21Chuck Nice?

  You're a pro.

• 3:22Gary O'Reilly?

  This is a school day.

• 3:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:24Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm in the front row of the class, because bracketology is a new part of the English language for me. Um, I do believe, I've been recently informed, it is in the Oxford English Dictionary, so I am not about to criticize that in any way. But I get it, but I have yet to experience it, so.

• 3:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 3:40Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm really looking forward to this, because there's a bubble team.

• 3:43Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 3:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Cinderella, I understand, yeah. Uh, but the Elite Eight?

• 3:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 3:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Why isn't it Super Eight? Don't worry, moving on, Sweet Sixteen. So we've got these, I've got a new language to learn, as well as everything else. So Chris, please, bring it on.

• 3:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, let's, uh, let's start with first of all, just explaining what the bracket is, bracketology is, and, and, and how you go about putting together a bracket.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Well, every March, the the NCAA, which, you know, runs college sports in this country, puts on a 68-team championship. It used to be 64, then it went to 65, now it's 68, all for for basically for money reasons.

• 4:21Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  And what you do is, you know, there are the 68 teams, 32 qualify automatically by winning their conferences. They win a conference tournament, which is usually played this week, right before Selection Sunday, which this year is March the 12th. And the other 36 teams, there is a selection committee, which is the Division One Men's Basketball Committee, and they meet, they're meeting in New York right now as we're speaking. And they actually pick those 36 teams. They take those 36 teams and the 32 automatic bids. They rank those teams from 1 to 68 and place them into four regions, which have somewhere between 16 and 17 to 18 teams, because you might have two opening round games in the same region. But the goal is they have a first four on Tuesday and Wednesday of right after Selection Sunday.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Those four winners move on to the main bracket of 64. We have nice, you know, a nice, solid bracket, four regions of 16 teams each. The winner of each of those regions moves on to the final four, and those two semifinal winners play off to win the national championship.

• 5:24Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 5:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 5:25Chuck Nice?

  Good job, man.

• 5:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Considering this.

• 5:27Chuck Nice?

  That was a, that was a great breakdown, Chris.

• 5:30Gary O'Reilly?

  That even I understood that, so it was good.

• 5:32Chuck Nice?

  All right, so you just explained the process. That is the process, the selection process, the 32 automatic teams, the 36 selection committee teams, and then how they're put together to create the field of 64. Okay, now we've got this nice, round field of 64, okay? And it all starts out with everybody on the outsides of the brackets, okay? How do you go about now moving inwards until you get to 16, Elite Eight, 4-2 champion?

• 6:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Even before we get there, aren't there some variables that, because you said 32 teams win their championships, the rest have to be invited? And if you don't get invited, don't complain, it's tough.

• 6:20Gary O'Reilly?

  Am I about right? So what are the criteria that you get selected on and invited?

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Well, the most important things, and this is something that's a little bit different this year because we had, we had a new twist to the process this year. Where a month ago, February 12th, the selection committee actually had for the first time a special on CBS. Where they announced their top 16 teams at that point. Granted, those could change over the final month. But for those of us who do bracketology, it gave us a nice idea of kind of what they're looking for. And this year, it seems like quality wins, which are wins against teams. That fit within the metric they use, which is called the ratings percentage index, the RPI, which is.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  It's an old metric. It's been used for almost 30 years at this point. It's not basketball specific. Basketball people generally hate it. But it does a relatively recent job, decent job of telling you what teams have done, you know. Into the season up to that point. It's not predictive, but it tells you, you know, this team, you know, has the first best, you know, schedule and performance. Second best and so on. So they released those 16 teams. So we have a good idea now, you know. That quality wins, which are, which are wins against the top 50 teams in that RPI metric are kind of what the committee seems to want the most this year. So, so, so when making those selections and trying to figure out what those 36 invited teams are going to be, some of them are very obvious because.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  You know, their record is good enough. They beat enough good teams, but as you get towards the end and you get towards the cut line. Between 36 and 37, it gets a little more muddy and you're wondering, you know, how do these teams play away from home because playing. Road games in neutral courts, it's a tougher environment. And if you can win games in those environments, you're generally thought of as being a stronger team. Um, how do you do? How did you do in November and December? Because in college basketball, the season's really in two parts in November and December. You uh, it's games that you have to schedule yourself and then from January to March, your conference schedule those games.

• 8:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, one second, Chris. What if you're a really good team, you don't win your championship, but you're in a weak conference?

• 8:27Speaker 02

  That's where the controversy usually comes in.

• 8:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, good. I found controversy. Lovely. Unlike me to find the bad bit.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  And this always comes up because if you're in a weaker conference, a lot of the times, if you're a stronger team and if you're historically strong, say like Wichita State out of Missouri Valley Conference.

• 8:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  Power conference teams, they don't want to play you. They don't want to play you at home. They don't want to go visit. They certainly don't want to go visit you.

• 8:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, so they're sneaky with the schedule?

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Rascals.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  They are very sneaky with the scheduling. So, so this is the problem and this is always the controversy and the thing that we try to balance. Now, the selection committee, the membership changes every year. They usually lose three or four people because they kind of rotate on and off. So you have to kind of figure out what their backgrounds are and what schools they've worked for and where they've worked for is you can kind of figure out their biases.

• 9:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  And, and this year, we kind of suspect that the biases are going to be in favor of the power conference teams and not so much the major teams. So they're going to be out of luck.

• 9:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm. So there's a, there's an element of telepathy involved and mind reading.

• 9:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:34Gary O'Reilly?

  This is real detective work, Chris.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  When I, when I was in grad school, I studied Supreme Court decisions and, you know, trying to figure out, you know, how justices would determine, would vote on cases based on their background, their political belief.

• 9:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  You know.

• 9:47Chuck Nice?

  The other briefs that they've, uh, the other dissents that they may have written or, or I got you.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Exactly. And it's very similar to that.

• 9:55Gary O'Reilly?

  It's more profitable to be a bracketologist than it is to go into law.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say that.

• 10:02Chuck Nice?

  You're like, no, let's not get crazy.

• 10:05Gary O'Reilly?

  There are some mad numbers in and around March Madness.

• 10:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:09Gary O'Reilly?

  But you carry on with the bracketology because this is my lesson for today.

• 10:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay. So now, let's say you're putting together your bracket. Um, what do you want to look for and how do you want to go about that? Um, for those who are interested, first of all, you know, there's a lot of people are putting together brackets because it's like an office thing. Everybody wants to, you know, everybody's putting their five dollars in or their ten dollars in and they're, they're picking their teams and, you know, a lot of people like me, you just pick the colors that you like the most, the team with the best colors. Or, you know, hey, look, I know that this team, their cheerleaders, awesome, I want to see them on CBS at some point. So those are the teams I'm picking. But if you're serious about it, how would you go about it?

• 10:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, before you answer that, we bought a, if we've got a chance, we're gonna go round to Berkshire Hathaway and get a job. Because Warren Bu- what you, I think you know where I'm going with this. Warren Buffett runs a bracket.

• 11:05Chuck Nice?

  Yes, he does.

• 11:06Gary O'Reilly?

  He loves sports and probabilities. Now, if you predict the first thirty-two, you get a hundred thousand dollars.

• 11:13Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 11:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Get, no, no, no, this is, this isn't the kicker. The kicker is, you predict the Sweet Sixteen, you get a million dollars.

• 11:21Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 11:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Each year for the rest of your life.

• 11:23Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 11:24Gary O'Reilly?

  That could cost Warren about sixty call, but then again, I think he could afford it.

• 11:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Let's go, I think anyone who's got a chance, go round there now, get a job at Berkshire Hathaway.

• 11:36Chuck Nice?

  I'm pretty sure there's, there's a pair of mom jeans sitting in Warren Buffett's dryer right now with sixty million dollars in it. I'm, I'm pretty sure about that. Chris?

• 11:45Gary O'Reilly?

  That's the one.

• 11:45Chuck Nice?

  My man.

• 11:46Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go.

• 11:47Chuck Nice?

  This is what I'm trying to say to you. Uh, can we please put together a playing with science bracket? That will make us a cool million dollars a year for the rest of our lives. All we have to do is get down to the Sweet Sixteen. That's it. Chris, you can do this.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  You, you, you think you can do it, but this event is just known for surprises every year. But that being said, there are some things that, especially if you want to do a little bit of research, can really help you out.

• 12:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  One, the first thing for me is that I always look for, especially when I'm looking for upsets, I look for teams that are lower seeded teams, especially, you know, eleven, twelve, thirteen seed type teams. That have good senior leadership, they have, you know, previous tournament experience, you know, maybe they were there the year before and, you know, pushed a team really hard, you know, late and they're getting a second chance. Um, good guards, you want to have good guards because they do a good job of, you know, distributing the ball and, and just, you know, taking care of things and, and keeping the offense ticking. That's another thing you want. A team that can shoot the three pointer, the three point shot is the great equalizer in college basketball. Uh, almost to the point where it's gotten crazy, but, but that's another thing you want to watch. So, so those are kind of some factors in terms of teams you want to keep an eye on.

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay. So, and you know what, that, that, that's very simple to follow. And I, just to recap, you know, uh, lower seeds, 13, around that, uh, good leadership, which means you're looking for some seniors that have been there and they're experienced, uh, previous tournament experience, and that means that they've been there before. So they don't have the, the big butterflies and the jitters. And when they get in front of the big crowd, they're not going to freak out and

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 13:23Chuck Nice?

  Where's my mommy? Um, and then good guards, because you got to be able to, uh, run the offense and good guards also give you clock management as well, which is very important.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:33Chuck Nice?

  And, and then three point shooters, which is something I didn't, uh, ever consider, but I guess you're right. The whole game has changed that way.

• 13:39Gary O'Reilly?

  I would, I would add, uh, from my own personal experience of sport, injuries, potential injury, injury history and current injuries to key players. And then your disciplinary record. You might have a player with a talent off the chart, but he's not going to last 20 minutes on court because he's a bad boy.

• 13:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 13:59Gary O'Reilly?

  And then I'm gonna, I'm gonna go and tug the bad boy's ear every time I walk past him and he's going to lose it. There's a penalty and he's out of the game before you know it. So that stuff, that, that's real drilling down from a scouting report. Uh, you must have files inches thick on each team.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Well, that kind of goes into the next thing where you want to take a look at kind of how a team has been playing lately. You want to look at their schedule. You know, you want to look at those teams that happen to win both their conference regular season and tournament championships, the ones that got the automatic bids, but they also did the work during the regular season because those have been tested consistently. You know, they're, they're, they're strong, they're not going to get flustered. So that, that's one factor you want to look at. You also, if you really want to dig deep, you want to look at when, how teams play based on different tip off times. And I say this based on the performance of my alma mater, the University of Florida.

• 14:50Chuck Nice?

  Hmm hmm.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Which, which plays really well at night. So week, so weeknight games, they usually do pretty well. But if they're scheduled for a Saturday afternoon, noon tip, eh, not quite so good.

• 15:02Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 15:03Speaker 02

  So if you really want to dig down, you can do that. And another factor you want to keep in mind, you want to look at where the games are being played in the tournament.

• 15:10Chuck Nice?

  Travel times.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Yep. Travel times, you want to be careful of teams that are from the West Coast going east, having to play a morning game.

• 15:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Also, you want to think of geographical considerations because of crowds. For example, two years ago, Providence played Dayton in Columbus, Ohio. And one of my friends yelled at me on Twitter saying, if I would have known this game was in Columbus, I wouldn't have taken Providence, I would have taken Dayton. And that's, that's the type of little things you want to keep in mind because teams might get unexpected home court advantages.

• 15:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, right.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  The committee draws up the bracket.

• 15:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, because you're right. The geography will determine who has the home court advantage because more of your fans will show up. And the travel time thing, you know, that's, that kind of is a factor in all sports. When you think about all sports.

• 15:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Then again, you've got young athletes who haven't had so much travel hardening. You know, if you're, if you're, if you're in the majors, you know you live out of your suitcase.

• 16:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but I'm saying even in the majors, they say like, if a West Coast team is going east.

• 16:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, it's always a problem.

• 16:09Chuck Nice?

  They're like, hey, don't even count this. Don't, you know, if you're a West Coast team and you're a really decent matchup, but you're coming east to play, let's say, um, uh, the Patriots. They're like, you're going to get murdered. Only because of the time difference.

• 16:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Traveling east is always the hardest one. Now, going to your old alma mater, Florida, my guess is biorhythms. So they're, they're geared up to playing a night, an evening tip off, right?

• 16:34Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 16:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Lunchtime, they're having pregame nap. They're having a little bit of a nap. So when it comes to an early tip off on during the day, their bio rhythm saying sleepy time. Okay. Well, they deserve to lose if they got to take an afternoon nap. What the hell is this? Oh, no, no. Standard practice. Rumpa room. Standard practice. You will go, you'll have a little lie down. Have a nap. Go again. Yeah. All right. Do you get milk and cookies too? No.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  But that is a very important thing to think of because this is one of the only, you know, events on the American calendar where games pretty much go from noon to midnight.

• 17:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Right. Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  You know, on weekdays, you know, Thursday and Friday of the first and second rounds, you know, that weekend, it's all basketball from 12 to midnight, you know, for four straight days.

• 17:19Gary O'Reilly?

  So this, this isn't a guy who just says, you know what? I'm going with the color of the uniform. This is scientific. Well, no, I mean, I, I know what Chris does. So I'm, I'm totally fine with him. Like I said, I'm front row of the class here. I'm at school. So I'm seeing a scientific process here from how you construct your bracket. When we're constructing our bracket, those of us that have never done it before think we like the number 16, we'll go with that. Waste of time, correct?

• 17:45Speaker 02

  That's right. It's never happened and it probably, it doesn't seem like it's ever going to happen in the foreseeable future.

• 17:52Gary O'Reilly?

  Because the way the pods are set up, we have seeds and pods. We're back to gardening again, Chuck, and you love gardening. And so the first seed gets drawn with a 16th seed.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 18:03Gary O'Reilly?

  And that basically is au revoir.

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Usually a 16 seed, sometimes they have a losing record. Sometimes they're, they're from, they're always from a weaker conference.

• 18:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  A lot of the times they're a team that didn't win both the regular season and conference tournament title. They just kind of snuck in by getting really hot during the conference tournament, winning three or four games in a row.

• 18:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  And usually that number one seed is playing somewhere close to home. So they're going to have a lot of fans behind them.

• 18:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Right. That's yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. So.

• 18:30Gary O'Reilly?

  What's, what's the, what's the lowest seed that's ever walked home with the big deal?

• 18:35Speaker 02

  The lowest seed that's ever won a national championship, Villanova won as a nine seed.

• 18:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow. So, in other words, I'm exploring it can be done. You don't have to be in the top two seeds, three seeds to have it all to yourselves.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  No, but it's very, very difficult. Usually, usually it's the top four seeds that have a shot.

• 18:58Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  And usually the one and the two seeds, but, but we've only had one since they actually started seeding teams where all four one seeds made it to the final four. That was in 2008.

• 19:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so here's the deal. We're going to close things out by taking a fan question. And John W. from Twitter wants to know this, Chris.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 19:19Chuck Nice?

  He says, "What is it about the 5-12 matchup that seems to consistently involve the most upsets? Is there any rhyme or reason for that?"

• 19:31Speaker 02

  There, there are a couple. Usually, the five seed is a team from Power Conference who might have been sitting, they might have lost early in their conference tournament. So maybe they've been sitting for almost a solid week. And a 12 seed, a lot of the times, is one of those mid-major conference champions who's better than their record would indicate, better than their profile would indicate, that, that isn't going to be intimidated by that five seed. And they're also a little bit fresher because they won their conference tournament. You know, they haven't been sitting for, you know, a week. They've only been sitting for a couple of days. And occasionally, a 12 seed will be one of those teams that plays on Tuesday and Wednesday. So they're really, you know, into their rhythm and, and, and ready to go.

• 20:12Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  So, so those are the two things that really, to me, kind of are why those matchups always kind of stick out as upset picks. It's usually a pretty even matchup, too.

• 20:20Chuck Nice?

  That is just amazing that you were able to jump right in and answer that question the way you did. I'm seriously impressed.

• 20:27Gary O'Reilly?

  He's a pro.

• 20:27Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic.

• 20:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Right. Okay, so we have a question now from Jeff Sostarches. Yes, say that's, that's the right way. Apologies, Jeff, if that's not. I'm mangling the English language, as you probably guessed, it isn't my first, or I don't even have one. Right, considering that there are upsets in every tournament, Chris. Are there any strategies proven to be effective in determining bracket results? In statistics outliers are typically thrown out as anomalies, but every March outliers make a dramatic impact on the tournament. So do we have secret algorithms? Because it's all numbers, are there equations? And of course, as Jess says, do we have certain strategies?

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Well, as somebody who overthinks everything, don't overthink. I usually, when I make my picks, I go with the first instinct. But, you know, we talk about, you know, how the bracket is set up. And usually in a pool, you know, games become more valuable as you move on around. So usually your first round is only worth one point. So your upsets are only worth one point. Or, you know, if you get credit for an upset, maybe it's double, so it's two. But those round of 32, round of 16 games and so on are going to be more important. And that's when the favorites usually win. That's when your one seeds, your two seeds, your three seeds are gonna go and take care of things. So oftentimes, if you pick all chalk, your bracket is gonna do better than somebody who goes crazy picking upsets.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  So don't overthink it, you know, go with your gut. But remember that upsets, while they're great, they aren't really gonna make all the impact, you know, when we get to the final four in Glendale at the beginning of April.

• 22:04Chuck Nice?

  Sweet. Well, listen, we gotta wrap this up. I tell you what, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go to a break. And while we're in the break, I'm going to keep you on the line, Chris. I need you, pretty much-

• 22:20Gary O'Reilly?

  You want a one to one, don't you?

• 22:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I need you to give me as much information as possible so I can win a million dollars for the rest of my life from Warren Buffett. This is the goal now of, for every person who is watching the NCAA tournament, your goal should be to pick a bracket and make Warren Buffett pay you. That's really what this is about now.

• 22:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, job application in Berkshire Hathaway prerequisite.

• 22:44Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 22:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, you have to be an employee at Berkshire Hathaway.

• 22:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay, you guys give me this information now?

• 22:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, no, we did tell you.

• 22:52Chuck Nice?

  Now this is what you're telling me this?

• 22:53Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, no, you tuned out.

• 22:54Chuck Nice?

  Now I gotta go get a job?

• 22:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 22:57Chuck Nice?

  I gotta get a job now, this sucks.

• 22:59Gary O'Reilly?

  It's one, it's one mill a year, it's a life.

• 23:02Chuck Nice?

  That's true, that's true. Okay, hey, listen, I don't, I don't mind, you know, listen, uh, I'll show up and I will just apply for whatever job they have available.

• 23:10Gary O'Reilly?

  They have to have a great job, you just have to be on the payroll.

• 23:12Chuck Nice?

  I don't care for a million dollars a year, I will be Warren Buffett's personal butt wiper. I do not care, okay? I just want this million dollars a year, we're gonna find a way to do this, alright?

• 23:20Gary O'Reilly?

  I do hope that job isn't available. I really do.

• 23:25Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Chris, buddy, thanks so much, man.

• 23:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolute pleasure. And you know what, sir?

• 23:30Chuck Nice?

  Thanks, Gary.

• 23:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Best of luck.

• 23:32Chuck Nice?

  Thank you so much. Not that you'll need it.

• 23:35Gary O'Reilly?

  You got a better chance. And thank you for taking me to school, it's been a pleasure to be in the front row of this class.

• 23:39Chuck Nice?

  You're very, very welcome.

• 23:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you to Chris Dobbertean, our bracketologist extraordinaire.

• 23:45Chuck Nice?

  Uh, I gotta tell you, the, the March Madness is only gonna get bigger and bigger. Uh, that's the one thing that, uh, I like and, uh, and I shall continue to waste money every year on a bracket. So, you know, that's, that's what I've learned. I'm in good company when I'm wasting my money picking teams for March Madness.

• 24:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, if you don't see it as wasting money, but bringing your office, your family, your friends together, then maybe there's not so much madness in March.

• 24:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I don't like-

• 24:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Gary O'Reilly.

• 24:14Chuck Nice?

  I don't like any of those people, though, that's the problem. And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 24:17Gary O'Reilly?

  And this has been Playing with Science, and really, we do like people, honestly, and I'll speak to him afterwards. See you soon.

• 24:28Chuck Nice?

  So, Playing with Science fans, uh, thank you, first of all, for sticking around and checking out our little extension of our March Madness show. You just finished listening to the show from last year where we had, of course, Gary O'Reilly, who is conspicuously absent from this extension because Gary is in the UK. He was supposed to be here, his plane was, uh, grounded because of the big snowstorm that we hear, had here on the east coast. He was unable to join us and so we say hello to Gary and we miss you and we wish you were here. But what we do have from last year is Chris Dobbertean,

• 25:10Chuck Nice?

  who is the curator of bloggingthebracket.com and works for SB Nation. And as I said, is, I don't care. I see these guys from ESPN and I see these dudes on CBS. And Chris, no smoke blowing at all. Man, you are probably the most knowledgeable bracketologists that I know. So, welcome.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me once again, Chuck.

• 25:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man. Yeah. So I know that you are super busy. Last year, we were not able to talk about the brackets in any detail because we were speaking before Selection Sunday. But right now, you and I, even though this will be airing during the tournament, probably the very beginning of the tournament, you and I are speaking on Selection Sunday evening. And so they have just announced the teams. And I'm really excited to hear what you have to say about this year's bracket. Before we get into your picks and start picking apart the bracket itself,

• 26:18Chuck Nice?

  I really want to know from you something about this selection process. Already, there's some controversy about the teams that have been selected. Because from what I understand, they did some tweaking, not real changes, but some tweaking to the way that they choose the teams. Can you talk to me about that? And while you're at it, can you tell me what RPI means? And what quadrants are? And all this stuff that I'm hearing that I have no idea what's going on.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Let's let's kind of start at the beginning because all these things that you ask about do really kind of feed into each other.

• 26:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Previously, what happened was all wins that a team picked up during the course of a season were considered the same. So if you beat a team that was ranked in the top 50, that was considered a group one win. Then teams 51 through 100 were another group and then 101 through 200 were another. And then 201 to 350 were yet another and it didn't matter if you beat that team on your own home floor, on the road in their building or, you know, some neutral site event in November, December, during a conference tournament. That didn't matter. This year, they decided to tweak a few things. They decided to redefine quality wins and create these quadrants. Now, the quadrants were always there.

• 27:36Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  But now the quadrants exist to give you more credit for winning on the road in another team's building and less credit for winning at home. Let's take that first group before, that group one, it used to be just top 50 wins, period. Now, neutral site games, they're still, you know, one through 50, those teams still fall in there. But if you win a game on the road against anybody in the top 75, that now falls into that bucket. But on the flip side, only your home wins against the top 30 teams do. So you're not getting as much credit for winning at home.

• 28:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so what they're doing is there's there, it's kind of like in figure skating or diving, where you have this little factor called a degree of difficulty. So that if you're doing a two and a half twist with a pike, right? You're, you get scored higher than just doing a jackknife. Because they're like, yo, this is a much more difficult move, so we're going to give you more credit. So they're saying that it's more difficult to win against a good team on their own turf? So if you do that, then we're going to give you more credit?

• 28:50Speaker 02

  That's exactly what it is. That's a great way to put it, you know, that degree of difficulty. And he brought up the RPI, which is the Ratings Percentage Index, and this kind of goes, ties into another thing that changed this year. Okay. The RPI is a very basic calculation, and it's actually used by the NCAA, not just in basketball, but in various guises through pretty much every sport they do, you know, baseball, softball, any team sport, they have an RPI or something like it. And that's because it's a very basic formula that calculates your own winning percentage, the winning percentage of the teams that you play, and then those teams' opponents' winning percentage. There's another factor that goes into it. So you can see that there's not really anything really basketball specific about it.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  It doesn't really tell you, you know, you know, how good a team is on offense or on defense, or how efficient they are. So they decided this year that they were going to incorporate several other metrics, including, you know, broken into two categories. The RPI is called a results-based metrics, because it was based on what you do during the season. It looks only at the past. There are three other metrics they're using, which are predictive. And most prominent of these is Ken Pomeroy's ratings, kenpom.com, Jeff Sagerin's rating, and ESPN's BPI. And these try to predict how a team is going to perform based on how efficient they are on offense, on defense, how often they turn the ball over. You know, they factor in things like injuries and availability of players and things like that.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  So they try to get those kind of involved as well. Based on what I've seen of the bracket so far, it doesn't look like those predictive metrics were really used quite as much as the result-based ones were, which was one of the controversial things as I was kind of running up my recap, because I felt like I was going into the season expecting all these changes, and things pretty much stayed the same, and my performance, you know, from year on year has, you know, remained consistent even with these updates.

• 30:44Chuck Nice?

  Interesting, interesting. So basically, what they what they had was kind of like these predictive analytics that were not, instead of an algorithm, they're using some other criteria to put in place these predictive analytics, and then they decided we're not going to use them.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I'm thinking at first glance. I'm going to take some time during the next couple of days and try to figure out, you know, how, you know, Ken Palm in particular was used because that's like I said, that's really kind of the gold standard, the one people that kind of cite the most when they talk about college basketball. To see how that was kind of used, if it was at all, and then kind of make a decision for now. I'm just kind of making a a quick assumption based on, you know, the the two hours I've had without, you know, without having to deal with these things and try to look at what actually is there.

• 31:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but so what we can, what we do know is kind of like this caliber of wins things. Where that definitely went into play, you know, that's a that's a big factor. Caliber of wins and the what I call the degree of difficulty. So that's a new thing. And you think it's a good thing? I mean, does it look like it's doing something good?

• 31:54Speaker 02

  I think it is. I think that one factor the committee used to look at years ago, they've gotten rid of it over really the past four or five years, was was your performance late in the season. They used to have a metric that checked your record based on the last 10 or last 12 games you played. And this is where a lot of the controversy about the teams that got selected kind of came in. Because two of the most controversial or three of the most controversial really were Alabama out of the SEC, Arizona State out of the Pac 12, and Oklahoma out of the Big 12, all of whom just cratered during the last month of the season.

• 32:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Arizona State was even worse. Arizona State started out 12-0. I had them as a number one seed in the first bracket that I did back in January. They won eight games the rest of the season. They finished 20-11, and they got in.

• 32:40Chuck Nice?

  So

• 32:40Speaker 02

  And

• 32:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, really? Okay.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:44Chuck Nice?

  I mean,

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Alabama lost five in a row before they won two games in the SCC Tournament, and it turns out they probably didn't even win those two games based on where they were placed in the bracket.

• 32:53Chuck Nice?

  Wow. So Arizona is a 500 team and they're basically they're on par with in they're on par with everybody else in terms of its first round. You you you got your chance to do just like everybody else.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Well, Arizona State, and that's a big difference because Arizona is, well, we'll talk about them in a bit. They're a scary, scary, scary team with NBA level talent. But Arizona State, they're gonna have to play that extra game in Dayton coming up on Tuesday or Wednesday.

• 33:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so

• 33:21Speaker 02

  They gotta play the extra game.

• 33:22Chuck Nice?

  All right. So they're playing the extra game. So they're they're not that they have to still earn their place. Okay, cool, cool. Um, is it possible that a team with a losing record could make the tournament? And has that ever happened?

• 33:35Speaker 02

  Oh, it happens. It happens quite for it actually happened this year, but it's only ever happens when it's a team with an automatic bid. For example, one of the games on Wednesday night is gonna feature 15 and 19 Texas Southern, who played every single non-conference game on the road. They do this so they can, you know, make money for the athletic department. They're playing bigger programs that, you know, give them a nice paycheck. And their coach, Mike Davis, used to coach in Indiana. He basically treats them like he uses that money in part to treat his players to staying in nice hotels, eating in nice restaurants before games. Yeah.

• 34:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, he wants to treat them like professionals.

• 34:14Chuck Nice?

  I want to play for this guy.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, while they go out and get their rear ends handed to them. But they've had their chances. A couple of years ago, they won at Michigan State, for example, which is a very difficult team, especially for a team of that level to do. They're playing North Carolina Central and honestly, you know, Texas Southern's out of the SWAC, North Carolina Southern's out of the MEAC. This is the first time I can remember in all these years of doing this where they put the two HBCU teams against each other in the first round. I think it happened way back in the 80s, in the 90s at one point with a slightly different format. But this is the first time I remember them actually ever doing that.

• 34:50Chuck Nice?

  Wow, okay, so the the team with a losing record is going to, they got an automatic bid, right? And so they're basically going to the tournament and they're gonna have like a wonderful meal with their coach and stay at a nice hotel.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:08Chuck Nice?

  And that's, and that's why they're there. I'm actually going to root for them more than anybody else, which I don't think is gonna make a difference because they're gonna lose in the first round, right?

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Well, well, they still, they still had that first game against North Carolina Central, who also played in that round last year.

• 35:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  But the thing about that is, the good thing about playing in that early game is, you know, you get, you get the credit for it financially. So the NCAA will send you checks for the next six years because you're playing in that game, which is a great boost to your conference and their collective financial coffers.

• 35:41Chuck Nice?

  So by the way, I am just now, for the first time, finding out that these teams actually get paid money from the NCAA to be in the tournament. So this is a big deal for these schools and for their programs.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Yes, especially for the smaller conferences, because they, you know, they don't have the big TV contracts that the ACC and the Big Ten and the Pac-12 have. They've got to get by with, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of streaming and television rights, and then whatever money they happen to get from the NCAA tournament from their participation.

• 36:16Chuck Nice?

  Wow, I did not know that. I had no idea that this was, I mean, I knew that this was a billion-dollar business.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:24Chuck Nice?

  I just didn't realize that the colleges themselves were getting paid. And so they're competing, this is a real deal. These people are competing, there's, there's money on the line here.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, the more, yeah, the more games you win, the more money you get. It's just a shame that that money doesn't go to the students.

• 36:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that is, but listen, this is America. We couldn't have it any other way. All right? Let's not get crazy, Chris. Not crazy.

• 36:55Chuck Nice?

  All right, so are there any first-time coaches or first-time teams in the tournament this year?

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Well, we actually do have one first time, we seem to have a first-time team every year, and the one that really stands out to me this year is Lipscomb out of the Atlantic Sun Conference.

• 37:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Which is a small 18-conference in the southeastern United States with one outlier up in New Jersey. They're usually dunk city, Florida Gulf Coast usually wins that league. They lost to Lipscomb, who's out of Nashville. They will represent that conference. They play North Carolina in the first round on Thursday.

• 37:30Chuck Nice?

  Well, it was nice while it lasted, wasn't it?

• 37:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:34Chuck Nice?

  Well, so now, is that set up to make these, the better teams, to give them a easier path to the tournament? Or is it more set up for entertainment, to have these, these lower seeds? I mean, most tournaments go that way. The lower seed takes on the big seed. But I'm saying, I think for television and for entertainment, it's probably better to have like, this team go up against the, you want the David and Goliath story, right?

• 38:03Speaker 02

  And that's the one thing that really kind of attracted me to this event when I was a kid. Was seeing these teams, you know, you know, I knew all these big-name schools, but seeing these little teams from the mid-major conferences going in there and getting their shot on national television on CBS, or now CBS and Turner. You know, getting those opportunities, that was the thing that kind of drew me into this. This, this is, this is awesome.

• 38:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it really is. It's very exciting for that reason. Last year, there was a team, a first-time tournament team. Everyone loved them. They were the darling of the tournament. I believe you, the three of us, with Gary, were talking about whether or not they would go anywhere. Me being the cynical comedian that I am, I said that they would crash and burn in the very first game. I believe that's what's happened. I forget the name of the team, though.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  And I gotta go back and think about it because that's the one thing about doing this job. When you do it so frequently.

• 38:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  You kind of forget what happened the year before. Northern Kentucky was one of the three. UC Davis was one and North Dakota was another ones. We had, we had actually, we had four first time, four first time participants last year. I forgot Jacksonville State as well out of Alabama.

• 39:13Chuck Nice?

  That's the one Jacksonville State. Everybody was like, yeah, they're gonna do something because uh, and I was like, yeah, they're going home. That's what they're gonna do. All right, that's what they're gonna do. They're gonna go home. So. All right. So um, do you think that this system is fair? You know, from your estimation? Um, be, think about this and here's why. You just said that a team with a losing record can get an automatic bid because of where they play. But then you got a team that may be much better than that team. That has to go through the selection process and maybe on the bubble and get kind of knocked off. So is this a fair? Is this a fair system?

• 39:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:53Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  In a word, no, because here's the thing. I think that the mid-major conferences, they have conference tournaments and they use that to select their automatic bid. And what that does, you know, you have your number one seed and it's a single elimination tournament. That team can always get knocked off. So if you have a really good team, let's take the Sun Belt this year who had Louisiana, Louisiana, Raging Cajuns out of Lafayette. They were looking like a 12 or 13 seed. You know, they could have won a game or two because they, they're, they're a very talented, very athletic team. They got knocked out by UT Arlington in the semifinals. Replacing them is Georgia State. Now, Georgia State though, they, they won a game a couple of years ago as a 14 seed. Not as good this year. They don't have an NBA player on their roster this time around.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  They're a 15 seed, they're playing Cincinnati. That's not a great matchup for the Sun Belt. And as I said, when there's financial implications for these conferences, they gotta win games to get more money. You want to have your best team in the field. You don't want, you know, your, your number two seed or your number four seed necessarily getting in when your number one seed is that much better.

• 40:59Chuck Nice?

  Because that helps the whole conference when your team does that, right?

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so, all right, well, it's not fair, but, you know, once again, like I said, this is America. So what, what it does, it's not supposed to be fair, okay? Supposed to make it against the odds. Pull yourself up by your shoelaces.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Now, now, what I would like, though, and we, you know, you talk about the financial side of things. I would like to see more conferences implement some kind of double elimination system for their conference champion. Hey, that's another game to put on television. That's more money potentially. So that's, hey, that's, you know, that's potentially a way to think about it.

• 41:34Chuck Nice?

  All right, cool. Let's move on to bubble teams. Are there any teams in the bubble this year that you like and think that they have a shot?

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Here's the thing about this year's bubble. It was really deep. I had a bubble watch post this morning. It featured 17 teams. And even though I only missed one at large this year, I went in there thinking that

• 41:55Speaker 02

  any one of these nine teams that are left out, they could get in and they could win a game or two. And the same thing applies to the teams that actually didn't get in because the thing with this season was outside of really the top eight to 10 teams, it was remarkably even. So we have a lot of teams here that I think are going to have a really interesting shot in the first couple of rounds to kind of get through, depending on their matchups. One team that stands out to me wasn't a bubble team. They could have been a bubble team if they didn't win their automatic bid. From my backyard here in Chicago, Loyola University. Last time they made the tournament, 1985, they

• 42:34Speaker 02

  made the Sweet 16. Very similar team, great shooting team. They won at Florida at my alma mater in December, which mid-major teams don't do.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  They play Miami in the first round and then they potentially could play Tennessee in the second round. And that's a path that, you know, they could maybe make the Sweet 16 out of that.

• 42:52Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Um, another couple of bubble teams to keep an eye on. Um, Texas has a big center in Mohammed Bamba who's going to be an NBA pick. They're a 10 seed. I think they have a great shot. Oklahoma is, you know, in that range as well.

• 43:06Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  You know, with Trey Young, who's dominated media coverage throughout college basketball. He's another guy to kind of keep an eye on. You know, if they've struggled lately, but if they get hot, they have a shot. Um, Providence just played three overtime games in the Big East Tournament. They're a 10 seed. They're probably going to lose to North Carolina in the second round, but they can get by Texas A&M in the first.

• 43:28Chuck Nice?

  Maybe, yes. And then again, when you play those overtime games, I think that that kind of wears you down, but.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:35Chuck Nice?

  Who knows?

• 43:36Speaker 02

  Another squad to keep an eye on from a potential, from the automatic bid side of things is New Mexico State, who was a 12 seed. They played Clemson in the first round and they would potentially play Auburn if they win that game. And Auburn is kind of in an interesting spot right now roster wise.

• 43:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and uh, that's, that's kind of cool that Auburn since what 2003, that's when the last time they made it, so.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's been a long time. I'm a little worried about their prospects just because they, they have a, a, a great, a great young interior player who went down, his name seems to me right now.

• 44:12Chuck Nice?

  Don't worry about it. I don't know his name either. And I don't, I have to tell you, the one thing that I don't do in college basketball, unless you're a huge star, is follow the personnel. You kind of follow the programs and I think that's why coaches become more rock stars than the players. And that's because the players, they're leaving.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Anthony McLemore, Anthony McLemore, he's been out and they have not been the same, especially inside.

• 44:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  So, so they have struggled since he went out. They, you know, since he, since his injury, you know, since February, really, they have struggled. They've lost five games and won four. They're four and five in their last nine. That's not really a great way to go in the tournament. They, they lost to Alabama for the second time this season in the SEC tournament. So they, you know, have a little bit to do when they go play College of Charleston on, on Friday.

• 45:01Chuck Nice?

  And well, you know, for them, I say, um, there's always prayer. Okay? So just keep that in mind, guys. Keep that in mind. Uh, let me ask you this, um.

• 45:14Chuck Nice?

  Is it better to be a team that kind of runs and guns it, plays real fast, scores very high, or is it better to be a team slows the game down, plays it on their own terms? Or maybe you're that team that slows it down, plays real slow, but you're still high scoring because you shoot a lot of three pointers? What do you think is the best combination?

• 45:34Speaker 02

  I think the last one is probably the best combination because the three-point shot is really the great equalizer in college basketball, so much so that in the NIT, they're actually going to experiment with pushing the three-point line out a bit to try to get teams to play more inside, play more of a mid-range game.

• 45:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, nobody wants to see that, though. We like seeing somebody rain down, drops from above. That's what we like.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  But to me, the one thing that you want to keep an eye on making your picks is you've spent really the past two and a half months playing in your conference. You're used to a very specific style of officiating in particular, and you're used to a very specific set of opponents and their styles. You're going to be matched up against teams, and it's not so much in the first round because you have a few days to prepare, but it's on that second turnaround from Thursday to Saturday or Friday to Sunday where you don't have all that much time to prepare. And you have to try to get used to a completely different style of offense and potentially defense, and a different style of officiating. And the teams that can make those adjustments the most quickly and the most efficiently, those are the ones that are going to do it well.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  So you want to look for the teams that are well-coached.

• 46:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  And the teams that also have a fair amount of talent and have a lot of good veteran leadership.

• 46:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was going to say, that sounds to me like the teams with good coaches and teams that have been there before, as well as teams that have maybe some seniors and some guys that know what they're doing. So those are very good points. What's the best bracket you ever filled out?

• 47:05Speaker 02

  In all the years that I've done this, and honestly, since I've started doing bracketology, my picks have just gotten progressively worse. There was one year, I think, was it actually 2014, where I think everything pretty much went, everything went to hell, and Florida, I had Florida going to win the national championship because they were number one overall seed, and I went to the final four. And I ended up just winning my pool by default because everybody else's final four picks had just gone and completely into the trash. And I had one team left standing. That's pretty much it. That's, I overanalyze this stuff, so I really have no shot.

• 47:42Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know what, and it's fun because that's what I love about the tournament is the fact that I don't know anything, and I have just as good a chance as somebody who knows so much like you, I have just as good a chance of getting a good bracket out of it. From what, from what I understand, there are nine quintillion possibilities when the tournament starts. So there are nine quintillion ways to fill out

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 48:12Chuck Nice?

  the bracket. If you are a really good basketball aficionado, if you're a person with a great deal of basketball knowledge, I think the odds then drop down to one in 128 billion of picking the perfect bracket.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 48:31Chuck Nice?

  So it really doesn't make a difference how, how bad you did, Chris. You're, you did better than the odds ever could, could let you, could, could, could let you do.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Warren Buffett's money is very much safe since he hasn't run that bracket contest in, in many years.

• 48:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Well, I have to tell you, man, I'm, I'm, once I found out these stats, and I will put this out there right now, this is not sanctioned by playing with science or the StarTalk organization. But I am going to say right now to anyone listening, if you pick a perfect bracket, I will fly you to New York City and pay for you to have dinner with Neil deGrasse Tyson. I will set that up personally and make it happen if you pick a perfect bracket. So, and you know, that, all I'm saying is, we'll go in the honor system too. I'm going to put it out there like that. We'll go on the honor system. And if anybody has the nerve. To actually tell me they picked the perfect bracket when they get to New York,

• 49:34Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna hit you with a baseball bat.

• 49:42Chuck Nice?

  So let me ask you this because we're pretty much out of time. We spent way more time than we should have, but this has been a lot of fun. One, how many of the number one seeds do you think will make it this year? Two, has there ever been a time where the final four was all four number one seeds? And, and then I'll ask you about your final, your elite eight.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  I, I think this year we're gonna probably end up having two number one seeds make it out of the four. We've only, it's funny you ask, we've only had it happen once where all four number one seeds have made it. And that was 10 years ago, 2008.

• 50:15Chuck Nice?

  Wow, cool.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it was also in San Antonio where the final four is this year.

• 50:20Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow. Cool. All right. Something to look forward to. So you know what? Skip the elite eight. Let's go to the final four. Tell me, who do you have for your final four or who would you like to see? Even if you're just not making a prediction, who would you like to see as your final four? And then who do you think will be in that championship game? And then of course, who will win it all?

• 50:40Speaker 02

  I, I warned you about Arizona earlier. I'm taking Arizona out of the East. So that knocks out one, one seed in Virginia. Um, I, I think that Villanova, their path in the East is fairly, fairly easy. So I think that they're gonna get through out of there. I think Kansas will make it out of the Midwest. Duke is kind of their biggest hurdle in that region and Michigan State as well. They're gonna have to really earn their way there. And finally, I'm taking North Carolina out of the West. So that would set up a final, a final four of Arizona versus North Carolina State.

• 51:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  And Villanova, Kansas, and I, I'm gonna go with Arizona. I, I really like the way Arizona's playing right now. I'm taking Arizona over Kansas in the final.

• 51:22Chuck Nice?

  Wow, look at that. So an Arizona championship this year, 2018, according to Chris Dobbertean, uh, which, you know, I'm excited to see whether or not that happens. I'm, uh, I'm picking the team with the black dude.

• 51:44Chuck Nice?

  That's really not a bad idea. I got a feeling I'm going to win, man. Yeah, I think so. Well, listen, Chris, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for joining us and having some fun with the Bracket this year. So sorry that Gary couldn't be here with us to do it. It's always more fun when we're all together. Keep up the great work. Everyone can find you at bloggingthebracket.com. And you do some incredible writing and you are just so knowledgeable. If you're a fan of college basketball, period, you should definitely read, Chris. It's an education that is well worth it.

• 52:26Chuck Nice?

  And we're going to wrap things up. Thank you all for joining us. On behalf of Gary O'Reilly, I'm Chuck Nice, telling you that when you play with fire, you get burned, and when you play with science, you get learned. We'll see you soon.