First weekend of March Madness

My friend Art put together a bracket league on Yahoo! this year. Any player is allowed to make three brackets, so he and I made brackets of our own and two brackets based on picks made by people who have made their brackets public.  Art's extra brackets are based on the picks of basketball expert Ken Pomeroy. I used the prognostications of Nate Silver and... 

A well known Islamo-fascist socialist usurper, Barry Soetoro.

Right now, the usurper is kicking everybody's ass hard. He has 35 of 48 picks right, a remarkably good score this year, given how many big upsets there have been. Nate and I are tied for correct picks at 31 of 48.  You get more points for picking correctly in the second round than in the first, so by that way of counting, Silver is ahead of me 40 to 39. But our league also has bonus points for picking upsets and Silver's best guesses lean very much on higher seeds, so with the bonuses the top of the table looks like this.

Barry Soetoro's Halal Bracket: 70 points

Grown Ass Man's Bracket (mine): 65 points

The Pom-Poms of Doom (based on Pomeroy): 52 points

Nate Silver Eats Chalk: 51 points

Art, who is usually pretty good at this, is taking a pounding this year, but there are still four rounds to go and the scoring increases each round.  I'll update the standings next week after the Final Four has been determined.

March 16, 2012 - the day of two fifteens

Quick question. What is the team name of Lehigh University?

I'll give you a moment.

Did you guess Mountain Hawks or did you know?  I'm wagering you didn't guess.

They beat Duke in basketball this evening.

You know, the Blue Devils.

That's a 15 seed beating a 2 seed.  That hasn't happened in NCAA history in... oh, let me look it up... nearly four hours.

I think this now can be counted as the maddest day in March Madness history.

It's Friday afternoon of the first weekend and my bracket is crushed like an itty bitty bug.

This was the scene at Norfolk State on Sunday when they found out they would be in the NCAA Division I tournament for the first time in their school history, a 15th seed against #2 Missouri, a great team who has played great on the road this year. As the cliche goes, they were just happy to be going to The Big Dance. But now at just before 4:00 p.m. Pacific, they have pulled off one of the biggest upsets in history, only the fifth 15th seed to beat a 2nd seed ever.

I had Mizzou winning the whole thing.  My bracket is complete crap now.

But you've got to be happy for these kids.  This is one of those games that will be remembered for a long time, like Michigan losing to Appalachian State in football or more locally, #16 seed Harvard beating #1 Stanford in women's basketball, even more humiliating because it was played on the Stanford campus at Maples Pavilion in 1998.

Whether they make it to the Sweet 16 or not, this has to be the upset of the tournament, one of the biggest of all time.

UPDATE: Okay, this is the biggest upset of the early afternoon.  Got one just as big if not bigger this evening.  See the other post labeled "Two major upsets".
 

No silver mask?Then it's not Santo.

 This guy is running for president.  Not of the senior class, president of the United States.

A lot of people don't like using his last name.  Since you found this blog on the Internet, you probably know why.  On Twitter, several people are shortening his name to Santo.

I hope this trend will stop.

Santo is a hero.  Santo has a silver mask.  Santo fights the Vampire Women, not The Women Who Want To Go To College or The Women Who Don't Want To Get Pregnant.

The name is taken, please use something else.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Results from Alabama and Mississippi

The polls were all wrong in the Deep South, so neither Nate Silver or I did very well, turning in our worst performances since Iowa, the other huge upset win for Sick Rantorum. That said, in this contest our algorithms are competing against each other, and I pulled off two low scoring wins.  Here are the results.

Mississippi
------------
Santorum 32.9% (I gain 0.6%)
Gingrich 31.3% (I gain 1.1%)
Romney 32.9% (I lose 0.8%)
Paul 4.4% (I gain 0.3%)
None of the Above 1.1% (break even)
Hubbard 85.0%, 83.8%

Alabama
------------
Santorum 34.5% (I gain 0.4%) 
Gingrich 29.3% (I gain 1%)
Romney 29.0% (I gain 1%)
Paul 5.0% (I lose 1.3%)
None of the Above 2.2% (I gain 0.3%)
Hubbard 85.6%, Silver 84.2%

Simply put, we overrated everybody in the field except Senator Rick.  We also underrated None Of The Above.

The news will be about these two victories and ignore the fact that R-Money picked up more delegates last night than the other candidates by winning big in Hawaii and American Samoa.

Delegates won on 3/13

R-Money 40

Rantorum 35

Old Cheerful 25

Dr. Ron 0

 

The boa constrictor continues to squeeze. Newt has said many times he won't quit, but even a guy as cheerful as he is has to be getting a little glum by now. This next week has a non-binding caucus in Missouri, a winner take all caucus in Puerto Rico and a direct election next Tuesday in Illinois.  I expect the polling companies to give a lot of data in Illinois and next to none in the other two contests. If that's the case, I'll be back to report on the prognostications a week from now.

More fun with the tracking poll.

Gallup tracking poll - Beginning of January through middle of March

The Gallup tracking poll produces almost no information that will tell us who will be the Republican nominee, but because it is updated nearly every day, it gives a great snapshot of the mood of the GOP voters and trends over time.  Let's look at the patterns.

R-Money (green): He rose, he fell, he rose again and fell again, and we have seen his third rise, which may be now entering his third fall.  Even so, he has been the leader in the tracking poll for about 70% of the time and has never been worse than second. Notice that the highest grid line any candidate has passed this year is 35% and R-Money has done it at least once in every month.  It has been really tough for anyone to stay over that level of support for even as long as a week at a stretch.

Sick Rantorum (greyish brown): In the beginning of January, he was a sad joke.  By the beginning of February, he has become R-Money's main competition, even taking the lead for about a week in mid-February.  It's too early to tell, but his numbers are currently rising as Mitt's are falling, so we may see a fifth lead change within a few days. The only thing that might prevent it is two third place finishes tonight in the Southern primaries, which is the general prediction from the polls but close enough that there might be a surprise.

Cheerful Old Newt (grey): December isn't shown on this, when Newt went from being a prohibitive favorite to second place. He peaked again in late January, but since then he has faded to a steady and unimpressive third place. Who knows if GOP votes nationwide will give him a boost based on what should be strong finishes this evening in Alabama and Mississippi.

Dr. Ron Paul (GOLD!): Very steady and consistently in the 10% to 15% bracket, with one small dip in early February. Can't gain traction, won't die out.

None of the above (black): At the beginning of the year, NOTA was up around 25%, but over time it has shrunk and for the past month it has been hovering around 15%. The GOP voter may not be in love, but they are becoming accustomed to the idea that one of these guys is getting the nomination and no white knight is coming to the rescue.

You will see updates of this graph in the future, because it's my blog and I love numbers.

Predictions for March 13:Primaries in Mississippi and Alabama

There are four contests today, primaries in Alabama and Mississippi and caucuses in Hawaii and American Samoa.  Polling companies only showed interest in the primaries and once again, my model for prediction goes head to head with Nate Silver's, this time in the two Southern states.  Here are the numbers, with my predicted percentage first and Silver's in parentheses second.

Mississippi
------------
Romney 34.5% (33.7%)
Gingrich 32.0% (33.2%)
Santorum 26.5% (25.9%)
Paul 7.0% (7.3%)
None of the Above 0.0% (-0.1%)

Alabama
------------
Gingrich 31.5% (32.2%)
Romney 31.0% (31.3%)
Santorum 28.5% (27.9%)
Paul 8.0% (7.3%)
None of the Above 1.0% (1.3%)

 

We agree on the basics, predicting victory for R-Money is Mississippi and Cheerful Old Newt in Alabama, Sick Rantorum in third in both races and Dr. Ron Paul a distant fourth in both.  As the numbers shake out, I'm bullish on Mitt and Rick in Ole Miss with the advantage that None of the Above can't be negative - it's like have a tiebreaker in pocket, while in Alabama, my model is bullish on Santorum and Paul.  Both of us are predicting close battles for first place based on the polling data, and it would not be truly startling if Gingrich or R-Money swept the South tonight.

 

I'll be back tomorrow with the results.  Currently, Silver and I are tied at 5-5 in the ten contests where we both made predictions. If we take the average of our ten predictions so far, Nate is ahead 89.6% to 89.3%.