Turn Your March Madness Into April Rad-Ness with Dr. Brackets' 2019 Tips and Tricks

Get on Kevin Harlan's level, folks! Courtesy of Awful Announcing.

This Minnesota winter seemed like an endless cycle of either barrages of snow or days of 30 below. I, for one, have learned my lesson and will not be relying on that rascal Punxatawney Phil for my long-range weather forecasts in future Februaries. But in what is the surest sign of The Glorious Long Thaw, the dulcet tones of Kevin Harlan, Jim Nantz, and the rest of the CBS play-by-play gang are once again filling the open-concept office spaces and living rooms of the nation.

It's time to once again investigate what you need to know in order to swipe your friends' and co-workers' hard-earned money and hard-won bragging rights, and Dr. Brackets is here to help you separate your bracket from the chatter and the racket.

Here is your annual disclaimer: I am not an actual doctor. I don't save lives, I've never finished a dissertation, and I'm not licensed to practice law in the United States (though if we ever cross paths in Iceland and you've run into some legal troubles, let's talk). But one of my favorite activities every year is the updating of the Warehouse, my collection of thousands of data points from the last 8 years of NCAA tournaments, which has displayed a scary amount of predictive power in recent years.

My statistical model has helped me correctly pick the tourney champ in 3 of the last 4 years! In that 4th year, the model told me to go with Michigan State...the year they lost to Middle Tennessee in the 1st round. (Pay no attention to the Outlier!!!) But in the research I conduct in this week every year, I always uncover a dozen or so tips and tidbits that can help you both scratch out a few more points in those early-round matchups that will help your bracket separate from the crowd and make smart selections deep into your bracket. So what do you need to know this year?

1. You would be forgiven if you found it hard to be (TERRIBLE PUN ALERT) cavalier with how far you advance Virginia this year. Last year's version of the Virginia squad suffered the indignity of being the first #1 seed to fall to a 16-seed in the first round of the tournament.

The good news for this year's Virginia team is they battled to a top-5 ranking in both offensive and defensive efficiency, losing only twice to Duke and once to Florida State all season. As I'll mention below, teams that finish the regular season top-10 in both O and D efficiency win an average of 3.7 games in the tournament (last year's Virginia team did not carry this distinction).

But the mark against Virginia is that they plaaaaaay soooooooooo sloooooooooowly. Their pace of play is the slowest of all 353 Division I teams. This can serve, much like it did for Bo Ryan's Wisconsin teams of the previous decade, as a source of frustration when a team seems to only get the ball for 5 seconds of every minute of game time and can't do much with it in their short time in possession. But, as last year, it makes Virginia susceptible to poor shooting nights or opponents who hit a hot streak, as their slow pace really shrinks the number of possessions they're allowed to get back into a game once they trail.

So, the advanced stats suggest Virginia should be poised for a lengthy run. Most of the other top teams in their bracket also play slowly, so they won't have a stylistic advantage, but they are the best in college basketball at playing the way they do. But you may see many of your bracket opponents follow a "once bitten, twice shy" rule with this year's Cavaliers.

2. This year marks an exciting return of powerful mid-majors! If you're naturally drawn toward a good underdog story, you can't help but root for the Woffords and Belmonts of the world. Gonzaga has of course become one of basketball's blue bloods over the past 20 years, even as they continue to dominate the West Coast Conference. But Buffalo, Nevada, and Houston (from the American Conference, which is kind of a high-mid-major but just humor me) all won games last year and bring back stronger squads this year.

Look out for three other mid-major teams as well: 11-seeded Belmont, who vanquished Temple in a First Four game last night, and 12-seeded Murray State, who features a 25 point, 10 assist per game guy you should make sure to catch in Ja Morant. You'll hear Morant's name called alongside a bunch of Dookies in the top-5 picks of this year's NBA draft. And 7-seeded Wofford may make some serious noise in the Midwest bracket. Their only losses are to other tournament teams, and they ran through a stronger-than-usual Southern Conference undefeated. Plus, they hit threes at a fantastic clip, which makes them a Giant Killer-candidate.

3. Every year, an unlucky handful of teams have to try and adapt to injuries to stars and/or key rotation players; often, these teams find it really difficult to make deep tournament runs. It takes time for teams that usually go 8- or 9-deep to settle into new rotations and usage patterns. Injuries can turn title contenders into 2nd-week also-rans, and can take promising mid-high seeds and make them upset fodder.

And if the injuries occur late enough in the season, the advanced analytics haven’t been allowed to gather enough data to effectively “price in” a key player’s absence to his team’s route through the tournament. Here's a list of the injuries you should know about this year, and keep in mind: injuries to point guards and big men often hurt the most in March. (Number denotes team's seed)

2) Michigan State - Joshua Langford (2nd-leading scorer) AND Kyle Ahrens (key bench big) both out
2) Kentucky - PJ Washington (Leading scorer, 15ppg/8rpg) QUESTIONABLE for round 1, appeared during Selection Sunday, mysteriously, in a walking boot
4) Kansas State - Dean Wade (2nd-leading scorer, best 3pt shooter) out - he suffered an injury right before last year's tourney, too. Poor Dean.
4) Kansas - Lagerald Vick (2nd leading scorer, 14ppg/4rpg) out for personal reasons, Udoka Azubuike (#3 scorer, 13ppg/7rpg) out
5) Mississippi State - Nick Weatherspoon (5th-leading scorer) suspended
8) Syracuse - Tyus Battle (Leading scorer) QUESTIONABLE for round 1 with back injury
8) VCU - Marcus Evans (Leading scorer, 13ppg/3apg) QUESTIONABLE with bone bruise
9) Baylor - Tristan Clark (Leading scorer, 15ppg/6rpg) out with a knee injury
10) Florida - Keith Clark (Key bench big, 6ppg/4rpg) tore his ACL

Zion Willamson: A man whose biceps are wider than my gut. Courtesy Getty Images.

4. For the first time in the history of this column, we get to transition from the downer "injury bug" item into a more positive jam: Players that are recovering from recent injuries and are expected to bring a lift to their teams this week!

As you might expect, the teams listed here may be undervalued relative to their seed, since the analytics likely show a version of the injured players' teams playing at a reduced capacity for at least a portion of the year. Here are the players looking to make returns and spur their teams to better outcomes than you might expect:

1) Duke - Zion Williamson (Likely National Player of the Year award winner, he's a freak, he's awesome, watch all his games) back after missing 5 games with a knee injury when his shoe exploded early in a game against North Carolina.
1) North Carolina - Rechon "Leaky" Black (key bench ballhandler, missed 13 games) expected back for the tourney.
1) Gonzaga - Killian Tillie (key bench big, 3pt shooter, missed 22 games) and Geno Crandall (key ballhandler and LOCAL MINNESOTA KID, missed 9 games) both back in rotation.
2) Michigan - Charles Matthews (starting wing, missed 3 games) back in starting lineup.
2) Kentucky - Reid Travis (starting big man and LOCAL MINNESOTA KID, missed 5 games) back after knee sprain.
4) Auburn - Austin Wiley (starting center, missed 11 games) back in lineup for SEC tourney.
11) Belmont - Nick Muszynski (starting center, conference freshman of the year) was back in Belmont's lineup after missing conference tournament, looked great against Temple last night.
11) Ohio State - Kaleb Wesson (leading scorer, missed 3 games while suspended) gave Ohio State a boost in the Big Ten tourney after being reinstated to the team.

5. The presence of a steady ball handler often means a longer presence for your team at the tournament. Over the past 7 years, if your team has a "floor general" who averages at least 3.8 assists per game, you win 0.6 games more than teams who don't. And 24 of the past 28 Final Four teams have had a floor general toting the rock up the court. So having a capable point guard (or point forward! This a non-discrimination-against-big-guys-with-handles zone.) helps both the mid-seeds get a win or 2, and the top teams achieve long runs.

I usually bring this up to pinpoint which teams lack this resource as candidates for early exits. This year's pack of notable floor general-less teams includes: Texas Tech, Kansas, Kansas State, Buffalo, ALL of the 8- and 9-seeds except Central Florida and Utah State, and...gulp...the Gophers.

Pictured: Will Wade. Not pictured: Will Wade on the sideline coaching LSU during the tournament. Courtesy Sporting News.

6. The deja vu of LSU: The 3-seeded Tigers are experiencing the weird reality of being without their head coach for the tournament. Will Wade has been suspended indefinitely by the school, as he's been ensnared in the same FBI sting operation around illegally paying to recruit star players that befell Arizona before last year's 4-seed was upset by Buffalo in the first round in 2018.

This information by itself would not point to LSU being in danger of losing to 14-seeded Yale in this year's first round. But...if you look at the full list of last year's tournament teams, LSU's closest comparable - both stylistically and efficiency-wise - happens to be...Arizona. And, freakily, Yale's closest comp happens to be...Buffalo.

Not sayin', just sayin'.

7. The "20-game win streak" rule: One of my favorite little "probably-doesn't-mean-anything" nuggets in my 8 years of data exploration is this: Every team that was assigned a 12-seed or better that had a 20-game or more win streak during the season has won at least one game in the tournament. That may seem obvious when the subject is highly-ranked teams (of course 1's and 2's are usually going to win a lot of games during the regular season and then win at least once in the tourney!), but this stat has also held true for Cinderellas like 12-seeded Stephen F. Austin in 2014, and mid-majors that earn high seeds, like 6-seeded Murray State in 2012.

This year, two of our plucky mid-major favorites achieved this feat: Gonzaga (a 1-seed, so...yeah) and 7-seeded WOFFORD WOOOOOOOOO!!! So go ahead and move those two teams ahead to at least the 2nd round.

WOFFORD WOOOOOOOOO!!! Courtesy Statesman.com.

8. Overseeded/underseeded: The selection committee did maybe their best job of the decade, both in terms of giving the top seeds to teams who deserved them and picking worthy squads with those 10- and 11-seed teams who were on the bubble before Selection Sunday. As usual, my biggest sticking point was in how they handled some of the better mid-major teams:

Nevada should be a 3 or 4-seed, but got handed a 7-seed.
Wofford deserves to be a 4 or 5, not a 7-seed.
Buffalo should also be a 4 or 5, instead of a 6-seed.
Murray State should be an 8 or 9, but were saddled with a 12-seed.
Also, Cincinnati (not really a mid-major) deserved to be a couple lines higher than the 7-seed they were granted.

In contrast, I only uncovered a few egregious overseedings - all of which, coincidentally, are exacerbated by injuries or extenuating circumstances listed above:

LSU is more of a 4- or 5-seed than a 3-seed.
Kansas State should be a 5- or 6-seed instead of the 4 they received.
Same with Kansas.
Baylor should have been one of the last teams in, but they got a 9-seed.


9. KenPom Top 10s: Ten teams over the past seven years have entered the tournament with top-10 ratings in both offense and defense, per Ken Pomeroy and his seminal site kenpom.com. Nine of those teams won at least three games in the tournament; the one that didn't was last year's Michigan State squad, but they (or Duke, one of the other "dual top 10" teams) had no chance to WIN three games, because they (and Duke) were set to play each other in the Sweet 16 last year! Um...Michigan State actually lost to Syracuse one round before they would have played Duke, but MY POINT STILL STANDS, thank you.

This year, we have the most "dual top 10" teams going into the tournament since 2012: Duke and Michigan State again achieved the feat (and are again positioned in the same region of the bracket), and as mentioned earlier, they've been joined by Virginia in this exclusive club this year.

10. Best Bets for Upsets: So how exactly do you win a bracket pool? You do 2 things:

A. You nail as much of the Final Four as you can.
B. You gain a small advantage early on by picking the right upsets.

How do you accomplish A? Often, especially in pools that a lot of people enter, the highest expected value for your Bracket Buck is to pick a team to win the title that falls outside of the top few favorites that most of your competitors will likely pick. This is a strategy that, 4 years out of 5, may backfire and drop you to the middle of the pack by the end of the tourney. But every once in a while it will pay off and vault you to the top of the standings when things go your way.

But what are the best bets to help you gain that early-round advantage this year? Here are the double-digit seeds that are stronger-than-usual for their seed line this year; whether or not I picked them to steal a game or 2 is entirely match-up dependent:
11) Belmont and St. Mary's
12) Murray State and New Mexico State. A lot of people like Oregon, but they're not very efficient offensively. Wisconsin is stout defensively, the best 5-seed, and a bad match-up for them in Round 1.
13) Vermont and UC Irvine
14) Yale

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There you go, folks. I just emptied my pockets for you! Now go forth and prosper. (And when you win your pools, remember to send me 5% of your winnings as per my consultancy fee; please make checks out to "Dr. Brackets, Esq. (Iceland).")

Make sure to get your brackets submitted to your various contests by 11am Thursday morning, and enjoy the best 3 weeks of the year, everyone!

Dr. Brackets Is Back To Guide You To Office Pool Victory

Courtesy of Gold And Gopher.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! March Madness springs anew on Thursday morning, and Dr. Bruff is back again with 10 hot tips, tricks, and fun facts to help you vault over those jerks in your office bracket pool (FEEL THE HOT STEEL OF MY STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT DATA, DARREN FROM SALES).

I must lead with the disclaimer that I am not an actual doctor. I have friends who are doctors, but that in itself does not make one a doctor. In truth, I’m as much a doctor as Dr. Drake Ramoray from Days of Our Lives, or that guy that stayed at a Holiday Inn Express that one time.

Wild and Children First, or, Maybe Gonna Give You Up, or, I’m Gettin’ Too Old for This: The Ethics and Adjudication of Taking a Break from One Team to Get Closer to Another

Courtesy of Forbes.

I’ve been hung up on this piece for the last six weeks, mostly because I couldn’t settle on a title. That’s why there’s three of them.

And then the always entertaining Michael Rand kicked me into high gear by posting an article at the Star Tribune Tuesday investigating whether Minnesota sports fans can believe that this year’s Wild won’t let folks down by going on one of their long winter skids that have derailed each of their last 3 seasons. The article’s headline: “Is it safe to go ‘all in’ on the Wild? Yes and no.” Don’t be wishy-washy, Michael—they’re a Minnesota sports team. The answer is no.

0-for-Vegas, or: Aneurysms for Everyone! Gophers Men's Basketball in 2013

This is Part 1 of a 7-part look-back at what happened in Minnesota sports over the past 12 months. Some of these stories are obviously figments of my imagination. A couple actually happened. These are the tales, imageries, conversations, and visualizations that best described, at least for me, what it meant to be a Minnesota sports fan over the past 12 months.

“Bud Light Lime-a-Rita TALL BOYS. Shit will HIT YOU QUICK,” said Ron, in reference to the 8% alcohol-by-volume drink that was inexplicably lumped in with other pretender beverages in the “2-for-$10” cooler in a long hallway at the Tropicana. We both bought one for each hand and headed to the sports book because we knew that the best way to watch the maddening roller-coaster that was the under-utilized talent of the 2012-13 Gophers basketball team was with a steady dose of lime-flavored sugar-booze coursing through one’s bloodstream.

Closing (Tubby) Time: One Last Call for Basketball

Less than 24 hours after the Golden Gophers basketball team’s season-ending defeat in a 78-64 against a strong Florida Gators squad, Minnesota athletic director Norwood Teague flicked the lights off for the Tubby Smith Era of Gophers hoops.  The local media has approved the move for the most part, while the national folks have lamented the pink slip received by one of the good guys in college basketball and decried Teague’s and the program’s aspirations to become something more than a second-and-a-half-ish tier team in a big-time conference. Come on, they say. Count your blessings. You’re Minnesota. You’re located in the nation’s hinterlands, and you’re about as big a basketball powerhouse as McDonald’s is a place to get great ribs. You just fired the best thing you had going for you. 

This Was Supposed To Be The Winter of Sports!: or, Fun With Limericks

The world's first book o' limericks, penned by Edward Lear

(The following is a combination of truths and fictions relating to the origin of the limerick—a rhythmic, five-line poem structure—and the current states of affair for our local sports teams. Please consider all of the following limerick-related information in the same manner as you would any recent victory from any of our local squads: with a grain of salt and a swift retaliatory kick in the nether regions.)

Regression to the Lean: Reviewing a 96-Hour Pu Pu Platter

Tuesday, January 22
Nashville 3, Wild 1

Wednesday, January 23
Northwestern 55, Golden Gophers 48
Brooklyn 91, Timberwolves 83

Thursday, January 24
A Brief Respite

Friday, January 25
Detroit 5, Wild 3
Washington 114, Timberwolves 101

Saturday, January 26
Wisconsin 46, Golden Gophers 45
Charlotte 102, Timberwolves 101

As much as it sometimes seems like I revel in our sporting misery, I really don't like writing articles like this very much. They're much more cathartic than enjoyable, and there's no sense of a weight being lifted when the last keystroke has been hit and the last picture placed. But this was one remarkably awful week of sports for all of our most nationally relevant hometown teams, and a website that cites taking mediocrity to task as one of its stated motives for existence must give some kind of comment about the line of turds the Timberwolves, Wild, and Gophers guys basketball team have laid in one particularly trying 96-hour span.

I Don't Know What To Do With My Hands: In Praise of These Gophers and Their Hot Start

Rodney Williams finishing a 360-degree dunk into what is probably the correct hoop.

The Minnesota Golden Gophers men's basketball squads have a recent history of hot starts in the non-conference portion of their schedules during Tubby Smith's tenure as coach. Last year's team started 12-1 but could only muster an NIT berth after a 6-12 Big Ten campaign. The 2010-11 squad also romped through their early season schedule, going 11-1 with wins over North Carolina and West Virginia, but Al Nolen's broken foot derailed that team's chance at postseason success. Also, let's not forget the 16-1 start to the 2008-09 season that included a neutral-court win over 9th-ranked Louisville but ended in a 1st round thud in the NCAA Tournament at the hands of A.J. Abrams and Dexter Pittman.

Just How Right Are the Prices: The Week in Review

Much like the yodeler from Cliff Hangers who makes his way up the mountain, hoping not to crash at the apex of his ascent, it's been a week of high hopes and dramatic tumbles for your local squads.

MelAnChoLy in Minnesota: A Stroll Through the Ligament Graveyard

O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,

O I say now these are the soul!

--Walt Whitman, "I Sing the Body Electric"

The drive to Virginia, Minnesota, takes about three and a half hours from my home in the southwest suburbs of Minneapolis. Tony, Silky, and I made the trip Wednesday afternoon with solemn business on our minds. We are three of the youngest members of the Ligament Induction Panel, and the news had just come through the wire that Twins pitcher Scott Baker would miss the 2012 season to fix and rehab the flexor pronator tendon in his pitching elbow.

Return to Normalcy: A Gopher Hockey Analysis & Frozen Four Preview

Freshman Kyle Rau (18 goals, 25 assists) and sophomore Nick Bjugstad (25 G, 17 A) are two of the top reasons the Gophers have re-emerged this season from a brief spell of mediocrity.

Disclaimer: I know very little about hockey. I know even less about Minnesota Golden Gopher Hockey. The highest level hockey game I have ever attended was the MIAC championships at Gustavus Adolphus. My only connection to Gopher hockey comes from that one time I hung out with former center Patrick White at college. So keep this in mind as we delve, together, into some relatively new (for me) territory of Minnesota fandom.

Did I Miss Anything? Gophers-Stanford NIT Championship

In which your narrator turns off a Minnesota sports contest in disgust, purporting to know enough about the team and its players to fill in a rough sketch of what probably happened during the rest of the game.

The situation: Stanford led 44-28 with 13+ minutes left in the game.

The catalyst: Andre Hollins bricks one 3-pointer, then air balls another in a 3-second span.

My roommate, Tony, farted, then said, "Excuse me, I just Gophered." I asked if we could watch something else.

Da Goofers: An Introduction to Silky J

Before I get started here, I’d like to take a second to allow myself to introduce… myself (Austin Powers joke at the very beginning… not a good start). My name’s Erik, but I’m known as Silky J around these parts. I’ll be contributing things on here from time to time, hopefully with a voice and perspective distinct from Bruff’s. I will often defer to him because he’s not only more knowledgeable and more passionate than I am (Which is saying a lot; I’m neither stupid nor apathetic.) but he’s also much more eloquent with the written word than I am. (Editor’s Note: Full Disclosure--I paid Silky $16,535.00 to say that.) All that said, I’m sure I’ll find my niche, and I’ll end up contributing posts that are as rewarding for you to read as they are for me to write.

The Fiscal Year of Our Discontent: Article 1

Combined Win-Loss Records, March 31, 2011-March 29, 2012

Minnesota Gophers (BKB) 23-14 (.590)

Minnesota Gophers (FB) 3-9 (.250)

Minnesota Timberwolves 25-35 (.417)

Minnesota Twins 63-99 (.389)

Minnesota Vikings 3-13 (.188)

Minnesota Wild 34-38-10 (.415)

Combined: 151-218 (.409)

FY 2012 has largely been an unkind one for Minnesota sports fans. Losses mounted quickly as quarterbacks were battered, shootouts were squandered in embarrassing fashion, and all kinds of collateral ligaments were torn asunder. Our most successful team percentage-wise--Gophers' basketball--possessed zero players who wanted to even attempt a shot in a late-game, high-pressure situation against Michigan State one month ago. The past year has been so bad for our big-time sports teams that you could make a compelling argument that the best Minnesota athlete of the past year was actually the guy who finished 2011 as the top-ranked American tennis player in the world: Mardy Fish. And he's only a Minnesotan inasmuch as he learned to burp and crawl and use a potty here before his family moved to Florida when he was four years old.

Whether it's warranted or not, Minnesota fans have a reputation for loudly applauding our occasional flashes of brilliance and largely condoning the long periods of subsequent mediocrity. We break audience decibel-level records when we make the World Series, but mostly, we hope that our general managers know what they're doing when they bring in the Mike Lambs and Kim Johnssons of the sports world to fix our teams' glaring holes. And as the win-loss records show, the past 12 to 18 months in particular have been a special kind of emotional beat-down for the followers of the most prominent local squads.

Now, there have been signs of life with certain squads lately. The Wolves have again become a hot ticket with their exciting brand of play this season, and both big-money Gophers squads (with the promising late-season look of Jerry Kill's squad and a dangerous Hollins-Mbakwe duo on the 2012-13 horizon) look as though they might finally be heading in an upward trajectory. But it seems for every Kevin Love 40-point outing we've celebrated, there has been, say, a Zack Bowman signing that makes Vikings fans wonder if our front office remembers what a competent football player looks like and threatens to drag the whole fan base a little deeper into the dredges.

What I (and several of my friends, who will occasionally contribute as writers and editors) hope to do through this site is analyze, criticize, yell and scream, stomp and cheer, and generally translate Minnesota fandom into the written word. You can expect to check us out a couple times a week for new content here in our infancy. I'm especially excited to try out a few original types of blog posts, including installments of the "21 Years..." series, in which we count down various lists of the top 21 athletes, events, and...I don't know, local beers that have helped define and shape life as a Minnesota sports fan in the time since our last major professional or collegiate title. You can also expect to find Game of the Week breakdowns; commentaries and columns; occasional tangents into topics like local music, un-American football, and video games; and a live blog or two, once I figure out how to work this here Internet device.

We're Minnesota. We're the fan base that knows more about the symptoms and ramifications of bilateral leg weakness than any other in the country. We're the state whose catered food is apparently so bad, it can serve as the catalyst for the messy departure of a beloved Hall of Fame-caliber athlete. We're the people who ask to be circled by a Dutchman who loves his flatulence, and we hold up signs at our one championship-caliber team's playoff games that say "At Least We Got Da Lynx."

Sometimes fatalistic, often irrational, occasionally analytical, always entertaining. The qualities of the fans I have met while rooting for the teams of this state are the ones that I hope come through most evidently on this website. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go celebrate a nail-biter of a Timberwolves victory over the cellar-dwelling Bobcats by muttering complaints about Anthony Tolliver into a Soco Seven.

**Special thanks right off the bat goes out to Tim Lien for putting all the balls on a rack, just how I wanted them, in the header design.