Warren Buffett will pay you one billion American dollars if you correctly pick the entire NCAA Tournament this year.
One billion.
Would you like some help with your picks?
I thought so. Let’s get to it.
TIP NUMBER ONE: Don’t rely on statistics. (But two stats are worth looking at.)
You can’t just crunch a bunch of numbers and then predict the NCAA Tournament, as two hotshot Yale professors learned in 2007… and really, if stats told us anything, some egghead genius would be world famous for solving March Madness by now.
It’s over 340 teams in college basketball. Every team plays a different schedule. It’s simply wayyy too many variables in this sport for stats to be the tell-all.
That said, two statistical measures can reveal a diamond in the rough or a big red flag. Ken Pomeroy runs a website called KenPom.com in which he computes the strength/weakness of a team’s offense and defense. Pomeroy calls these ratings “Adjusted Offense” and “Adjusted Defense.” Each team is ranked from 1 to 346 in each category.
What These Ratings Can Reveal
Diamond in the rough: If you see a team ranked surprisingly high in one of the numbers, usually Adjusted Defense, you have a dangerous team. Case in point, take the Oregon Ducks last season. If you watched that team play, you saw explosive guards, great outside shooting, good ball movement and rugged rebounding. I figured the Ducks for an offensive juggernaut. As a 12-seed, Oregon advanced to the Sweet 16. When I went back and took a look at the numbers, I discovered that Oregon ranked 11th nationally in Adjusted Defense. Wow. No wonder that team advanced. Explosive guards rule the tournament; couple that with a stout defense, and you’ve got a dangerous team.
Norfolk State busted everyone’s bracket back in 2012.
Red Flag: Back in 2012, 15-seed Norfolk State shocked 2-seed Missouri in the first round. At first glance, Mizzou looked anything but vulnerable. That team was loaded with explosive, versatile guards, and the Tigers went 30-4 that season with no bad losses and a Big 12 Tournament crown. So how in the name of Doug Smith (if you remember him, I’m impressed) did the Tigers lose to NORFOLK STATE? You guessed it: Defense. Swiss Cheese flavored Easy Cheese defense. 146th according to Pomeroy’s calculations. This team couldn’t stop anybody!
Now, just because of that one stat, were we supposed to know ahead of time Missouri would lose to Norfolk State? Of course not. BUT, we would have recognized that team’s VULNERABILITY…and probably would have predicted they’d lose in the next round to 7-seed Florida.
Why is that significant? I smell the next tip…
TIP NUMBER TWO: Focus on the rounds that give you the most points.
When you enter a bracket contest, the scoring system is such that you receive more points for picking the later rounds correctly. It is crucial to avoid blindly picking the wrong high seed to get to the Final 4.
Here’s the smart play: Don’t worry about getting every single first round matchup right. Instead, take a look at each group of four teams and determine the most likely of those four to advance into the Sweet 16. Write that team into the Sweet 16 and then work back from there. You’ll put yourself way ahead of the rest of the people in your contest if you’re on the money with 12+ of your Sweet 16 teams. In that scenario, you’ll likely have most or all of your Final Four teams still alive, giving you an advantage.
But how can you know which teams are vulnerable and which are equipped to get to the second weekend?
TIP NUMBER THREE: Utilize Jux Berg’s research and brain.
I’m single, and I’m house-sitting for my dad while he’s in Arizona, so I’ve got time on my hands to fervently research past NCAA Tourneys. And I’ve done just that.
I wanted to see if common characteristics existed for both vulnerable and dangerous teams. I went back over the past five years and inspected:
1) 1-4 seeds that were knocked out in the first weekend (happened 11 times – happened to Georgetown 3 of those 11 times)
2) 5-10 seeds that went to the Sweet 16 or further (Butler was a 5 and an 8 in their Final 4 years. Wichita State was a 9 in 2013’s Final 4 appearance)
3) 11+ seeds that won two or more games (Florida Gulf Coast was a 15 in 2013)
For each team involved (25 total), I evaluated six factors…and after concluding the observational portion of my study, I then went to the stats. I appraised the following:
1) What TYPE of guards did Team X have?
Here’s why: You hear all the time that good guards can take you a long way in March. But a lot of teams have good guards…and not a lot of teams go far. So I looked at the type of guards on each team to see if any correlation emerged. Guards can be big, small, one-dimensional, 3-point reliant, slow, quick, inside-out/dual threat.
A pattern began to form. And it helped explain certain results that most people wouldn’t have predicted.
Michael Carter-Williams (6-foot-5) was a tough matchup for Indiana’s smaller guards.
For example: Last season, number 1 seed Indiana, who looked incredible all season, lost to 4-seed Syracuse in the Sweet 16. I was sure Indiana’s precision passing and marksman shooting would carve up Jim Boeheim’s stubborn, get-over-it-already-dude 2-3 zone. But what actually happened was Indiana’s small guards (one of which, Jordan Hulls, was one-dimensional/3-point reliant) couldn’t score over Syracuse’s bigger guards; and Syracuse’s big, dual-threat guards scored at will against the smaller IU backcourt.
More on that in a moment.
After categorizing the guards, I moved on to
2) TYPE of Defense: Conservative, aggressive, ball pressure, pressing, or change defenses
3) TYPE of Offense: Methodical, explosive, 3-point reliant, inside-dominant, or balanced
4) Experience
5) Did team X have size, length, and/or quickness?
6) Did anything Team X do or not do during the regular season appear to foreshadow that it could win (or lose) a game like this?
And then, after all of that…
7) Adjusted Offense rank and Adjusted Defense rank (Kenpom.com)
After performing this classification process for each of the 25 teams in the sample, I stepped back and took a wide angle lens look at the findings…
What Makes a Team Vulnerable
The majority of the 1-4 seeds that were upset early in the tournament had four things in common:
1) Methodical offense
2) Conservative defense
3) Lack of quickness
4) Guards were small, slow and/or 3-point reliant
Take Georgetown for instance. The Hoyas have been shocked three times in the past five seasons. Once by a 15 seed and twice by a 14 seed (shout out to the Ohio U. Bobcats). Traditionally, John Thompson III’s teams run a very methodical, patient offense, they play sound defense without taking any risks or forcing the action…and really, the guards, as a whole, have not been especially quick.
Next, look at Notre Dame. The Irish have been ousted twice by double digit seeds in the first weekend recently. And man, that team looked unstoppable for most of those regular seasons. But, again, look at the four criteria above. Notre Dame fits the shit out of that mold, doesn’t it?
What Makes a Team Dangerous
Florida Gulf Coast had a gang of athleticism
In contrast, the majority of the lower seeds that exceeded expectations had the following in common:
1) Quick or big guards – usually versatile, dual-threat (ability to shoot and drive to the bucket)
2) Aggressive/Ball pressure defense (a lot of the teams pressed)
3) Quickness and athleticism (Florida Gulf Coast much? VCU anybody?)
4) Explosive offense – teams that create turnovers (with said quickness and athleticism) and present problems offensively because of versatile guards.
The Question is Why
I sat on that information for a day or so.
And then, last Wednesday afternoon, after eating a peanut butter sandwich and quenching it with really cold white milk (Vitamin D), I realized something. The reason methodical, conservative teams are prone to lose early on in the NCAA Tournament is…
Those teams lacked the ability to come back from a deficit.
Think about it. The best teams in the country play in this tournament. Regardless of what seed you are, at some point—and it could be the first game you play—you will be trailing. Possibly by double digits.
You better be able to do something about it.
But if you’re not built for scoring points quickly, you run the risk of either falling too far behind or running out of time on your comeback and losing.
The teams that pulled those upsets and unexpectedly made it to the Final 4 were built to score quickly. Those teams survived and advanced. The teams that were not built to score quickly died sad deaths.
To summarize TIP NUMBER THREE: Do your homework. Determine which high seeds are vulnerable and which low seeds are dangerous. Bringing us to…
TIP NUMBER FOUR: How to detect an over or under-seeded team
Seeds Explained
Obligatorily I must begin by telling you that the 1-seed is the highest rated team in each region and the 16-seed is the lowest. There are four regions. Now, with that out of the way, let me next say that sometimes, just because a team receives a particular seed does not necessarily mean it is the 10th best or the 38th best or the 59th best team in the bracket. The seeding order is selected based on each team’s body of work over the course of the entire season.
But think about it. Teams go through all kinds of adversity throughout a season. Some teams start out hot, then something happens, they lose to a few bad teams, fall out of the Top 25, and then rally at the end to beat some good enough teams to be included in the field. You can end up with a number-9 seed that was ranked in the Top 5 earlier that season (Oklahoma State in this year’s bracket). That team’s gonna be dangerous, man. It has too much talent not to be. And in a one game situation, on a neutral floor, with all things being equal—it’s just Team X against Team Y—the more talented team often wins.
An example: Oregon had some impressive wins last season, but lost a bunch of games in a weakly perceived Pac-12, and, as a result, received a number-12 seed. That team was talented + It fit well together + Dana Altman’s a tremendous coach + It fit the criteria of dangerous + A tough defense = Underseeded. The Ducks knocked off 5-seed Oklahoma State and then 4-seed Saint Louis to get past the first weekend.
And then you have the overseeded teams. Usually, these are teams that either:
A) received a high seed based on a gaudy win-loss record, even if it came against weaker competition, or
B) lost a slew of early season games in the non-conference portion of the schedule and then got their shit together and did well in conference play (in familiar atmospheres against familiar teams and coaches).
Those overseeded teams are vulnerable. 1-seed Gonzaga in 2013 is an example. Virginia, a number 1 seed this season, could fit that mold.
And that segues into…
TIP NUMBER FIVE: What happens in conference play stays in conference play.
What a team does in conference play doesn’t mean a daggum thing. Look at the evidence. You see it both ways. In 2013, New Mexico won the Mountain West Conference regular season and tournament for the second straight year. And for the second straight year, New Mexico was bounced in the first weekend. Tom Izzo and Michigan State have made deep runs in countless NCAA Tournaments. The Spartans lose plenty of conference games and rarely win the Big 10 Tournament.
Conference play has a very high degree of familiarity involved. It also has a slew of extenuating circumstances, such as one team had a game two days before and the opponent had a week off to rest and prepare.
And this goes for the conference tournaments as well. Just because a team finishes strong and wins its conference’s tournament doesn’t mean it has an advantage in the Dance. Remember, all things are equal in the NCAA Tournament. It’s all about Team A versus Team B…battling in a vacuum. It becomes about matchups. And that’s when you take a look at the above criteria to determine which team has the advantage.
Contrary to popular belief, it’s no such thing as “momentum heading into the tournament.” We’ve seen many-a hot team get knocked out in the first round, and we’ve seen many-a waffling team make a deep run. Again, it’s just Team A against Team B at a neutral site.
Finishing Strong
Thank you for reading all the way through this. You’ve received five tips to help you make your picks. As Judge Reinhold’s character Brad Hamilton said to Jeff Spicoli and his stoner buddies in Fast Times At Ridgemont High, “Learn it. Know it. Live it.”
But before you get started on filling out your bracket, here are THREE BONUS SECRETS to add to your arsenal:
1) If Team X has legit NBA talent (usually two or more players of that caliber), it is a definite threat, regardless of its seed.
2) If a school lost in a stunning upset the year before, it’s no such thing as that team “coming back this year with extra motivation because of last year.”
3) If you weigh two teams, and the scales are completely equal, the tiebreaker should go to the team with the better head coach.
If you have any questions or need clarification about anything in this article (or just want to discuss the tournament), feel free to e-mail, call or text me. I’ve got time.
I will reveal the most dangerous and the most vulnerable teams in this year’s field, along with my picks, on Tuesday, March 18. Enjoy March Madness!
Berg On Sports 
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