Tourney Wrapup

by A.J. Coltrane

Before the NCAA Tournament I thought it would be fun to get a few people, give them $100 in Monopoly money, and have a blind bid on the tournament teams. The entry fee was 1 “twinkie” per person. The high bidder on the team that won the tournament would receive 3 twinkies, and the 2nd highest bidder would break even and gets his/her twinkie back.

I thought it would be an interesting experiment in game theory — do you put all of your money on a big favorite? There’s a very real possibility that everyone else will want to do that too, so you’d better bid a lot or risk wasting your investment. Alternately you could spread your money around, but what would be the minimum to “claim” each team?

As an added twist, it was possible to bid on “The Field”. “The Field” was defined as every team “leftover” that nobody had expressly bid upon. So — do you bid a lot on The Field, or do you value certain teams enough to put a nominal amount of money on them and hope you don’t get outbid?

The Outcome Of The Bidding:

Team	CW	BD	AJC	AS	Total	Result
Louisville	30	30	12		72	Win Champ
Ohio St	20	10	6	20	56	Elite 8
Georgetown	20	10		20	50	1st Round
Florida	20	10	16		46	Elite 8
Kansas		20	22		42	Sweet 16
The Field	10	10	2	20	42	Final Four
Duke			16	20	36	Elite 8
Indiana		10	12		22	Sweet 16
Miami			2	20	22	Sweet 16
Michigan			2		2	Champ Game
Michigan St			2		2	Sweet 16
Syracuse			2		2	Final Four
Wisconsin			2		2	1st Round
Gonzaga			2		2	Round of 32
Pittsburgh			2		2	1st Round

I [AJC] went with the strategy of trying to get as many teams as possible. I feel like I did pretty well for myself — I “won” Kansas, Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, Syracuse, Wisconsin, Gonzaga, and Pittsburgh. If Florida, Duke, or Miami won the tournament I’d still break even. Overall it represented two #1 seeds plus a bunch of good quality to back it up. That “quality” wound up being half of the Final Four teams (Michigan and Syracuse.)

But what was I thinking with Pittsburgh? Bleh.. at least they were cheap.

Ultimately my strategy didn’t work out, of course. The #1 overall seed in the tournament was Louisville, and they did indeed win it all. (Though I was feeling pretty smart when Michigan was up 12 in the first half of he championship game.) Louisville was the team that we bid the most upon in total, and there’s definitely a good correlation between where we chose to invest and how wells the teams actually fared. The biggest “overperformers” were Michigan and Syracuse, while Georgetown was the biggest letdown.

Anyhow, I had fun with it. Hopefully somebody will want to try it again next year.

Attacking the Zone

By Blaidd Drwg

I have seen goalies play up late in the game to try to give their teams an advantage on the attack when they are behind, but this is brilliant.

The scene is set in the offensive end of the field and the attacking team’s goalie (the one in the yellow jersey) is near the attacking goal. What happens next is a brilliant way to recover.

The full story can be found here.

Vegas, Briefly

by A.J. Coltrane

I’m back, and recovered, from Vegas. I can talk like a normal person again. I went 29-19 this year (60.4%), betting almost every game. That figure includes money lines that I won, which raised my “effective percentage” to 63.7%. That’s pretty good, though it’s about on par with how I’ve done each of the last two years. I’d estimate I’m now “effectively” winning about 65% over the last three years.

To avoid TL;DR, here are a few bullet points about what worked, what didn’t, and some other general observations and thoughts.

1. I got in the neighborhood of “paying for the trip” this year. To actually succeed in paying for the vacation I’m going to need to lay off the stuff I don’t have a strong opinion on, and (probably) increase the size of the bets somewhat. I feel comfortable with the idea of increased bet size, though I’m not sure that everyone that I travel with shares that opinion. I may have to make little bets on the “unsure” pile, since I’m not in Vegas *not* to gamble.

2. While watching the games we usually play video poker at the bar. One of our traveling companions was dealt a Royal Flush. Dealt! No “holding” cards.. just lots of hearts. She said she just saw “heart, heart, heart, heart, heart” and held them all. At that point she realized she had a Royal Flush and had won $1000! I’ve seen people hit Royals before, but never someone we traveled with. According to at least one “odds” site, the probability of being dealt a Royal Flush (without a re-deal) is one in 649,740. I’ll need to wait several lifetimes to see it again.

3. The betting public had no idea what to do with VCU all weekend, and *that* turned into absolute no-brainer profit on both games. Here’s why: VCU’s entire offense and defense is/was predicated upon creating turnovers and scoring off of turnovers. In the first game they played Akron. The line had VCU favored by about 8. Akron’s problem is that their star point guard had been arrested (and suspended) for trafficking (5 pounds(!)) of marijuana. For whatever reason, the public didn’t notice, or didn’t react strongly enough — VCU forced 21 turnovers, gave up 5, led 50-25 at the half en route to winning 88-42.

In the next game VCU was a slight underdog against Michigan. Michigan had the lowest turnover percentage in the country this year. Final: Michigan 78, VCU 53. Thank you VCU!

4. I took the Oregon money line at +160 against St Louis. There were a couple of Vegas natives sitting to our right betting the games as well. When I told one I had the Oregon money line he gave me the “You’re smoking crack” hand gesture. Final score Oregon 74, St Louis 57. That one felt pretty good. (Nice guys, actually.)

5. The worst losses are the close losses. Temple started well against Indiana. Temple looked “longer”, quicker, and skilled enough to play with Indiana. The halftime score was Temple by three. The sportsbook published a second-half line of Temple +8.5. I couldn’t believe it — Temple didn’t even have to win, they just had to lose by less than 6 (or win)! It seemed too good to be true, though it also looked really really strange. I paced back and forth a few times from the book to the bar, and eventually asked our bartender what he thought of that bet. He said that if it were him, he couldn’t make that bet fast enough. I went ahead with it…

Indiana trailed by four with 2:56 to go. That means I was “10 points up” on that bet with less than three minutes to go. Indiana outscored Temple 10-0 the rest of the game, and I lost by 1/2 point. Temple did literally everything wrong, and Indiana did everything right. What a crusher.

6. I thought Colorado State would be able to take care of the ball against Louisville and keep it competitive. Colorado State had a low turnover rate this year… Wrong, wrong, wrong. Louisville 82, Colorado State 56.

7. Creighton met their “better” doppleganger in Duke. Creighton had been a great 3-point shooting team all year, but they went 2-19 against Duke and lost 50-66. The line was 6, so that was an easy one to pick. After the tournament ends I’m going to do a post about the heavily 3-dependent teams and what happened to them.

—

Syracuse-Indiana post-game thought: Cody Zeller does not have a strong lower body. It showed against Temple, and it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Syracuse swallowed him up. He got his shot blocked about six times against Syracuse. (He finished 4-10 against Temple and 3-10 against Syracuse, though he shot 62.3% during the season.) I think he may struggle at the NBA level, unless he gets a *lot* stronger.

In a not-unrelated note: Kelly Olynyk went 8-22 while losing to Wichita State. (Though he did score 26 points.) Olynyk made 62.9% of his shots during the season.

"…And It Feels Alright…"

By Blaidd Drwg

This isn’t really that interesting a story, but I found it to be rather cool that Mariners scout, Alex Smith, made an appearance in Bull Durham without knowing it for 25 years.

As it turns out, a real-world baseball card, Smith’s 1987 Durham Bulls ProCards release, got some screen time as a bookmark used by Annie Savoy as she decided to read Walt Whitman poetry to Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh.

And Smith, now the Northeast Scouting Supervisor for the Seattle Mariners, had no idea.
“I received your message, ironically on my birthday,” said Smith, who turned 50 on Monday. “What a unique, interesting gift to find out my baseball card was used in the movie. Never knew that! My initial thoughts? Pretty cool!”

Oh, the real reason for this post is to just include my favorite song from the movie: “I Got Loaded” by Los Lobos.

“…And It Feels Alright…”

By Blaidd Drwg

This isn’t really that interesting a story, but I found it to be rather cool that Mariners scout, Alex Smith, made an appearance in Bull Durham without knowing it for 25 years.

As it turns out, a real-world baseball card, Smith’s 1987 Durham Bulls ProCards release, got some screen time as a bookmark used by Annie Savoy as she decided to read Walt Whitman poetry to Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh.

And Smith, now the Northeast Scouting Supervisor for the Seattle Mariners, had no idea.
“I received your message, ironically on my birthday,” said Smith, who turned 50 on Monday. “What a unique, interesting gift to find out my baseball card was used in the movie. Never knew that! My initial thoughts? Pretty cool!”

Oh, the real reason for this post is to just include my favorite song from the movie: “I Got Loaded” by Los Lobos.

Upcoming Events of Interest

By Iron Chef Leftovers

A few potentially fun cooking related events will be happening around Seattle in April.

On April 9th, chocolate guru, Autumn Martin will be doing a free event at the Book Larder in Fremont promoting her new book: Malts & Milkshakes: 60 Recipes for Frosty, Creamy Frozen Treats. I am sure there will be some tasty treats to sample during the event. It runs 6:30 -8.

On April 28th, Book Larder is hosting former Top Cheftestant/Heartthrob Fabio Vivani for a book reading/signing from 4-5:30. Reservations are required and are $25, which includes a copy of Fabio’s book, Fabio’s Italian Kitchen.

And one not food related:

On April 29th, the UW Bookstore is hosting Bill Mullins to talk about his new book, Becoming Big League: Seattle, the Pilots, and Stadium Politics at 7PM in a free event. The focus of the evening is on Seattle’s one year wonder, the Pilots.

Bracket Busters and History

By Blaidd Drwg

Is your bracket busted yet? It feels like there are a ton of upsets this year, but if you actually look at the numbers, percentage wise, it isn’t that many. If you don’t count the 8-9 games, which are two supposedly evenly matched teams (even though the 9 seed has historically won something like 54% of these games), higher seeds are 20-8 in the tournament, or have won 71.4% of their games.

This year, it was not a good idea to be a #5 seed as 3 of the 4 teams lost their game with VCU the only team in that seed to survive.
What does this actually mean historically? Well, I took a look at the last 5 NCAA tournament first rounds (including this year), and found that the higher seed (1-7) has won exactly 71.4% of their games. So this year is an exactly average year for upsets. Just for fun, I decided to look at the results by seed for the 5 year period:

Seed	Wins	Losses
1	20	0
2	17	3
3	18	2
4	15	5
5	10	10
6	10	10
7	10	10
8	12	8
9	8	12
10	10	10
11	10	10
12	10	10
13	5	15
14	2	18
15	3	17
16	0	20

What does it all mean? Well basically it means that any games involving seeds 5-12 are a toss-up and you could probably expect to see a 13, 14 or 15 seed knock off a higher seed at least once in the tournament. The key is picking the right upset.

The Mariners and Their Spring Training Offense

The Mariners offense is lighting it up in Spring Training! They lead the majors with 43 home runs and are second in total runs scored. It is time to get excited!!

Nah, if you are getting excited about the Mariners offensive barrage, just remember 2 things – those games are being played in 80 degree weather at 2000 feet, where the ball really tends to carry (as opposed to 45 degrees and sea level which is pretty much Seattle in April and May), and SPRING TRAINING STATS ARE RARELY AN INDICATION OF REGULAR SEASON PERFORMANCE. Spring Training stats usually involve a ton of at bats against guys who will not make the majors or are trying to work out some stuff, which leads to more offense. You doubt me – here is the last 4 seasons with a monthly breakdown for the M’s hitters. I included 2009 since that was the last season the Mariners hitters were not historically bad.

The ugly truth after the jump.

Continue reading “The Mariners and Their Spring Training Offense” →

The Cheap Seat Eats Bracket Of Peril (Well, let me have just a little bit of peril?)

by A.J. Coltrane

It’s the Cheap Seat Eats (hosted by ESPN) tournament bracket! Match wits with the CSE writers! It’s free!

Up to three brackets per entry.

Link

Bracket Name: Cheap Seat Eats

Password: TakeMeOut (As in, take me out to the ballgame, note that it’s case-sensitive, and there are no spaces.)

The prize is absolutely nothing, which is what sir Galahad gets in this scene from The Holy Grail:

Upsets at the WBC

By Blaidd Drwg

The WBC’s 2013 edition has had its share of surprises. The group stage of the Far East bracket went mostly according to plan, with Netherlands, Japan and Cuba advancing to the knockout stage. The mild surprise was that the 4th team to advance was Taipei rather than Korea, but it wasn’t as earth shattering as what happened in the North American bracket. It was generally assumed that the US and Mexico would advance out of Group D and it would be a dog fight between Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Venezuela for the 2 spots in Group C. Well the Dominican and Puerto Rico advanced (with Venezuela basically looking inept despite what essentially amounted to an all-star lineup) but the shocker came out of Group D, where Italy, easily the worst team in the group, knocked off both Mexico and Canada to advance along with the US, who survived an early defeat to Mexico to win its last 2 to advance.

How shocking was Italy’s feat? Their lineup consists of only 2 guys who are every day MLB players – Nick Punto and Anthony Rizzo. Their two most productive hitters, Chris Colabello and Anthony Granato are effectively career indy minor league hitters. Their “best” pitcher is Brian Sweeney and the staff includes such notable names as Dan Serafini, Jason Grilli, Tim Crabbe and Pat Vendette (whose chief claim to fame is that he is ambidextrous). There is a really good chance that they are pretty much going to be 2 and out in the knockout round. This team is just not very good.

Speaking of the knockout round, that is done in the Far East (it hasn’t started yet in North America since the finals are in the US, it gives those teams time to adjust to travelling half way around the world). In a huge shocker, Cuba was eliminated by Netherlands. The Dutch team isn’t bad, but what is shocking is that they managed to eliminate Cuba by beating them twice in the knockout round, with the second time in a come from behind win. It made me start to wonder if all of the defections over the last few years from Cuba have finally started taking its toll on that country’s team.

I still don’t have a great deal of interest in watching the WBC, but at least there were some interesting stories this year.