Bracket Science™ is an on-line information resource that answers the pressing questions of the millions of fans who try to forecast the tourney results every year. Unlike other websites that cover the NCAA tournament which focus on individual teams in isolated years, Bracket Science™ puts the entire modern history of March Madness in a context that helps visitors understand why certain teams advance in the tournament and others don’t.
More than 100 million people watch the NCAA tournament on television each year. At least 35 million of those fans fill out brackets for office pools and on-line contests. Countless others test their powers of tourney soothsaying against friends, family members or TV pundits. As popular as March Madness has become, however, surprisingly little information has been written on it. The NCAA publishes an annual record book, there are dozens of college hoops season previews, and there are a handful of works recounting the tourney runs of past champions. But there is nothing that speaks to the event’s main audience: everyone with a passionate or passing interest in trying to figure out who will advance in the tournament.
In many ways, Bracket Science™ is like The Bill James Baseball Abstract, a long-running institution among baseball fans. Like The Baseball Abstract, Bracket Science™ takes a fresh perspective on a popular sport based on a unique statistical analysis and challenges conventional wisdom about what contributes to success in that sport. Some have likened Bracket Science™ to the approach that Billy Beene took to baseball in Michael Lewis’ popular Moneyball.
Pete Tiernan has built Bracket Science™ with the help of Jeff Smeenge from ActiveFan Sports Network—and a statistical database that includes the results of every tournament since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985. This database, which is now partially available through the Bracketmaster™ on-line research tool, contains a wealth of information on the 1408 participants in the last 22 tourneys—everything from conference affiliation, coaching experience, star power and team makeup to scoring averages, pre-tourney momentum, bench play, scoring balance, playing location, and more. These stats enable Pete to take an historical view that doesn’t depend on knowing the current year’s match-ups. Instead of dwelling on whether the 2006 Montana squad will upset Nevada, for instance, Bracket Science™ identifies the conditions that have historically led to N0. 12 seeds beating No. 5 seeds. It puts the results of past tournaments in a context that readers can use to predict the outcomes of the current tournament.
Bracket Science™ answers key questions fans ask when filling out brackets:
- Which attributes matter in evaluating a team’s chances of advancing in the tournament—and which don’t?
- What factors make some longshots more ripe to spring upsets than others?
- What are the telltale traits of tournament champions?
- What’s the best strategy for filling out a bracket?
- Which is really the best conference come tourney time?
Bracket Science™ also provides substantive analysis of how the tournament has evolved over the last 20 years. Is the average tourney team more or less reliant on guard play than in years past? Are they higher or lower scoring? Are their coaches more or less experienced? Are there more upsets. These kinds of questions are examined with in-depth analysis and easy-to-read trend charts.
With all the rich articles that make sense of March Madness, the breadth of statistical information available in the BracketMaster™, and the chat rooms, blogs and Podcasts, Bracket Science™ gives you everything you need to build a better bracket.
