Fifty million brackets will be filled out this week as part of March Madness, otherwise known as the NCAA basketball tournament. The phenomenon has swept the country and has become an obsession that even non-college basketball fans will participate in for a “friendly” wager or two.
The American Gaming Association says more brackets will be completed than ballots cast for President Barack Obama in the 2012 election.
The same is probably true throughout the New River Valley as people were scrambling this week to pick the winners.
Bill Roth, a longtime radio broadcaster, hopes the public will soon know him and his communications class at Virginia Tech for their predictions of March Madness. On Tuesday, Roth’s Introduction to Sports Media class completed its second annual March Madness simulation experiment.
Each student used “analytics” and statistics on every team in the Big Dance to put together a bracket.
Roth required each student to examine items like strength of schedule, wins over top 25 teams, wins over Division I programs with a winning record and their records on the road. They then picked the winners of each game.
“It’s an exciting project that combines data analytics with sports. Filling out brackets is something millions of Americans do each year, but in this instance, we take a more analytical approach to it. The class will study the various rating systems, and once the bracket is set, simulate the tournament,” Roth said.
He then tallied the results of each student’s final four prediction to come up with a class final four and eventual winner.
“We want Virginia Tech to become the Quinnipiac of the Final Four,” Roth said previously, referring to Quinnipiac University’s reputation as a powerhouse in U.S. presidential election polling. “I have legitimate aspirations of seeing my class’s tradition become to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament what Quinnipiac University’s polling institute is to U.S. presidential elections.”
Roth is a communications professor of practice in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech. His areas of specialization include sports media and broadcasting.
The former “voice of the Hokies,” served as a play-by-play broadcaster this year for ESPN’s Friday and Saturday football packages and CBS Sports Network’s coverage of NCAA Basketball.
“This year’s postseason tournament is going to be an exceptionally tough test for the analytical experiment because it’s been a very surprising season in college basketball thus far with many unlikely upsets,” Roth said.
Despite crunching all the numbers and analyzing the statistics, he told his students not to be afraid of picking the upsets.
“There is an average of 12.7 upsets every year,” Roth said. “If you always pick the favorite, you will lose.”
The key, according to the broadcaster, is to learn things from the data that might show a possible upset.
“The odds are against putting together the perfect bracket (every game correct), but it could happen. I just don’t see it happening,” Roth said.
The idea for the project has a direct connection to a national analytic expert with Virginia Tech roots. Ken Pomeroy, who graduated from Tech in 1992, is the creator of the website, kenpom.com which provides statistics on every basketball team. The website include college basketball ratings and archives that date back the past 15 years.
He continually updates the ratings for all 351 Division I men’s basketball teams with metrics that many of those same teams use in an attempt to gain a competitive advantage over the competition.
His predictions have been included in many national magazines and newspapers, and Roth hopes there might be another Pomeroy in this semester’s class.
The communication students called the “pick’em”, which is in its second year, a fun project. One of those was Sophomore Katie Wroniewicz.
“It was interesting to take the technical analysis and look at the brackets,” she said. Wroniewicz was confident with her picks after taking 2-3 hours to examine the statistics. This was the only bracket she would be doing this week.
By the way, Roth’s Hokie class picked UVA, UNC, Villanova and Michigan State in the Final Four with UVA to win it all. Last year, the class correctly picked two of four Final Four teams.
