When two Major League Teams combine to win over 64 percent of their games one of them tends to win the World Series—but the new Westgate World Series Odds indicate the odds are 2-to-1 that someone other than the 63-29 Dodgers or 61-30 Astros do it this season.
Four Duke 1st Round Draft picks play Summer League with guaranteed NBA contracts bring the total to 38 Duke players in the Value Add historical database who made the NBA, and the average Duke team since 2001-02 boasted a national best 5.5 future NBA players per season.
Value Add Basketball indicates Lonzo Ball, who just pulled off a hilarious Father’s Day rip on his overbearing Dad, should receive $21 million for the next three seasons as the No. 1 pick in Thursday’s NBA draft, while Notre Dame’s Bonzie Colson edges Wisconsin’s Ethan Happ as the best of the 3,704 players still playing for free at the college level.
After Sunday’s 8-4 win over the Orioles, the Astros are on course for the World Series title that Sports Illustrated predicted three years ago would happen this October.
If ever there was a non-politician poised to follow Donald Trump’s path to an executive office, it was Tommy Tuberville, who went an incredible 5-2 against Top 5 teams during his football coaching career.
Despite his claims, Lavar Ball was not better than Michael Jordan, three “white guys” did not cost his son the NCAA title, his son will not be better than Steph Curry, and in fact the final Value Add Basketball calculations prove his son was not even close to the best player in basketball.
Gonzaga and UNC won Final Four games Saturday to set up the championship game predicted by Breitbart Sports on March 14, meaning if you simply filled out all 62 lines as instructed in that post you find yourself in the 99th percentile of the 18 million brackets submitted to ESPN and very likely in first place in your office pool.
If you followed all 63 www.valueaddbasketball.com bracket picks posted on Breitbart prior to the tournament, a Gonzaga-over-UNC championship is almost sure to make you the winner of your pool. Both won this weekend and will be favored over South Carolina, featuring the No. 1 Value Add player in the country in Sindarius Thornwell, and Oregon in Saturday semifinals, respectively.
The brackets were not the only thing Breitbart Sports did right. Breitbart’s March 11 announcement that relative unknown Sindarius Thornwell of South Carolina ranks as the best player in the country garners national notice.
Skeptics abounded after the March 11 announcement that South Carolina’s Sindarius Thornwell passed Kansas’ Frank Mason and Villanova’s Josh Hart as the Most Valuable Player in college basketball according to the www.valueaddbasketball.com rankings. However, there may not be many doubters after his third three-pointer Sunday put South Carolina ahead of Duke 42-41, and was part of a 53-point weekend that denied Marquette and Duke a trip to the Sweet 16 in New York.
Four years ago ESPN increased its annual payment to the ACC to $240 million as part of an attempt to make it the greatest basketball conference in history, and prevent Fox Sports from getting off the ground with a basketball lineup of the Big East to its lineup of the Big 12 and Pac-12. This week ESPN’s “greatest conference ever” produced only one Sweet 16 team (UNC) while the three Fox Sports’ conferences produced eight.
Hype that called the ACC the greatest basketball conference in history came crashing down when their three NCAA teams lost by an average of 21 points on Saturday, leaving them as the only major conference without a Sweet 16 team. Jim Boeheim wanted his Syracuse team included as a 10th team in the tournament, to match the Big East and Big 12 with two-thirds of their teams in the conference.
The Match-up Bracket predicted six of eight games Saturday, including Wisconsin’s upset of top-seed Villanova, to move into first of the sample brackets and in the 100th percentile of the 19 million ESPN brackets. The East bracket preview explained Wisconsin was
Exactly one week after turning 18 years old, Marquette freshman Markus Howard wrapped up his freshman season in which he hit 82 of 150 three-pointers to finish at 54.67% from long range, the second highest percentage in the history of college basketball.
The theory of Value Add Basketball is to calculate the number of points each player is worth to his team above a replacement player, and so far applying it to this year’s bracket correctly predicted 28 of 32 first round games, good for the 99th percentile of all brackets submitted to ESPN (see all picks posted March 14).
Most brackets are in good shape after one day due to only two lower seeds winning. Of the 10 analytical systems used for the sample brackets explained in this Breitbart post, three systems went 15-1 on opening day and the other seven went 14-2.
The following table lists the teams in the order in which they appear on 2017 March Madness brackets. Brackets must be in by Thursday morning on March 16 before the games start, but some leagues may have an earlier deadline. If you simply want to fill out your bracket and be done with it, you can just count the lines below and turn in your bracket to get it off your step.
In our final press conference, Villanova coach Jay Wright wondered if he was biased in calling Josh Hart the best player in the country after the senior scored 29 points to win his second Big East Tournament MVP and almost assure that March Madness would start with him rated as the best player and Villanova rated as the best team when March Madness starts this week.
Villanova’s Josh Hart passed Kansas’ Frank Mason in what looked like a two-way race for the Value Add Basketball Most Valuable player, only to have Sindarius Thornwell pass them both for No. 1 after single-handedly putting South Carolina in the NCAA tournament. In filling out your brackets be aware Virginia Tech, Xavier and Creighton must overcome the toughest injuries.
Among the 106 teams still alive (see table below) due to one of the 32 conference tournaments or a great regular season, Villanova and Creighton play on the biggest stage Saturday after both won in front of another Madison Square Garden sellout of 19,182 with the Daily News reporting earlier in the week the average ticket was going for $205 – a figure that can double for conference semifinals.
All of the 129 teams that still have a chance at an NCAA bid should take a lesson from Providence Coach Ed Cooley’s final words in Madison Square Garden, in response to a Breitbart Sports question Thursday about how to deal with the loss that ended their six-game winning streak.
Losing subscribers at a fast clip, ESPN hopes moving it’s top basketball conference tournament, the ACC, into New York to protest North Carolina’s bathroom bill will help counter the Fox Sports’ Big East conference a few miles away at Madison Square Garden.
Breitbart Sports asked the last question to Billy Garrett Jr. as a player for DePaul University, as his hopes of making March Madness died, just like players from 175 other teams. The simplified conference-by-conference list of the 175 teams alive now shows the day of their next conference playoff game, and the chance they will make the tournament if they do not win the automatic bid.
Chris Mullin and John Thompson screamed at each other and the St. John’s and Georgetown players at Madison Square Garden seemed near to blows as cheer leaders scattered and referees started issuing technical fouls and a flagrant and screamed at players to separate. As the Madison Square Garden camera panned to Allen Iverson in the stands, the old Big East that launched ESPN seems to be back with 8:35 to go in a No. 8 vs. No. 9 conference championship opener led by St. John’s 59-55.
Iona pulled out an 87-86 OT thriller to claim the MAAC, and South Dakota State outdid them with thrillers Monday and Tuesday to claim the Summit bid to March Madness, leaving 174 teams vying for the final 24 spots.
A total of 38 teams are now in the NCAA tournament, either as a Conference champion or as a unanimous choice of 113 brackets, leaving just 30 spots for the other 211 teams that are still alive. Wichita State removed
Jacksonville State became the 25th team to make the tournament, winning the Ohio Valley Conference title Saturday after stunning heavy favorite Belmont in the semifinals en route to their first March Madness appearance. For 23 other teams the chances of March Madness ended with conference tournament losses and a 0% chance of an at-large bid.
The Conference Basketball championships are in fact the opening rounds of March Madness for teams that do not have a chance for an at-large bid to the tournament – and the following is the conference breakdown of 284 teams that still have a chance after 67 teams were eliminated.
Frank Mason defeated Oklahoma Monday in his last home game, staying in 1st place in the newly updated Value Add Basketball rankings to lead the 15 players on the fifth Breitbart Sports All-American team.
The following 32 teams are vying for the final 19 or so NCAA bids that will be left after these locks and auto bids are determined.
Thursday ESPN announced “Josh Hart has led our @Wendys #WoodenAward board nearly the entire year,@KUHoops’ Frank Mason has forced a change,” four days after Breitbart Sports made the same announcement (Mason Passes Hart for POY).
Kansas Frank Mason torched the 6th best defense in the country to pass Villanova’s Josh Hart in the two way race for Player of the Year, according to www.valueaddbasketball.com. However, the Value Add team rankings place Hart’s Villanova in the Final Four along with Gonzaga, UNC and Arizona.
The NCAA’s release of the top 16 bids if March Madness started today left out Wisconsin, Wichita State, and SMU based on Value Add’s new adjustments for injured and returning players.
Frank Mason is worth 12.35 additional points per game to Kansas, enough to turn a would-be 6-point loss to Kentucky Saturday into a 79-73 win according to www.valueaddbasketball.com. That performance moved Mason close to the No. 1 spot in the Player of the Year tally due to Marquette and Virginia holding Villanova’s Josh Hart (13.03) in check.
Objective and subjective methods each have advantages, but the Wooden Award team released a mid-season list of potential Players of the Year that included the top four Value Add Basketball players, leaving off only No. 5 TJ Williams from little-known Northeastern.
The NCAA may replace the Rating Percentage Index (RPI) with systems that reward blowouts in March Madness selection.
Two of the last three teams to have freshman duos among the Top 100 Value Add Basketball players have won the national title – and this season both UCLA and Kentucky have a chance to keep history going.
The $5.6 billion New Year’s Eve nightmare continued for ESPN, with Saturday’s games averaging only a 10.4 rating, down 32 percent from the 15.4 rating just two years ago.
Fox Sports’ gamble on Big East basketball still results in a small fraction of ESPN’s viewership, but in addition to the defending national champion (Villanova) and Value Add player (Josh Hart), the conference boasts elite players.
The midseason arrival and departures of college basketball players in December lets us put together the first true Top 50 teams with the best chance at March Madness success.
