Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Vibeology? No. Bracketology.

ESPN has a "bracketologist" on staff named Joe Lunardi (in case you hadn't heard). His sole job function is to create proposed NCAA tournament brackets and speculate as to which teams will be in and which teams will be out based on their current performance. Right now he has Virginia Tech sitting as a 10-seed in the Midwest bracket, despite our recent stomach-punch performances against Clemson and Boston College. You might be thinking, "Hey, a 10 seed isn't that bad! He must be pretty high on VT," however you would be wrong. There are only two teams included on his brackets, Georgetown and Tennessee, with a worse overall record than Tech when you take out all of the mid-major teams that he's projecting will win their conferences. Baylor's record is the same as Tech's. The other non-mid-major/at-large teams with a better record than VT who he placed as lower/equivalent seeds are South Carolina, Penn State, Utah, LSU, and St. Mary's. The projected mid-major conference winners are in capitalized letters, in case you were wondering which of those teams I was talking about that we are taking out of our (fun?) little study. All of a sudden, VT is battling a much smaller number of teams to stay in the tournament, and many of them have comparable (if not superior) resumes compared to us. Georgetown has a bunch of losses, but they are all to good teams. The same can not be said of VT, who lost to Georgia (a team that couldn't shoot a basketball through a hula hoop) and Seton Hall (a team that is 2-6 in their conference). This bracket might seem like a good thing at first glance, but all it really tells us is that the Hokies have their work cut out for them if they want to show up on this bracket come selection Sunday!

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