Saturday, August 31, 2013

AFC South Preview

It's rare that I post on a Saturday lately, but in order to make sure that I get everything posted on time for this season, I have to scramble and post today and tomorrow as well as into this next week. College football might also prompt a couple posts on Thursday. We'll see.

As for today, I'm looking into the AFC South, which should be one of the more fun divisions this season. Maybe not to the same extent as it was last year, but it will be a fun battle for the top. And probably also a fun battle for the bottom.

Common opponents on schedule: AFC West, NFC West

1.  Houston Texans
Last year: 12-4 (1st), lost in AFC Divisional Round
The offense largely stood pat, which in the grand scheme of things isn't necessarily a bad thing. As long as Arian Foster can keep putting up good numbers, it takes pressure off Matt Schaub, who is a really good, but not great, quarterback. The defense though... even though he's old, when you add Ed Reed to your secondary you're in good shape. It only helps a defense already anchored by J.J. Watt. People like him are why I didn't play football in high school (and I mean that out of utter respect for his physical skills. Dude's an athletic freak.)
2013 Prediction: 12-4

2. Indianapolis Colts
Last year: 11-5 (2nd), lost in AFC Wild Card
The Colts were the big surprise of the 2012 season, becoming a major storyline with head coach Chuck Pagano being diagnosed with leukemia during their bye week, seeing Bruce Arians fill in and then the Colts stepped it up for their ailing coach, winning games they had no business winning, with any appearances by Pagano or shaving of cheerleaders' heads at the 50 yard line between quarters serving as catalysts for #Chuckstrong magic. That kind of magic isn't something you will see every year, so there's bound to be at least some regression. I don't think there will be too much though; not with Andrew Luck under center. They'll still be good, just maybe not to the same degree.
2013 Prediction: 10-6, Wild Card

3. Tennessee Titans
Last year: 6-10 (3rd), missed playoffs
It's Year 3 of Jake Locker, who is still developing, but the team is his to run now with Matt Hasselbeck having moved on. Chris Johnson can help a little bit, but the question is whether Nate Washington and Kenny Britt If He Stays Healthy can be productive. Defensively... not impressed. The Titans don't play the Patriots, so Simmons doesn't have to worry about Bernard Karmell Pollard.
2013 Prediction: 5-11

4. Jacksonville Jaguars
Last year: 2-14 (4th), missed playoffs
I think they're certainly better than 2-14, if nothing else. Luke Joeckel will help solidify the offensive line, and Denard Robinson can certainly add an element of uncertainty to that offense, but this team isn't going to go anywhere with Blaine Gabbert at quarterback. Chad Henne would be a bit of an improvement, though it's certainly possible that Gabbert can improve in Year 3. I'm not counting on it though.
2013 Prediction: 3-13

Tomorrow is a rare Sunday where I'm not working, but I'll still have a preview post for you as we move to arguably the strongest division in the NFL.

Friday, August 30, 2013

NFC South Preview

After a day off from the NFL to focus on trying to single out the 29 sniveling cowards at the FBS level (don't worry, I'll probably end up singling out just about everyone else by the time the season is over) I'm back to the focus of the level of football I love more.

Today we're back in the NFC South, which has been a seesaw the last few years at the top. Everyone has won the division at least once since 2002, though Tampa has the longest drought. I'm sticking to that seesaw theory in my picks for how this division stacks up.

Common opponents on schedule: NFC West, AFC East

1. New Orleans Saints
Last year: 7-9 (3rd), missed playoffs
The biggest addition this offseason was the return of Sean Payton from his punishment for Bountygate. Ultimately this will be a boon with Drew Brees back to do Drew Brees things again, and his top weapons remain. On defense, they're switching to a 3-4 now, so it's a totally different scheme from what they've been running. I'm not sure how much of a difference it will make though. After giving up the most yards and second-most points in the league last season, I wonder if they'll be able to fix that problem (in 2011, they gave up the 9th most yards and were in the middle of the pack in scoring defense). I think Brees has enough firepower to give the Saints the division now with Payton back, but that defense will bring them back down to earth some.
2013 Prediction: 11-5

2. Atlanta Falcons
Last year: 13-3 (1st), lost in NFC Championship Game
The Falcons let stud running back Michael Turner go in the offseason but replaced him with Steven Jackson, so they'll still have a ground game. Matt Ryan was good last year and finally won a playoff game, so that monkey is off his back. He still has his top 3 receiving targets in Tony Gonzalez, Julio Jones, and an insensitive idiot who needs to learn to shut his mouth/stay off Twitter and actually watch legal proceedings before making judgments, especially ones that call for people to kill themselves. Scumbag. Anyway, the big thing that gives me pause about this Falcons team was the sort of voodoo magic they seemed to have at home. Their luck in close games last year is bound to come back down, even if just a tad. They'll be back in the playoffs, just not as the division winner.
2013 Prediction: 10-6, Wild Card

3. Carolina Panthers
Last year: 7-9 (2nd), missed playoffs
Cam Newton continues to develop, so Year 3 should see continued improvement from him. They had a respectable defense last year too that should only get better with guys like Star Lotulelei. The Panthers also had terrible luck in close games, so based on the same premise as Atlanta, regression to the mean is probably due here. Not enough to get them in the playoffs, but I think these guys are headed in the right direction.
2013 Prediction: 8-8

4. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Last year: 7-9 (4th), missed playoffs
I've been pretty high on Josh Freeman over the years, but I'm not sure I can trust him anymore. He's too inconsistent. He can have stretches like last year where he looked amazing, but then follow that up with several clunkers. They did address their biggest need in pass defense by trading for Darelle Revis, and Doug Martin will be able to run for a lot of yards this year. The question is whether or not that defense can stop anyone from throwing at will, and can Freeman have a year like he did in 2010. I'm not convinced.
2013 Prediction: 5-11

I'm going to put in some weekend work and be back tomorrow with a look at the AFC South.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

2013 NCAA FBS Rankings: Week 1

Ah, it's good to be back and doing some number crunching. At least at its highest level, NCAA football begins tonight. There are only a handful of games though, with most of the action starting on Saturday. Nonetheless, I need to get started on crunching the numbers.

Earlier this week I highlighted the formulas I will be using this year, but of the three, I can really only use one of them at this stage. The Road-Home Disparity Index is best saved for the end of the year to account for any cancellations and what have you, and it's much too early to factor in Playoff Points. As such, we're going back to the Non Conference Schedule Strength. What I did in the early part of the season last year was rank each team's point total, but I didn't really release that information until later on when there was a decent sample size and I could start thinking about playoff seeds.

Instead for the first few weeks, I'm going to look at this by conference. Since these conferences range in size from as few as 7 teams to as many as 14, I need to give each conference's score as an average (rounded to the nearest hundreth of a point). I'm sure you'll see a theme pretty early on. So without further ado, here's the initial rankings based on the opening week:

  1. Mountain West (1.58). San Diego State, San Jose State and Air Force all scheduled FCS teams, but this is more than offset by 5 teams going to power conference schools. Others get tough opponents or go on the road. Strong starting schedule (which of course will somewhat penalize the tougher conferences, but not too badly).
  2. MAC (1.53). Having an extra team compared to the Mountain West doesn't really help when it comes to computing averages, (the sum score for the MAC was 1 point higher) but average is more fair. Kent State, Ball State and Eastern Michigan all face FCS squads, but 6 MAC schools go on the road to face BCS opponents.
  3. Conference USA (1.42). Middle Tennessee moved conferences, but they still host a D-IAA opponent, as will Tulsa. This was offset by 4 trips to "big-time" schools. Their sum score actually matched the MAC's as well, but having 14 schools will lower the average.
  4. Big Ten (1.17). The highest of the BCS conferences, this is helped by having only a couple schools hosting weak opponents (granted, it's Illinois and Indiana, but still). Northwestern, Penn State and Purdue all travel to face BCS opponents from another conference. (Random aside/possible additional unprovoked shot at the U of I: ESPN Chicago producer Adam Abdalla, who I used to intern for a few years back, came up with a great hash tag for Illini football. Use at your leisure.)
  5. SEC (1.14). Part of me was a little surprised they were this high, but we have to remember last year that these guys, for being so "elite" backloaded their schedules with cupcakes (I think as a ploy to cheat the already corrupt BCS). Missouri and Tennessee are the only transgressors this week, countered by Mississippi State and Georgia visiting other BCS schools. Alabama and LSU play neutral site games against other power conference schools, and Krntucky also has a neutral game. South Carolina and Auburn host schools from those conferences too. Not bad.
  6. Sun Belt (1.00). Then there's these guys, who have 3 teams (South Alabama, Georgia State, Arkansas State) playing FCS schools, with only 2 teams hitting the road to face BCS opponents. It's enough to average out as each team hosting another FBS school, but still.
  7. Pac-12 (0.83). Oregon, Oregon State and Arizona get punished for facing those smaller schools, and this score does get dragged down due to byes by Arizona State and Stanford. California and Arizona State do get kudos though for starting their schedules on the road at BCS opponents.
  8. American Athletic (0.7). The former Big East doesn't start too well, with Connecticut, Houston and South Florida pigging out. Memphis is off, and the rest of the conference isn't helped by the lack of big time opponents (though Rutgers and Temple do have decent trips scheduled).
  9. ACC (0.64). North Carolina visiting South Carolina is the only thing keeping the ACC really afloat this week. If it weren't also for Clemson hosting Georgia and Virginia Tech's game against Alabama, they'd be really screwed. Boston College, Wake Forest, Duke and Georgia Tech have FCS teams lined up this weekend.
  10. Big 12 (0.4). TCU's neutral site game against LSU helps, as does Oklahoma State hosting Mississippi State, but Baylor, Iowa State, West Virginia and Kansas State all host FCS teams. The Kansas State one is hard, seeing as they're playing defending champion North Dakota State, but I have to stick to my guns on this. (This is more of an attack on KSU than a diss of NDSU, I have family up there!)
Next week I'll include a weekly score as well as an overall score through two weeks of scheduling stuff. It'll still be too early to even really look at Playoff Points or RHDI though, so it'll still just be this metric.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

AFC East Preview

Another day, another NFL preview, even though we're only into the second day of it. It's a football week, what can I say?

So today we swap conferences but stay out east for the AFC. This has been a division that's undergone a lot of turmoil both in terms of personnel moves and legal ramifications. And injuries. It's been an interesting lead-up to the season out here. Without further ado, here's how I think these guys finish out 2013.

Common opponents: AFC North, NFC South

1. New England Patriots
Last year: 12-4 (1st), lost in AFC Championship Game
I don't even know where to begin with these guys. First you lose Wes Welker in free agency (to Denver of all places), then Gronk ends up needing more surgery, and then the whole situation with Aaron Hernandez that I've actively tried to avoid. That leaves Tom Brady with the possibility of Gronk (assuming he isn't "Yo soy fiesta'ing" his way into a broken cheekbone after drinking shots of tequila and jumping headfirst into a 4-foot pool of Jello or something), Danny Amendola If He Stays Healthy (credit Bill Simmons), and Julian Edelman as his top receivers. His running game is pretty good though with Stevan Ridley and Shane Vereen, and this is Brady we're talking about. If this were any other division though, I think we'd be talking about a major collapse.
2013 Prediction: 9-7


2. Miami Dolphins
Last year: 7-9 (2nd), missed playoffs
Look, I'm not entirely sold on Ryan Tannehill either. But he has some good weapons (Mike Wallace, rookie Lamar Miller) and it's only Tannehill's second year in the league. As long as he doesn't end up looking like Blaine Gabbert, he'll be fine. Defensively, I'm not 100% sold on their secondary, but their front seven doesn't look too bad. I think it's too early to think playoffs for these guys though.
2013 Prediction: 7-9

3. Buffalo Bills
Last year: 6-10 (4th), missed playoffs
CJ Spiller is CJ Spiller and he's going to put up plenty of yards. This isn't the issue. The issue continues to be the man taking snaps under center. Early in the 2011 season we all thought Ryan Fitzpatrick was going to be a good quarterback and help the Bills back to respectability. He fizzled, and their management decided to bring in... EJ Manuel with a first round pick! My friend and former WONC colleague Trevor, as the one Bills fan I know, was less than thrilled about this and took his frustrations to Twitter (here's a microcosm of the night. Really it was all around entertaining though.) But with Manuel a question mark, we're looking at Jeff Tuel as the Week 1 starter! On the other side of the ball, Jairus Byrd remains a good safety and the biggest question for me is whether or not Mario Williams can rebound. Trevor, I know you said 4-12 is generous, so I'm going to, at least for the next 5 seconds, pretend to be like Andrew Carnegie or something.
2013 Prediction: 6-10

4. New York Jets
Last year: 6-10 (3rd), missed playoffs
So here we have a team that got gashed on the ground last year but was good against the pass, then instead of keeping their best defensive player (Revis Island) traded him away (in fairness, he was coming back from injury). Then in an effort to erase the laughter surrounding the circus franchise, they traded the source of the circus to whom they never gave a chance to salvage things, and now based on Sanchez possibly being hurt and Geno Smith being not very good, Greg McElroy might be your Week 1 starter. You know what? Just for posterity's sake:
2013 Prediction: 4-12
Come back Friday for the NFC South Preview! Tomorrow I'll be looking at how well college football team's set up their Week 1 schedules.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

NFC East Preview

Ah, it's good to have the shield back.

We're a little over a week away from the NFL season beginning, and college football starts this week as well. With just a few days left, I'm going to start cranking out previews by division, like I did last year.

Last year I ended up starting with the defending Super Bowl champion's division, but I'm going in reverse this time. I want to end with the defending champs, so I'm starting out east. Here's how I think the NFC East will shake up.

Common opponents on schedule: NFC North, AFC West.

1. Washington Redskins
Last year: 10-6 (1st), lost in NFC Wild Card Round
I feel kind of dumb after picking these guys to finish last last year. I obviously didn't realize how dynamic RGIII was going to be. Ultimately how successful this Skins team will be rests on how well he's recovered from his torn ACL. If he's not able to go in Week 1 (though most signs seem to suggest he will be), I think Kirk Cousins can hold his own. Having Alfred Morris as a running back also helps. This team can score plenty of points. My concern is whether or not their secondary will be able to hold their own. DeAngelo Hall isn't facing Jay Cutler 16 times, after all.
2013 Prediction: 10-6

2. New York Giants
Last year: 9-7 (2nd), missed playoffs
I really have no place picking things when it comes to this team. Every time I thought I had the Giants pegged, they proved me wrong. Their road to winning Super Bowl XLVI went against everything I figured would happen. So, naturally, I went with them whenever conventional wisdom said they'd fail... and they ended up failing! Eli is still a good quarterback. and the Nicks/Cruz pairing is one of the best in the league. But their defense isn't quite what it was, since the depth on the defensive line is diminished and I'm not entirely sure about their back seven. They'll be decent, but I don't think they'll have extended playing time in January.
2013 Prediction: 8-8

3. Philadelphia Eagles
Last year: 4-12 (4th), missed playoffs
This past week, Michael Vick was named the starter again for this team under Chip Kelly. As long as he stays healthy, this team's offense will be tough to beat, with weapons like LeSean McCoy, Desean Jackson and Brent Celek. The issue is, Vick is rarely healthy and always seems to take a beating. So for a best-case scenario, let's say he plays 12 games and Nick Foles starts the other four. The jury is still out on him, ultimately. They've got decent rushers in the 3-4, but I'm not ultimately sold on this defense. Of course, that could be because Andy Reid was kind of dumb with those coordinators. We'll see how Kelly handles it in his first year.
2013 Prediction: 6-10

4. Dallas Cowboys
Last year: 8-8 (3rd), missed playoffs
My fiancee's grandfather lives down in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and at least to some extent follows the Cowboys. He's up to visit and we were talking a little about football the other night and he had... shall we say... some strong words about Jerry Jones. Needless to say, I don't think the local sentiment about him down there is very good. And I think it's with good reason; Jones seems to keep thinking the Cowboys are just one or two pieces away from being a Super Bowl contender. Unfortunately for him, I don't think the offensive line is that great, which doesn't help under any circumstances. As fun as it is to rag on Tony Romo for choking in big games (the Google image search is pretty funny), he still puts up good numbers, and he still has some great targets in Dez Bryant and Jason Witten. But switching over to a 4-3 defense (thus moving DeMarcus Ware to a defensive end spot) is probably not the best idea out there. This all will probably result in Jason Garrett getting canned because Jerry Jones doesn't want to take the blame for his own failures and will replace him with another yes-man resulting in more mediocrity. And crotch scratching.
2013 Prediction: 5-11

Monday, August 26, 2013

2013 NCAA Football Season: New Year, New Formulas, Same Old Playoff Griping


For much of this calendar year I haven't been able to do a lot of writing for COAS (NBA Tournament of Champions aside), and I feel bad about it sometimes, but unfortunately other things take priority. However, as we approach football season and one final year of a piece of crap system, I'm back at calculating how the FBS should really run its postseason.

Last year's run was a pretty fun one, and I kind of enjoyed really following a season for the first time to really try to get a better idea of who to put in a 16 team playoff. It may not have been perfect, but I'm sure people enjoyed it more than the 42-13 drubbing Notre Dame received at the hands of Alabama (you know, unless you're a Bama die hard or Notre Dame hater; I don't fall in either category). The handful of upsets in the tournament made for a little drama, while still not invalidating the regular season.

So with a full season under my belt, I wanted to take things up a notch in terms of formulas, just to give myself a little more information to work with when it comes time to decide at-large teams and seed the field. (Also, it allows me to judge poor scheduling habits that will hopefully start working their way out of the system next year when we actually do get a playoff.) Returning from last year is my Non-Conference Schedule Strength metric, which I use to try to measure how well a team schedules its out of conference slate. For each week, teams receive a score based on how well they schedule. The formula basically goes like this:
  • -1 point for facing an FCS team (last year, I penalized UTSA with a -2 a couple times for holding onto old D-II matchups)
  • 0 points for a bye week or conference game
  • 1 point for hosting an FBS team not in a "BCS Conference" (As much as I harp on equality, almost every year your champion will come out of a power conference barring some crazy voodoo magic happening, hence the favoritism)
  • 2 points for going on the road to face an FBS team not in a "BCS Conference"* OR hosting an FBS team in a "BCS Conference"
  • 3 points for going on the road AND facing a team in a "BCS Conference"*
Note: The "BCS Conferences" are defined as the ACC, American Athletic, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC.

Obviously independents are going to have a much higher NCSS than everyone else, but this provides a pretty good indicator of how well they're scheduling overall. (This is also why I didn't include an independent average in my weekly rankings.) Inherently it also benefits the "non-BCS conferences" since they tend to go on the road to face more big time opponents, though really it's an indicator that for all the talk from BCS conferences about how "Oh, our schedules are the toughest, you guys don't play anybody!" is something of a lie since their non-conference schedules weren't really up to par.


I need to go beyond that though. Last year a lot of decisions on at-large teams were pretty subjective based on quality of losses, so I found a much more objective system that, while not perfect, should help alleviate some of those problems. The IHSA uses "Playoff Points" in the construction of its football playoffs, and it's an easy enough system to translate over that I'm going to use it here. Basically, at the end of the season, the total number of wins by teams you beat counts as your "Playoff Points". I'm not counting wins against FCS teams in this system, but everything else will. If a team plays in a mediocre conference, this score might get inflated a little bit, but beating a really good team will help balance this out.

Finally, I'm also going to condemn a major scheduling disparity by including what I call the "Road-Home Disparity Index". What I noticed really looking at schedules last year is that most, if not all, FBS teams play an unbalanced schedule in terms of home and road games, with a ton of games coming at home. This is great for you gate receipts and all, but for the sake of competition, this is not ideal. For its upcoming season, my alma mater North Central College has a 10 game slate (they're D-III) consisting of 5 home games and 5 road games. Granted, 4 of the 5 are in-conference, but the athletic administration did a good job of making sure that the non-conference schedule balances it out. Going back as far as 2008, 2011 is the only time North Central played an unbalanced schedule (and also faced an NAIA team at home... shame, though it hasn't happened since thankfully.)

For this formula, I'm going to tally up the number of home, road and neutral site games played during the regular season (conference championships don't count since those are merit-based). From there, I'm going to subtract the number of home games from the number of road games and halve the difference. I won't count neutral site games against either team that plays out of fairness to both. For example, taking Alabama's 2012 schedule would give 7 home games, 4 road games, and 1 neutral site game. Taking the 4 road games and subtracting their 7 home dates gives us -3, which results in a final RHDI of -1.5. I would guess most teams will be in the -1 to -1.5 range. I will probably look more favorably on teams closer to zero, though this, like the other formulas, will not be an end-all, be-all factor in awarding bids or seeds.

Hopefully this regular season will have just as many interesting storylines as last year's did, and hopefully we can see some great matchups set up for another fun playoff! It works at the lower levels; why can't it work at the highest level of college football? I'll start crunching numbers on a weekly basis beginning later this week, since Thursday marks the beginning of this season.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

NBA Tournament of Champions: Quarterfinals

After a lengthy amount of time off, I figure it's about time to get back into the process of rounding out this tournament. Sixty four teams entered, and now only 8 remain. If you were to give me the 8 best teams of all time, I'm sure a lot of these squads would make it, but probably not all of them. But each of these teams has survived a virtual onslaught from other NBA champions (granted, some slates tougher than others) to get to this point, and to be the Champion of Champions, you have to get through three more titans. It's no small feat.

So for today, we move on to the quarterfinals. I'm doing all the series here, but not announcing best players or anything until we get to the end. At that point I'll name an All-Tournament Team or two (or maybe even three, we'll see). For now, it's just simulations. As in the first three rounds, these series are best of seven (2-2-1-1-1 format), with home court going to the team with the better overall record (regular season plus playoffs). All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. You can click on the tag below for "Tournament of Champions" to see every other post about the tournament to date. For now, let's move on to the quarters.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Wait, It's the 21st Century?

I was glancing at Twitter on my way up from grabbing lunch when I saw a Sportscenter headline pop up that made me happy. It's been a long time coming.

I put together a list of things I wanted to improve in baseball last year, but looking back I've continued to realize that it was far from complete. I've addressed umpire incompetence a couple times on this forum, so I'm all for replay. The only caveat is, I want it to be done right. Hopefully the owners want it done right as well and make sure that this system can be implemented in a way to help the game.

In a way, I kind of wanted a challenge system as long as it was done well, so I was a little leery when I initially heard that each manager would be given three challenges a game. Then I learned the conditions and that you only get one in the first six innings of a game, and then two for the remainder of the game. Ultimately, I think this will work. It limits stoppages early and allows for greater weight to be placed towards the end of games. Every out of a game is technically worth the same, but later situations are under much more scrutiny. Such is the nature of sports.

AP Photo/ Mark Duncan
The limit also keeps us from overanalyzing every play. Despite Angel Hernandez's best efforts, I still believe that umpires make the correct call far more often than not. The issue I have with them more so lies in their lack of accountability (or so we seem to perceive,since umpires face consequences; we just don't know what they are) than the fact that they make mistakes. They're human. It happens. We just want it to happen less, and when it does happen, for them to drop the aura of self-righteousness. With the new plan, we can hopefully get rid of some of these mistakes and thus cut down on some of the appearances of umpires making spectacles of themselves.

Ultimately though, there's going to be one or two loud opposing arguments. One of them will be from the purists who claim that replay would "remove the human element from the game", an argument that really doesn't make any sense. Keeping a tradition around just for the sake of tradition may seem noble, but when so many stories about baseball revolve around controversial calls (when we're not talking steroids), you know it's not a good tradition. That said, I'm fine with umpires continuing to call balls and strikes. I don't mind the slight differences in strikes, as long as it's not ridiculous (giving a couple inches outside the standard zone is fine, but calling a strike on a pitch a foot outside is insane). It's rare that ball and strike calls by an umpire have a huge impact as compared to calls in the field.

The only complaints that might come louder would be from fans who don't want the game slowed down any more than it already is. While I get that, replays don't take as long to do as people think. When managers come out to argue, we end up seeing replays on TV anyway. Why not make it productive? In the other major sports, replay reviews more often than not don't take very long to do, so the time additions wouldn't be much of a factor. More time issues arise from batters stepping out of the box after every pitch or pitchers taking forever between pitches. Changes in rules there would probably more than make up for any time lost for reviews. How many games are going need more than one anyway? Probably not many.

Obviously, the specifics need to be carefully reviewed before a final decision is reached by the 30 clubs. But the specifics we have so far all look pretty good in theory. It's 2013. It's time for Major League Baseball to start acting like it.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

NBA Tournament of Champions: Bob Cousy Bracket Finals

What a ride the NBA Tournament of Champions has been thus far. Sixty four teams entered, and right now only nine are left standing, but one more must fall before the end of the week. The Cooz couldn't get any of his teams to move onto this stage, but his franchise did get an incarnation this far in his bracket. However, they have an incredibly tough task ahead. Can they knock off arguably the best team ever assembled? There's only one way to find out.

As the prior 47 series have been, this is a best of seven (2-2-1-1-1 format), with home court going to the team with the better overall record (regular season plus playoffs). All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. To see how we got here, you can click on the links for first and second round results. Let's round this out.

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

NBA Tournament of Champions: Magic Johnson Bracket Finals

Magic Johnson was able to get one of his championship teams through out of the bracket stage already, but in his namesake bracket, he got bumped a couple weeks ago. In his place in the finals of this bracket are a pair of juggernauts that have gone 8-1 through the first two rounds. And somewhere, maybe the leader of one of these juggernauts is shrugging at Magic again. Ultimately one question ensures with this matchup: will the dirty little secret of one of the greatest dynasties in NBA history be exposed for all to see? We're about to find out.

As a refresher, this series, like all the preceding ones, is a best of seven (2-2-1-1-1 format) with home court advantage going to the team with the better overall record (regular season plus playoffs). All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. You can view the first and second round results at the links provided. Let's play ball.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

NBA Tournament of Champions: George Mikan Bracket Finals

In some ways I feel bad for poor George Mikan. He was the dominant force in the NBA in the early 50's until the league changed things around, then was commissioner of the ABA and botched a chance to bring Kareem into his league's fold. Even so, there's still the drill named after him that all aspiring big men should practice often, so I guess it's not all bad. Unfortunately for him though, all his title teams were promptly wiped aside in the opening rounds of the Tournament of Champions. Heck, of his three title teams in this bracket, only one managed to avoid a sweep! Instead, we get a battle between a power of the late 80's and their Eastern Conference foil that would overtake them a couple years later and give birth to the last great NBA dynasty.

So to decide which of this archrivals gets to advance in the tournament, we stick to the best of seven series (2-2-1-1-1 format), with home court going to the team with the better overall record (regular season plus playoffs). All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. You can see results from the first and second round at the provided links. Now, let's play some (simulated) basketball.

Monday, August 5, 2013

NBA Tournament of Champions: Tim Duncan Bracket Finals


Looking at each of the eight brackets in this tournament, this one had a lot of recent title teams, and it just kind of happened that way since I built the tournament with a random number generator. Ultimately though, we come down to a couple of recent champions from Texas to fight for the right to advance to the final eight. Two of the best forwards of this generation lead the way. Who will win?

To find out, we're doing a best of seven series (2-2-1-1-1 format), with home court going to the team with the better overall record (regular season plus playoffs). All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. If you want to refer back to how these Texas giants got here, first and second round results are at the corresponding links. Let's get this party started.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

NBA Tournament of Champions: Bill Russell Bracket Finals

A common thread throughout two of the three brackets we've gone through so far this round: their namesake isn't playing in the Final. Bill Russell makes it three of four, since he saw one of his teams knocked out last round, but it does set up a battle of titans led by legendary centers.

The format of this battle remains the same as before: this series will be a best of seven (2-2-1-1-1 format) with home court going to the team with the better overall record (regular season plus playoffs). All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. You can click on the corresponding links for first and second round results from this bracket. Onward to the main event.