Malt Shop Logic

Click, then beg forgiveness from the Lord....

http://durrrrr.blogspot.com/

Have to say I'm pretty pleased how the ASM worked out this year. Three out of four Final Four teams ain't so bad.

In my pool, if Louisville wins on Saturday, I'll finish second no matter what. If Illinois wins, I can't finish in the money. Since I want Illinois to win, it's time to kick the ASM to the curb. F you Louisville.

Anyway, two years of use, 6 of 8 Final Four teams identified. Pretty good. Clearly, the ASM is not terribly predictive in the first two rounds, but I'd rather have three Final Four teams than all 32 first round games right.

One can get away without serious drinking, but to declare such a feat beforehand? Son, that's just foolish.

1) My two NCAA brackets are currently 2nd and 5th out of about 40-50 entries in my office pool. Looks like the highest I can hope to get is 2nd with either of them, though.

2) Josh...No serious drinking? Hah. Two words for ya'...

K.....


Kn....C


Kn...Cr....


K N O B C R E E K!!!!*


*And I've only heard the stories...

"I foresee no serious drinking on my part...."

Foolish, foolish Josh. Thou shouldst not profess such intentions in the public sphere.

Thou knowest not when thou may become an unwitting victim of the busy hands of evil...especially Malt Shoppe brand EEEEVILLLLLLLL........

Contrary to rumors travelling around the aether, Liverfest 2005 is still on. At least, I'm going to be there. Friday, April 15, Drinking Hour, live at the Malt Shop.

Personally, I'm going for the atmosphere and the company. I don't foresee any serious drinking by yours truly. The rest of you can play by your own rules.

ILL-

Duke...[Nelson Voice] Ha, ha! [/Nelson Voice]

I'm still very much alive in my pool as well, especially thanks to that dodgy traveling call in the UNC - Villanova game. But hey, I guess the ASM predicted that too, right Chris? ;) I kid, I kid. In selecting my brackets, a used sort of a combo of the RPI and the ASM (plus the good ol' gut instinct). I'd usually pick the team with the better RPI if the ASM was close. I love the heterodox approach. Early on, things weren't looking so good (I guess they weren't for a lot of people), but now I'm doing pretty well.

Sunday is a great sports day...The NCAA games, plus U.S. vs. Mexico in a World Cup Qualifier.

I picked almost 100% down the line using Chris' ASM metric. By doing that, despite the unbelievable upsets last week, I have retained 10 of my Sweet 16, 5 of my Elite 8, and all of my Final Four picks. Let's hope UNC and Louisville continue their dominance and Illinois and Duke pick it up a little bit. ILL-INI!

If you followed the ASM, you're still alive. That's more than a lot of people can say, especially those of you who foolishly picked Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Kansas, or Syracuse to go to the Final Four, or even win the thing. Still a long way to go, but it's better to be in it at this point than out of it.

Other observations:

• That Wake Forest-West Virginia game was as entertaining a basketball game as I have seen in a while.
• I never understood why so many people thought Syracuse was going to the Final Four. They were the same team they were all year - two excellent players, but capable of being shut down with no one else to pick up the slack.
• Same for Georgia Tech - BJ Elder may have been back, but he wasn't exactly doing much.
• If you watched just basketball, you might have missed a great finish at the NASCAR race yesterday - Carl Edwards wins by .002 seconds on a last quarter lap pass of Jimmie Johnson. Truly awesome.
• For us ASM folks, Duke is truly the shakiest of our final four picks, UNC the strongest. Illinois and Louisville each has one tough game to go (AZ or Ok St. for Illinois, Washington for Louisville).

Kansas and Syracuse are out. Bucknell and Vermont are in. WHAT?

So, the ASM left us 10 for 16 after the first day. Not so good. That Creighton game was a crusher, and Utah State was a damn tease.

I checked my results for the first round last year and only went 24 for 32. So, this isn't out of the ordinary.

Most important, we have all 8 elite eight teams still left, all 4 final four teams left and so on. That's what we're looking for.

ASM leads us to 4 for 4 in the late afternoon games.

Lots of ASM-testers tonight, especially with 4 games in the always dangerous 6-11, 7-10, 8-9 range and the ASM upset special of Utah State (can't believe I really went with that).

By the way, this is a hilarious series of articles. This espn.com writer is living at different campuses during the tournament. He starts at Illinois. Here are the first three installments:

Fountain of Youth

Tigger Karaoke

Drinking in the Orange

Ok, the ASM is not looking very strong. Only two for four.

But remember, the ASM is about keeping your final four teams alive and identifying a champion. So let's not panic...yet.

Following up on my post from last week, I have posted below the adjusted scoring margins for all the 2005 NCAA tournament field (except for the 16 seeds, to whom I have assigned a 0 as in their chances of winning a game).

As you can see, my final four teams will be Louisville, Duke, Illinois, and North Carolina.

Obviously this whole system is not foolproof. I think Louisville and Duke are the most likely not to make it, but I'm going to follow the numbers.

For the Final Four, I am going to pick Illinois over UNC for the title (except for pools where I can do two entries where I will also pick UNC over Illinois). While I am being a bit of a homer here (ok, maybe a lot of a homer), the ASM does not take into account the true homecourt advantage that Illinois will have not only in Indianapolis and Chicago, but St. Louis as well.

A couple other points:

• Utah State has an ASM of 15.2 in the Chicago region, which if you follow the numbers exactly would put them into the Sweet 16. Obviously this seems far-fetched and having viewed Utah State's schedule, that number is probably inflated by weak-ass opponents. I haven't decided whether I will follow the numbers there.
• Unlike last year, these figures don't suggest huge upsets (outside of Utah State). Last year I had Syracuse and Maryland losing in the first round based on the ASM. Both games were extremely close, but did not come through.
• If you follow the ASM, do not expect 100% success. The keys to winning NCAA tournament pools are: 1) picking the winner, 2) having the right final four teams, 3) keeping as many teams alive in the tourney for as long as you can. That's what the ASM is good at (hopefully).

Good luck. We'll review how the ASM is doing after each weekend.

Louisville (4) - 20.1
Wake Forest (2) - 15.5
Washington (1) - 15.1
Georgia Tech (5) - 12.2
Texas Tech (6) - 12.1
Gonzaga (3) - 12.0
Pittsburgh (9) - 11.5
George Washington (12) - 10.0
Pacific (8) - 9.7
Creighton (10) - 8.0
West Virginia (7) - 6.7
LA-Lafayette (13) - 6.0
Winthrop (14) - 5.9
UCLA (11) - 4.6
Chattanooga (15) - 3.4

Duke (1) - 18.6
Oklahoma (3) - 16.4
Michigan State (5) - 15.7
Kentucky (2) - 15.2
Cincinnatti (7) - 14.7
Syracuse (4) - 13.3
Utah (6) - 12.5
Vermont (13) - 10.9
Iowa (10) - 9.7
UTEP (11) - 9.5
Mississippi State (9) - 9.1
Old Dominion (12) - 8.7
Niagara (14) - 5.7
Stanford (8) - 4.9
E. Kentucky (15) - 1.7

Illinois (1) - 18.9
Oklahoma State (2) - 17.6
Utah State (14) - 15.2
Alabama (5) - 14.9
Arizona (3) -12.0
Texas (8) - 11.8
Boston College (4) - 10.6
Nevada (9) - 9.5
So. Illinois (7) - 9.2
UW-Milwaukee (12) - 8.9
UAB (11) - 8.6
LSU (6) - 7.9
St. Mary's CA (10) - 7.6
Penn (13) - 7.3
SE Louisiana (15) - 5.0

Here are the Syracuse Region ASM's:

North Carolina (1) - 21.9
Florida (4) - 17.7
Kansas (3) - 15.8
Connecticut (2) - 15.3
Villanova (5) - 14.6
Wisconsin (6) - 11.5
New Mexico (12) - 10.9
NC State (10) - 10.5
Minnesota (8) - 8.7
Charlotte (7) - 7.7
Iowa State (9) - 6.4
Bucknell (14) - 6.1
Ohio (13) - 4.2
Central Florida (15) - 2.1

I actually generally concur with your assessment of Starscream as a "first-rate pussy." What I appreciated was how he was always trying to bring down Megatron from the inside.

However, I will point out that maybe the real weakness of the Decepticons was that they were run like the federal government. Take Starscream - he's doesn't get the job done, is openly hostile to leadership, but is never fired. Damn unions.

Am I the only one who's secretly hoping Chappy continues to get the run-around from Comcast? I find the mental picture I get of him slowly reaching the boiling point amusing.

.


.

Anyways, Transformers, wow...They represented my life in fourth and fifth grades. I wish I'd kept all the ones I had. The Decepticons were always way cooler. Have to disagree about Starscream, though, Chris. He was a first-rate pussy. I remember going to see the movie and thinking how awesome it was that they said "damn" and I think even "shit."

...so after my rant yesterday, I contacted Comcast via phone again, hoping against hope to receive some useful information/assistance. I was told by "Sharon" that the MLB Extra Innings package would be available for purchase next week for $149.

Simultaneously, I e-mailed "Comcast Customer Care" about MLB Extra Innings...and received the following response:

"First, I would like to apologize for the inconclusive responses you have received. I am pleased to inform you that the MLB package is now available for purchase in the Arlington, VA area. Listed below is the pricing information."

So, in communications with Comcast, I've now received something like six different answers about its availability in the last week. I plan to call later today to see if I can actually purchase the package today. Keep your fingers crossed....

Optimus Prime, dead from prostate cancer.

(First saw this linked to on The Corner.)

I'll be able to get over this, in large part due to the fact that I am 29 years old. However, I am still pissed that Prowl, the first transformer I owned, was killed in the Transformers movie - in approximately the first 30 seconds.

I was also partial to Starscream on the Decepticons.

So, spring training is in full swing, and we are merely 3 weeks and change from Opening Day. For displaced baseball fans around the country, it's time to seek out opportunities to watch their hometown team.

Fortunately, both satellite and cable companies offer MLB Extra Innings, which brings up to 60 games per week into a viewing household, including just about every Red Sox game.

But if you live in Arlington County, home to the Comcast monopoly, and have a house that doesn't face south, getting MLB Extra Innings is like getting teeth pulled without novocaine.

At their online sites, both Dish Network and DirecTV offer information about MLB Extra Innings, including online ordering, accessible within 3 clicks of the mouse from their main page. Comcast offers no readily available information about the package (or any subscription package for that matter). Why? The Comcast site is built purely for prospective customers and is designed to funnel them only into two processes: Order New Cable Service or Order new Internet Service. And it even does that badly, providing little information about its services along the way.

I only found MLB Extra Innings at Comcast by using the Search function on the main page. Even then, the results provided me with no actual information about the package, instead funneling me back into the Order New Cable process, telling me that the best way to order MLB Extra Innings was to order Comcast Digital Gold -- which is in fact not true -- it's still an ala carte subscription package that can be ordered with any of Comcast's Digital packages (Plus/Silver/Gold). Though I have service, I even went through all the wickets to see if after ordering a cable service, I could order a la carte subscription packages like MLB Extra Innings. Answer: NOPE.

So, I abandoned the online ordering and called Comcast. BIG MISTAKE. I have received several different answers from Comcast Call Center employees. They range from, "We don't have any information about that," to "It's not available," to "It will be available for purchase April 4th." This is the same call center that forced me to hold my phone up to the TV and let them listen to CNN when I called to upgrade to digital cable 5 years ago and they replied that I couldn't upgrade because I didn't have any existing service to upgrade!

THE SEASON BEGINS APRIL 3RD. If you were a for-profit company that made a lot of money selling a la carte subscriptions on top of regular service, would you not even begin selling a sports subscription package until after that sport's season had begun??? I think not, which leads me to another point.

Comcast's call center is a black hole of uselessness, and it angers me to the point of violence. I want to go to the call center and burn it down.

The truth probably is that MLB Extra Innings is available right now, but either the people manning the phones are morons or the managers providing them with information are morons. Probably, both suppositions are true.

Comcast sucks, sucks, sucks. And you know what -- I blame the government. If it had authorized 5 companies to provide service a decade or more ago, this wouldn't still be happening. Competition would drive better products and better customer service. But instead, local government kept the cable monopoly in place until the telco downturn began in 2000. And then, it offered only one new company -- Starpower, which is just emerging from Chapter 11 as a result of the telco downturn -- the opportunity to provide service. Starpower has not implemented service to this day. As a result, Comcast remains the protected sole cable service provider, and it continues to SUCK.

Here's the lede from one of the Chicago Tribune's articles on Illinois' loss yesterday:

"They returned home to Champaign humiliated."

Let me respectfully disagree. While that was not the worst I had seen Illinois play this year, it was the least interested. And I'm still waiting for Deron Williams to play defense on that guy who hit the winning three pointer and all the other shots during the game (I believe his previous best game was 7 points - yesterday he scored 25).

Illinois wasn't exposed. They didn't shoot well at all, but they did rebound pretty well (a supposed weakness). Two Ohio State big guys (Dials and that Sylvester guy) scored a bunch of points, but only Dials did in the post (a supposed Illinois weakness), while Sylvester did it by driving to the basket and hitting outside shots (facilitated by lackadaisical defense).

No humiliation. Just a bad game.

It's true what you say about statistics, and the ASM does, I believe, have to be taken with a grain of salt.

For example, Louisville had a very high ASM last year as well, but because the ASM is developed over an entire year, it doesn't fully penalize a team when they are playing poorly as the Cardinals were at the end of last year. I would have more faith in them this year because they are actually playing well for a change at the end of the year.

Similarly, Cincy had a high ASM last year, but Cincy was a fraud based on their weak schedule (note: I believe Duke will be this year's Cincinnati - high ASM, but built on a weak schedule). While the ASM is supposed to account for schedule differences, I do think it can be inflated.

Anyway, it's an interesting tool that I'm going to use again. We'll see if it works again.

Interesting post about the ASM, Chris. Of course, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

P.S.- Louisville? [Nelson Voice] Ha, ha! [/Nelson Voice]

After years of futility in NCAA basketball tournament pools (before last year, the only time I was competitive was in 1990), I decided to let the numbers do the deciding for me.

So, I calculated something called Adjusted Scoring Margin (ASM) for each NCAA tournament team. What is ASM? Well that donkey bracketologist at ESPN developed the idea. According to that article, it has been very predictive of Final Four teams over the past five years.

Here were my top 2004 ASM calculations by region (with actual Final Four team in parentheses):

Atlanta – Duke, 19.0 (Duke)
East Rutherford – Oklahoma State, 17.7 (Oklahoma State)
Phoenix – Connecticut, 18.3 (Connecticut)
St. Louis – Gonzaga, 17.3 (Georgia Tech)

So, the only one that was off was Gonzaga, but, interestingly, the second highest ASM in the St. Louis bracket was 14.4 by…Georgia Tech.

Basically what I did last year was pick every game in the bracket by which team had the higher ASM. While this did not mean I got 100% of the games right, it did keep my Final Four teams alive. (I also deviated from it once I got to the Final Four because I thought UConn was simply better than Duke.) As result, I won two pools, finished second in another and sixth in another (would have won them all if Georgia Tech hadn't kept winning).

I know what you’re saying. Any monkey could have made those Final Four choices. Well not this guy. For one, it made me pick against Illinois. For another, I didn’t get trapped by Kentucky or Stanford. So I now have faith in the almighty ASM.

I’ve just started putting together some ASM calculations for this year. I will post the numbers once the conference tourneys wrap up (I’m all for openness, especially since I don’t compete in pools against you). However, based on early numbers, UNC, Louisville, Oklahoma State, and Illinois are looking pretty solid.

Question: Where will Brian be on Saturday, July 16th?

So a few months ago, the Red Sox cashed in on the obsessive loyalty of its fan base by creating "Official Red Sox Nation Membership". The capitalist in me admired the move, but the fan in me despised it. After all, membership in Red Sox Nation (RSN) was something earned by decades of loyal, often suffering fanhood...

...not purchased by a $10 fee and signified by a cheesy plastic card with one's name on it.

Did I pony up with the hope that it would yield some concrete benefit? God-damn right I did.

Today, it paid off.

Lately, scoring Sox home game tix has been near impossible. How impossible? Like keeping Professor Weinberg away from lovely undergraduates while he's hepped up on goofballs....

But yesterday, I received 24 hour e-mail notice of a 1-day, RSN-only ticket sale for all 2005 Red Sox-Yankees games. Today, I scored two tickets in the right field bleachers on Saturday, July 16th, when I will see the Red Sox battle the Yankees during what will undoubtedly be another tight pennant race. Add that to the 2 Red Sox-Os games at Camden Yards, and the 9 Nats games I have season tix to, and I AM IN BASEBALL HEAVEN.

Or at least what might be the answer.

I believe Holy Cross and Bucknell are the #1 and #2 seeds in this year's tournament. So, it looks like the Patriot League is giving the top two seeds as much of a homecourt advantage as they can so that they both reach the final, which I think is still played at the highest seed's homecourt.

So, AU, the #3 seed, will be playing its opening round game wherever Bucknell is located. The semifinal game would be the next day at the same location.

Also, maybe Show Place Arena was already booked for a horse show this year.

...for anyone who knows -- most likely Chris "Hoops Fiend" Close. Why are the first two rounds of the Patriot League Men's Basketball Tournament being played in two different locations -- Bucknell and Holy Cross?