Thanks for reminding me. This is how the final scores shook out with kolabear and Justdoit finish tied with points. Thanks everyone for participating! 118·Justdoit 118·kolabear·aj/m 117·SCUFANTASTIC <- 1 first round game? 112·Paltrysum 103·bmoline 102·karanicole 102·DrGoat 98··attackerp 95··GoCourage 95··cpthomas·rpi 95··4oclocksomewhere 93··UNC4EVER 93··theguru 91··richmondD15 86··socdad 86··Norfolk 86··BruBru 84··WPS_Movement 81··uscue13 81··UncleFugly 80··DemitriMaximoffX 80··darntaz 79··crazyhorse 78··GopherBob 74··kickithard 74··gogogo 73··soccershins 73··SoccerHunter 73··Bradleyk15 72··nvsoccerfan 68··Stinky·Shinguards 67··MRAD12 63··hykos1045 62··IceDog 61··iknosocr 42··NilamCA I think WPS_Movement's got the right attitude. Sometimes you can look brilliant picking a supposed upset. Considering the top 4 ranked teams made it through that strategy didn't work out this year.
Next year's early pick: UCLA (UCLA also will finally gettur done). West Coast again. The real girls play on the Westside.[/QUOTE] Wicked cute, but the East will reign next year.
WPS Movement cool and I agree! So just move me from the bottom of the list to the top for next year. And, to be fair to my family, I will throw in a little BLUE (Michigan). Big 10 vs Pac 12 next year.
Get to Vegas and put down your early bet on that, Crazyhorse. Those Bruins should have a very good team. Could be their year.
As Kolabear mentioned previously, it's interesting to see that the AJ/Massey system and the RPI did quite well. Also, the other resident RPI expert -- GoCourage -- did well too, although I don't know how he did his predictions. This surprised me. It also makes me wonder how the RPI would have done if I had made site adjustments, since I think I know what the RPI site adjustment amounts should have been. On the other hand, maybe this wasn't due to the high quality of the AJ/Massey and RPI systems but rather was due to the low quality of ...?
Hmmm! Well, maybe just low turnout... I mentioned this over at VolleyTalk and the creator of Pablo agreed it was rather surprising.
You know, there's part of the Pablo quote that I don't agree with, although maybe I'm not understanding the author. I've done this enough to know that the mathematical rating systems are not close to perfect. They may be pretty good at defining ranges of teams, but the specific alignment of teams within the range always is highly suspect. So, if teams are within a reasonable range of each other, picking a lower-rated team over a higher-rated team is not always picking an upset. Instead, it could be identifying a weakness in the rating system. In fact, if I'm trying to have consistently high scores in the competition, it seems to me I would not try to pick upsets at all. As the Pablo author points out, true upsets occur infrequently so trying to pick upsets overall is a losing proposition. Rather, if one uses a mathematical rating system as the base, the best approach might be to figure out where the system has problems and use your knowledge of the system to exploit those problems.
I'm cheating a little and posting a link to the 2012 prediction contest, since I believe everyone who participated in 2011 will get an alert. Just trying to prod some of the long-time posters to join back up this year. NCAA Prediction Contest 2012