The answer is yes, but Mills beat me to it. but what's really remarkable is the possible scores 161 down into the 150s, which may set a new record.
I think this was a unique year. The top teams are extremely strong. With the exception of UVA, not many upsets of top teams.
College Cup, Here We Come! We have a new leader! As expected, the big changes came from the UCLA win over Florida State. Congrats to the eight predictors who had UCLA advancing to the College Cup and, in particular, to new #1 dmthomas49, #2 McSkillz, #3 Peter, and #4 Playsimple. They all went with UCLA.
Wow I’m just behind one person. Now is the real test, Stanford needs to lose and I’m not sure if that’s going to happen. Fingers crossed!
Nope, even S. Carolina was a rare pick to get to where they did. Congrats on the lead DM. Well deserved.
Everyone of the top 7 have the same exact predictions, except McSkillz. Therefore, only Mcskillz can beat DMThomas at this point, which depends on the UCLA vs Stanford semifinal match.
After the semis, here are the standings. The top bunch all have Stanford (or UCLA) winning the championship, and the first predictor to have North Carolina (that would be Barry Selph) is more than 8 points back, so it looks like our current #1 will be the contest winner -- dmthomas49. If I'm right, a big CONGRATULATIONS!
Thank you all. I would like to thank my parents and my Penn State Math and Computer Science instructors. I will donate my winning forward to next year's winner!
A good trend study by your instructors might have suggested you as a likely winner: 2014 - 21st place 2015 - dnp 2016 - 19th 2017 - 10th 2018 - 3rd Have you changed how you make your predictions?
Yes, I copy one of the model predictions and look at 6-7 match ups that could have a different result than would be expected.
Well done then. For my personal predictions, I did the same thing but didn't fare nearly as well as you.
For my picks I looked at Massey and RPI and combined those with equal weighting to get my picks. Some results I overruled because they didn't seem logical to me so there was some "human" factor involved. I always enter a confidence pool for pointyball bowl games. There are usually 20 games to pick. I am always tinkering with my selection method but this year I think I'm weighting it 40% Massey, 30% Sagarin's, and 30% Vegas (human).
We have final standings, with dmthomas49 in first place, as expected. Congratulations to him, #2 Peter, and #3 Playsimple. In the group and robot divisions, the standings came down to the kicks from the mark, with the Committee and the coaches' poll coming in ahead of TDS barely and Massey coming in 1st, the ARPI 2nd, and my two systems 3rd and 4th.
Congrats to dmthomas and the others with a few points. Fun way for fans to compete! Thanks CP for doing this job! With 6 years of using this system I think that the point allocation works well. Depending on how evenly matched the top 8 teams are, it could be a free for all right to the last game as (for example) this year the spread was only a few points over multiple entries. Next year Stanford, UCLA, USC, South Carolina, and UNC (especially if Fox stays for her senior season) will be strong again based on having most of their top players returning and great recruited classes coming in. In addition, I predict that there will be other teams with runs like WSU (if not WSU them selves.)