Official Maher Ranking prediction bracket for the Sweet 16.

 

Maher Rankings | Maher Rankings Sweet 16 Bracketbasketball Kentucky | basketball, Kentucky | rankings, Kentucky

Yes, that was a brutal, bracket busting tourney. Nothing to do but take your lumps on it. From what I gather, most others suffered the same fate, unless you are from the Owensboro or Bowling Green areas!

 

The pre-tournament bracket finished 6-9

 

Even with re-calculating after each round, it won't be much better. Haven't run those #'s yet, and several games are too close to eyeball. Boyle was #21 entering the tourney, and Bowling Green was #22 , there is a chance they could have flip-flopped before their matchup. The same is true for #18 Owensboro, and Bowling Green. Might at least get over 50%!

 

Brings up an interesting point though. I have never done this poorly in the state soccer tournament. Is basketball harder to predict? I don't think so, the full season prediction accuracies are very similar. Is the state tournament in basketball more unpredictable than the soccer state tournament? Maybe, I'd like to go back through past basketball state tournaments to explore that one. I could see that being the case, since they play at Rupp with attendances in the five figures, it is a very different environment than the regular season. This is not really the case for soccer.

 

Or, maybe this years tourney was just a crazy one!

It wasn't a good tournament for chalk.

This tournament was a little crazy but I think the big things is that Owensboro and Bowling Green were underrated

This was one of the more upset filled Sweet 16s in a while, but in general I would expect many more upsets in Basketball than just about any other high school sport.

I think the environment has a little bit to do with it, but the unpredictable nature of a good/bad shooting performance is probably a bigger factor.