2023 March Madness

I had a simple March Madness model in place for 2023 March Madness. I ran the model and generated the picks on Monday, March 12, 2023. I had 21 people who signed up for the free picks I was giving out. All of the people were unknown to me except for 2. I had no real contact with most of these individuals - I just sent them an email. 

An email was sent out to our subscribers shortly after midnight on Thu, Mar. 16, 2023 just before the first games were played at 11:00 am (see above). It had been reported about 36 hours earlier that Tennessee guard Zackai Zeigler was not going to come back from an ankle injury. He was effectively out for the rest of the season. 

I was debating on taking that data into account and re-working the model analysis. I decided to do that at about 10:00 pm on Mar. 15th and I emailed everyone with the updated bracket picks. 

The updated bracket picks sent out on Thu. Mar. 16, 2023 at 12:16 am had UConn as champion. The first bracket picks named Tennessee as champion. With Tennessee's overall strength diminished in the model, Purdue was tagged as going to the Championship but losing to UConn. This ended up being the right call, although last years model was not very good at all in the early rounds. 

My son signed up for my free picks. I was delighted that he was supporting my project! He contacted me at the end of the March Madness tournament and said that he had won 2nd place in his company pool (he had an 890/1920 and the winner had an 1170/1920) and had won a $100 gift card. This got me stoked because I will always want my children and grandchildren to think I am a genius, even if I'm not. 

Also, my son said that he was in a pool with his girlfriend and her family. He was in last place in the pool until the final 2 rounds when he surged ahead. They were saying things like, "It's okay that you're in last place. Better luck next year!" 

I wanted better than a 890/1920 score for 2023, but that result placed 97.3% (better than all but 2.7% of all the entries) in the ESPN Bracket Challenge. 

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Todd Beach

Tuscaloosa,