Bracketology needs more in-depth, team-by-team resume and game play analysis. I’m here to help.
Bracketology needs more in-depth, team-by-team resume and game play analysis. I’m here to help.
We’ve got some incredible bracket and bubble watch folks out there. Some of them work for major publications, like Eamonn Brennan at The Athletic and John Gasaway at (redacted). But the vast majority of the best bracketologists are lesser known and exist on their own platforms. Shelby Mast at bracketwag.com, Dominic Lese at Bracketometry, and Lobofan come to mind.
It’s not a pissing contest, but I’m good at bracketology
I’d like to think I can hold my own with the best of the best mentioned above. In 2019, I was one of 3 bracket folks to go 68 for 68. In 2022, I was ranked 5th overall on the bracketmatrix. I’ve been doing this for a decade now, and I rank 25th overall out of 148 on the rolling 5-year rankings on the Bracket Matrix, well ahead of Joe Lunardi at ESPN and Jerry Palm at CBS.
Bracket projections will always be free, but this isn’t just going to be bracketology
I’ll have a seed list updated almost every day through Selection Sunday and will do my best to update the bracket pairings at least several times a week. And that comes without a need to subscribe. But this Substack account is going to include so much more.
What’s been missing in the college basketball space is a combination of analysis of individual team play, bid/seeding breakdown by conference, and granular resume discussion.
Early on in life, I was a basketball junky. I played obsessively through my childhood and teenage years and went to multiple camps every summer where some of the best coaches and college players convened. I was playing, but also obsessed over learning the game. In my adult life, after I was done with organized team basketball, a medical diagnosis took away the ability to get on the court. Looking to channel that energy elsewhere, in 2013 I started getting into the bracketology space (which you can find archived on my old site here). A decade of experience projecting the bracket and knowledge of how the composition of the committee and the politics of the college basketball landscape has changed (i.e. how the Power 5 conferences are doing their best to monopolize the sport) puts me in the perfect position to bring all of these elements together.
Detailed analysis, several times a week
Some days I’ll do an analysis about the play and seeding/at-large hopes of an individual team. Sometimes I’ll look at the bracket picture for an entire conference. And at least weekly through March 13th there will be a bubble/locks picture for all of DI.
Free to everyone:
Daily (with few exceptions): Updated Seed List (free to everyone)
Ongoing multiple times a week: Bracket projections (free to everyone)
For Subscribers ($6 monthly, ending April 15 and resuming October 15):
Quick hitter notes about the games over the prior 1-2 days
Monday: At-large seeding analysis for a given conference
Wednesday: Detailed team analysis
Friday: Bubble Watch/Lock it Up
NCAA Tournament: Lead-in analysis for every game
Coming in October: Conference and Team Previews for the P6 Leagues plus the A10, American, Missouri Valley, Mountain West, WCC, and select mid-major teams.
Plus additional content, time permitting.
(Bonus alert: stay tuned starting in late February for my “Lock It Up” page, where I keep daily tabs on teams that have locked up a bid and ad them to the list of teams that are 99.9% certain to make the field).
Subscribers get thrice weekly M/W/F (or more) posts for $6 per month or $30 for the year. I’m doing my best to build a subscriber base over months and years by building trust, and we all know there’s no point in charging you monthly during the dead period between mid-April and October.
Note: For monthly subscribers, I will be turning off my monthly subscriptions starting on April 15th, so you won’t get a recurring charge again until the season preview comes out on October 15th. If you are a yearly subscriber, the charge will not renew until a year from your original subscription date. (of course, you can always cancel anytime before then too - there’s no commitment).