Welcome back, college sports fans, and yes, there are 256 teams in 6 tournaments so 250 will lose and go home. One men’s and one women’s team will be named national champions. One each will be crowned NIT champions. One men’s team will be the CBC champion and one women’s team will be the CBIT champion. 472 (65.2% of all teams) squads are already done for the season. 250 (34.3%) will lose one more game. Six (0.8%) will win out. Those lucky 4-leaf clovers seem pretty important this St Patrick’s Day.
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The GCR predicted most of the women’s conference tourney games and finished 112-42 (.727). We hope to increase that a pinch today. There are just two games today and we are only predicting (Pred) one of them. NP in the final column means the GCR metrics Score and RPIF disagree on the winner. In this case, the Score selected Steph F Austin while the RPIF calculated Missouri St. If both metrics agree, we will post the prediction. We redid this table a little to provide a bit more information. The Tour/Round column helps keep track of which of the 3 active women’s tournaments the game is a part of and the progress in that tournament. In today’s case, the FF means First Four or the Play In games. The Time (all times Eastern) tells us when the tipoff is. The Game column will have records and GCR rank current to games played at posting. The Conf column inform which conferences the two teams play in. While not critically important each day, we felt with 31 conferences, it could be hard to keep up with. The Seeds column normally will have two numbers such as 16/1 which would indicate the first team listed is a 16 seed and the second team is a 1 seed. In First Four games, both teams have the same seed (PI means Play In). Here are today’s games (note: there are 30 games tomorrow).
| Tour/ Round | Time | Game (All Times Eastern) | Conf | Seeds | Pred |
| NCAA/FF | 7:00 | Richmond (26-7/17) / Nebraska (18-12/78) | A10/B10 | 11-PI | Rich |
| NCAA/FF | 9:00 | Steph F Austin (25-9/88) / Missouri St (22-12/112) | SLAN/CUSA | 11-PI | NP |
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Predicting the men’s conference tourneys, the GCR was 141-66 (.681) and we will hope to improve that over the next three weeks as well. The description of each column is in the paragraph above, but we have a few “new” things here. In the Seeds column, “U” indicates an unseeded team (found in the NIT and CBC). There will only be two active tournaments for the men until the CBC begins in April.
| Tour/ Round | Time | Game (All Times Eastern) | Conf | Seeds | Pred |
| NIT-R1 | 6:00 | Liberty (25-7/45) / George Mason (23-9/66) | CUSA/A10 | U/3 | Geo Mason |
| NCAA-FF | 6:40 | Balt County (24-8/120) / Howard (23-10/173) | AME/MEAC | 16-PI | Balt Co |
| NIT-R1 | 7:00 | Wilmington (26-6/40) / Yale (24-6/27) | CAA/Ivy | U/3 | Yale |
| NIT-R1 | 7:00 | Wyoming (18-14/119) / Wichita St (22-10/79) | MTW/AAC | U/3 | Wichita St |
| NIT-R1 | 8:00 | Davidson (20-13/138) / Oklahoma St (19-14/74) | A10/B12 | U/2 | Ok St |
| NIT-R1 | 9:00 | Steph F Austin (28-5/49) / Tulsa (26-7/59) | SLAN/AAC | U/1 | Tulsa |
| NCAA-FF | 9:15 | Texas (18-14/103) / NC St (20-13/52) | SEC/ACC | 11-PI | NC St |
| NIT-R1 | 10:00 | St Thomas (24-9/87) / Seattle (20-13/123) | SUM/WCC | U/4 | NP |
| NIT-R1 | 10:00 | South Alabama (22-10/98) / Auburn (17-16/83) | SUN/SEC | U/1 | Auburn |
| NIT-R1 | 11:00 | UNLV (17-16/141) / UC Irvine (23-11/67) | MTW/ BWest | U/4 | UC Irvine |
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Twelve games today. Tomorrow there will only be 244 teams remaining. The conference tourneys are exciting and, in some cases, are must win scenarios to continue playing, but true Madness is upon us. Every game is win or go home, pack up your gear, and start thinking about next season. Hang on tight as we take you through every day, every game, every round until we get our six champions.
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That’s it for today. Thank you for reading and sharing with others. Please provide feedback on this approach to the tournaments and let us know any changes/deletions/additions you’d like to see. Your collective creativity is a great deal more than ours, without a doubt, JoJo and G.
