Bracketology Recap 2023
Looking at my final results.
Now that the full results and updated standings are in on bracketmatrix.com, I wanted to take a few moments to go over the final results of my Bracketology in 2023.
I’ll start on the women’s side, as this was my first year doing women’s bracketology. I was thrilled to bring this coverage to CBSSports.com, and to my knowledge, I was the only person making online projections for both the men’s and women’s tournaments.
The first thing I had to realize was the differences between the criteria on each side of things. How the committees work to select and seed teams are very similar, but the criteria used are different.
Most obviously, outside of the NET, the advanced metrics used on the men’s team sheets (KPI, SOR, BPI, KenPom, Sagarin) do not exist on the women’s side.
Additionally, while the committee divides games into groups based on NET ranking, it does not use the same quadrant system as on the men’s side. Instead, there are five categories (NET 1–25, 26–50, 51–100, 101–200, 201+) with no adjustments made for game location.
There are also a few criteria that exist solely on the women’s side, notably including a heavier focus on results towards the end of the season, whereas, on the men’s side, there is purportedly no difference between how a game played in November and one played in March are viewed.
With all of that being said, I was relatively unsure how my projections would perform, although I knew my experience on the men’s side would prove valuable to some extent.
I ended up correctly selecting 66 of 68 teams into the field. Of those 66, I correctly seeded 42 teams, while having an additional 18 teams off by one seed and six teams off by two seeds. Using the Bracket Matrix scoring system, this works out to a score of 342.
My last two teams in (Columbia and Kansas) were the first teams out of the tournament. Mississippi State and Georgia (my first and third teams out) were given 11 (play-in) and 10-seeds, respectively.
Overall, I was very pleased with this performance (cue Sean Tucker jokes). I gave Iowa the final 1-seed over Virginia Tech, but I have no issues with Virginia Tech receiving that spot.
Outside of that flip-flop, I had all the other top 16 overall teams (who host in the first weekend of the tournament) correct and with the right seed except for Tennessee, a 4-seed that I gave a 5.
My last spot in the top 16 went to North Carolina, who ultimately received a 6-seed. This was a bit of a surprise, but my seeding for them was in line with other bracketologists.
On the men’s side, I also had 66 teams correctly in the field. I correctly seeded 45 teams while having an additional 18 teams off by one seed and three teams off by two seeds. This is a 351 on the Bracket Matrix scale.
I had both Rutgers and Oklahoma State (the first two teams out) in my field, while I had Pittsburgh and Arizona State (two 11-seed play-in teams) as my first and third teams out.
Given my experience and the more resources available on the men’s side, it’s no surprise that I scored higher here. However, this was actually my worst year in comparison to other bracketologists since I started making final projections in 2017, even though it’s a higher raw number than I had in the majority of those other years.
This is likely a combination of focusing more on women’s bracketology this season and the increasing skill of bracketologists on the men’s side. A score of 351 would have been excellent five years ago — the competition just continues to get tougher each season as men’s bracketology becomes more and more of a science.
The Matrix’s average score of 356.5 is nearly 10 points higher than last season (347.0) and nearly 20 points higher than in 2018 (337.8).
My biggest seeding complaints were easily Texas A&M as a 7-seed (I had them as a 5) and Florida Atlantic as a 9-seed (I had them as my top 8-seed but had a sizable gap after them and thought they were probably deserving of a 7-seed).
Looking ahead to next season, I’m excited to continue women’s bracketology and help grow the conversation around the sport.
Due to both limitations on my time and the saturation of the men’s bracketology market, I may hold off on men’s bracketology moving forward, but I won’t have to make the final call on that for a while.
Thanks as always to everyone who followed my projections this season.
