Shake it Up … A Randomly Selected 2023 NCAA Men’s Tournament Bracket

It would most definitely be interesting….

I hadn’t been stood up on a date in over 30 years, but lo’ and behold, a promised interview failed to materialize because, well … I was stood up.  Now, only one other coach has done that to me, and they are in my penalty box permanently.  Will see if this coach shoots me an email and apologizes….. (UPDATE: Said Coach came through in great style… and come to find out I stood myself up for confusing the day of our date…)

Between that and the snow day that we were in the midst of, I did what every other normal 25 year old would do (…. it’s all in the mind… as George would say...).     I created a randomized bracket for the 2023 men’s NCAA Tournament.  We all do this, right? (I did a YouTube short to highlight the drawings… kind of like FIFA… but for a much more sophisticated audience like you)

So the rules were as follows –

• Blind pick out of the hat.  After much shuffling.
• First team in the bracket was the “home” team.
• All 62 teams treated equally, although you could argue that the weight of the ink in a name … printed on a strip of paper … like Washington & Lee, Pomona-Pitzer, or Christopher Newport gave a clear random selection bias over school like Emory, MIT and Tufts.
• No measures were taken to ensure all slivers of paper were of the same temperature.
• Picks start in the upper left and work their way down, then upper right.
• The hat I used was officially sanctioned by auditors at Ernst & Young.

There were some real humdingers out of the gate.  Forget the second round matches, the first round would be entertaining as all can be.  Some of the pairings would be games I would just love to watch under any circumstance, let alone the first round of the tournament.  Can you argue these wouldn’t be some great games?

• Christopher Newport v Washington College – Hosted at Dominican University
• Mary Washington v Ohio Northern – Hosted at Lake Forest College.
• F&M v Tufts – Hosted at F&M
• OWU v Kenyon – Hosted at F&M
• Occidental v Amherst – Hosted at WPI
• Middlebury v North Central – Hosted by Connecticut
• Emory v Lynchburg – Hosted by Emory

The Bracket of Death (am I allowed to use that term?) … or should I say the Bracket of Forced Exclusion (Sounds more apropos…)  would just be a stunner.

Host would be Franklin & Marshall …

Franklin and Marshall would face Tufts and OWU would go up against arch rivals, Kenyon.

Who wouldn’t want to be in Lancaster, PA that weekend?

But if that doesn’t do it for you, the other Bracket I would be watching, what I like to call the Bracket of Unequal Outcomes would have to be this one..

Host would be Emory.

Emory would square up against Lynchburg, and Case Western would go up against this years Cinderella, Carleton.

As I was pulling weighted names from an E&Y audited hat, I started to get excited about the possibilities of these games.  Of course, if I could spend other peoples money, think of the host teams receiving teams that normally, although with the possibility of exceptions, teams would face teams they would never have seen before from the start.

But there is more!  The Fight for Inequality Brackets.  Those where some of the matchups would just be killer.  There are three of these that I highlight.

I think the one where the elements would play little if no role in outcomes would the WI Eau Claire bracket, where all the teams are comfortable in short sleeve jersey’s in sub-zero temperatures.  Nonetheless, the Lake Forest and Connecticut brackets are really good first round games, but the second round would be a national championship on their own.

Then we have the There Can Be Only One Brackets.  Yes, I am running out of pithy bracket names…..

Each of these brackets have an intriguing game or two, but a real setup for a second round matchup.  Montclair v SUNY Oneonta would be a throw down game, as would Catholic v Cortland State.  Although truth be told, I find the Western Conn v Manhattanville equally interesting.  I think Pacific-Lutheran would end up playing the winner of this Clash of Titans, Denison v. Washington & Lee.  And Colorado I think would face the winner of a Trinity v WI Superior battle.  

The Remainder Brackets are not too shabby and have some killer games…. and one typo.  Sorry, it’s Dominican, not Dominion, the voting company.

In the Dominican bracket, CNU v Washington would be a great game of ball control.  Occidental v Amherst would be the game… they played in the actual tournament.  Messiah v Joh Carroll would be a rapid pace game.  I would love to see St. Thomas (TX) v Otterbein, but have to give the nod to St. Thomas here.  And as I highlighted above, Middlebury v North Central and Denison v Washington & Lee would be instant classics.

Not going to go into detail about the how it ended up, but interestingly enough, I had St. Olaf out on top.  Think the neat thing is that a randomized bracket would give a lot more teams the opportunity to play spoiler, and some good teams would obviously be out.  

Not going to go into detail about the how it ended up, but interestingly enough, I had St. Olaf out on top.  Think the neat thing is that a randomized bracket would give a lot more teams the opportunity to play spoiler, and some good teams would obviously be out. Feel free to post your opinions on the randomized bracket or anything else … on the D3 Fan Boards.

Probably spent WAAAYYYY too much time on this, but I was finding it to be a wonderful thought experiment. I am not sure how to do this, but I wonder what the cost would be for this bracket to materialize. Would love if some enterprising coach of a team in the bracket calculated what their cost would be … hypothetically of course. Thats the only real way in which that could materialize… if the price tag would be equivalent… or less. 

Otherwise its something to think about during a snow storm….

Blessings.

SC.