Google will guesstimate how much solar power your roof could provide. Now available for most Indiana houses.
Just plan 2 starters for each Reds game. I really like this idea. The Reds need to evaluate a lot of young rotation arms and their bullpen is a dumpster fire.
So many awesome things happened in actual baseball games last night.
-Max Scherzer strikes out 20 (tying major league record) in a complete game while throwing only 23 balls.
-Noah Syndergaard (pitcher for Mets) hits 2 home runs in a game.
-4 are ejected in the Reds/Pirates game as they set a new GABP record for number of hit batsmen in one game.
-Ender Inciarte gets a double play via “I lost the ball in the clouds” fake.
And yet the only mention of baseball on the front page of ESPN is Bam-Bam’s (Bryce Harper’s) suspension. I miss the time when ESPN used to talk about actual game-play. Apparently that’s too boring, nowadays.
Same ordering for these four as before. Get Syracuse out of there, please.
Notre Dame and Wisconsin are the two weakest teams remaining. Of course they get to play each other.
Updated strengths for the winning teams after round 1. Not a ton of movement compared to the post pre-tournament, but some teams jump .5-1 points in the total column and there is a slight re-ordering of teams.
Last year, I posted the offense/defensive strengths for each NCAA tournament team, based on the scores of all NCAA games throughout the season. Below, you will find the values for 2016 March Madness.
Some things to note:
1. 6 tournament teams are below NCAA Division 1 average.
2. The top 11 teams are within 5 expected points of each other.
3. Michigan St is the 2nd best team and got a 2 seed. West Virginia is the 3rd best team and got a 3 seed.
4. Oregon is the 18th best team and got a 1 seed.
5. Purdue, Vanderbilt, Gonzaga, Michigan, and Wichita St are quite under-seeded.
6. Xavier, Oregon, and Utah are quite over-seeded.
7. The Kentucky (19.2 points above average) and Indiana (18.5 points above average) matchup in the second round will be a good game.
Using a model developed with Wayne Winston, I posted the bets I would make against the spread from Week 2 onward for the 2015 NFL season and 2016 playoffs. The model did pretty well, going 126-111.
When betting, you must perform well enough to make money after the betting market takes their cut (the vigorish). Typically, you bet $110 to win $100 if you are correct. If you had bet $110 on each game I suggested, you would have made $390, a return of 1.5% on the total $26070 bet.
Here are the links to each week of suggested bets (for posterity sake):
Super Bowl: 0-1
Conference Championship: 2-0
Divisional Round: 2-2
Wildcard Round: 2-1
Week 17: 10-6
Week 16: 9-6
Week 15: 8-6
Week 14: 7-7
Week 13: 4-11
Week 12: 11-5
Week 11: 6-7
Week 10: 10-4
Week 9: 6-7
Week 8: 6-6
Week 7: 6-7
Week 6: 8-6
Week 5: 5-6
Week 4: 10-5
Week 3: 5-11
Week 2: 9-7
Newton’s Football: The Science Behind America’s Game
by Allen St. John and Ainissa G. Ramirez, Ph.D., 2013
The writing style is reminiscent of Freakonomics, and the book is very well-written. I did find a lot of the science-references to be silly and forced, but they didn’t detract much from the exposition. The book has great insights into the evolution of the sport, with injury-prevention playing a heavy role.
I particularly liked all the references to Bengals players. I didn’t take a full survey, but I think Bengals’ coaches and players were discussed more than members of any other team. Greg Cook, Sam Wyche, Bill Walsh, Ken Anderson, and Boomer Esiason all feature prominently in various stories. The authors did a good job of incorporating interviews from both football and science experts into the book.
Funny post at KenPom about liking the tweets announcing losses by previously unbeaten teams. Duke wins for most hated team. When they lose for the first time, their loss gets the most retweets and likes. (Might have something to do with losing to Kentucky on heavily-watched game)