No, it’s a crap following.
In their best season in years, they averaged 70% of capacity on their home floor.
“Right now, UM home attendance is 5,434 a game. Add in another 7,972 for Saturday, and the 15-game average will be 5,603.”
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Miami is fans are nit basketball fans. Typically it’s a small and loyal fanbase. It’s obviously growing with the recent surge
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If Miami bought their team, I want them to win all the more. I want the most unashamedly boughtiest of bought teams to win the whole thing and shove it in the NCAA’s face. Right now the system is messed up, but they won’t fix it until they suffer some reputational impacts.
It’s kinda like when Dean Smith went four corners in the ACCT championship game (against us, sigh)… and forced the NCAA to adopt a shot clock. Someone’s got to gleefully exploit the system before the NCAA will take action.
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I don’t really get how that would rattle the NCAA. They’ve never cared about programs cheating, and now paying players is just a part of the game. Lol I wish we’d find more money to pay our players/potential players.
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Yeah, I’d say the TV ratings matter more than anything else.
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I’m thinking they fear reputational risk (the more it’s exposed just how rigged the game is – that you can literally buy a championship – the more fan engagement drops, and so viewership drops) and legal/regulatory risk (the reputational hit will lead some legislators to see an opportunity to stick their nose in and “fix” the NCAA).
But you may be right, it may have no impact at all.
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I think the Blue Bloods could bring some serious pressure though.
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Remember that “upset model” from the Athletic, put together by those Furman math dudes? I thought I’d check in and see how they did.
Before the brackets were released, they identified 4 “Vulnerable” teams (likely to be upset early) and 6 “Lethal” teams (likely to make a surprising run).
Vulnerable: Virginia, Creighton, Xavier, Miami
Lethal: Missouri, Mississippi State, Northwestern, Iowa, Rutgers, NC State
In a tournament where you could throw darts blindfolded and succeed in “identifying” vulnerable teams… they somehow (with the exception of UVA, sigh) managed to pick instead the teams that significantly overachieved. Xavier bowed out in the Sweet 16 according to seed expectations, Creighton (E8) went 2 rounds farther than they were supposed to, and Miami (F4) has outperformed by 3 rounds so far.
Their Lethal teams didn’t notch a single upset. (Rutgers didn’t make the tourney… but they lost in the first round of the NIT.) Arguably their bigger failure here was one of omission, as they didn’t identify any of the many teams that did overperform. 7 of the Elite 8 teams weren’t supposed to get that far. The model didn’t pick any of those teams. (As noted above, it picked two of those teams as Vulnerable.)
It’s gonna be a rough offseason for the Furman math department. (Just kidding. I expect they happily pocket their bonus checks and get back to doing math.)
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Accountability!
Part of the problem with identifying a 35% chance of upset as likely. They have a communication problem more than anything.
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Well, I suspect if we read what they actually wrote they probably didn’t phrase it the same way as the sports headline writers trying to grab attention.
On the other hand, the only way to determine accuracy on those sorts of things is lots of volume. Did their “35% likely” predicts actually happen around 35% of the time? How about their 50/50’s? Takes a TON of volume to determine that with any confidence.
And going 0/7 or whatever on something you think is 35% likely is possible, but still a pretty bad showing.
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Yeah, the small text wasn’t super helpful in clarifying what they were claiming the model does. I suspect the math guys behind it probably had some beef with The Athletic in how they talked about it too. The age old rivalry between research and comms
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And totally unfortunately for us, all people will remember is that they picked us as the most vulnerable high seed and we did, in fact, get upset. No one will remember that the entire rest of the model spit out junk.
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I agree it’s the writers who are the problem. This is why I think the Furman math guys don’t care: their math is probably 100% correct. The writers are just miscommunicating (and misunderstanding) what it actually says and means.
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I didn’t report on how they did with their “Top 10 Major Upset Picks of the First Round,” but in short, they got two right: Virginia and Iowa State.
They defined a “major upset” as one with a 5-seed difference. So an 11 over 6 counts, but a 10 over 7 doesn’t. The thing is, given that definition, who would you pick as the most likely upsets? Just off the top of your head. The 6 seeds, right?
Guess what the model picked:
It picked all the 6 seeds.
It picked three of the 5 seeds.
It picked two of the 4 seeds.
(It also picked a 2 seed, which it got wrong.)
So it was kind of a silly exercise, that the writers tried to make into something far more insightful than it was.
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All models are wrong, some models are useful.
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George Box lol
Indeed, hopefully the model was useful enough for the authors/modelers to make some fat stacks betting on Furman.
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Anyone see this? Kihei in an all star game on Friday afternoon:
https://twitter.com/nabc1927/status/1640775763963301888?s=46&t=Y9ZJTUudJiFOC0Ajwlmckw
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Interesting that Tobin Anderson is prepping and coaching one of these teams with all of the transfer outs already at Iona… he’s going to need to rebuild that roster.
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