After nearly two years, March Madness is back! I am pumped.
March Madness is second best USA-centric cultural sporting event after the Super Bowl. I have participated in bracket pools dominated by people choosing their favorite mascot, and I have seen brackets by the most knowledgeable of college basketball scholars fall apart after the first weekend. Fill out a bracket and compete against me and other fans of 2xParked (Yahoo account required).
I have proudly ventured to most college basketball venues in our city. From the steep cliffs of Barclay Center to the distant halls of Carnesecca Arena, there is good basketball to watch for even the lightest of fans. My personal recommendation is to check out Rose Hill Gymnasium in the Bronx. Home to Fordham University, it is the oldest active basketball facility in Division I. Although the basketball will likely not be great (Fordham has not made the tournament since 1992), you can sit in history and watch a decent A10 opponent.
It has been awhile since New York City has seen March success. Manhattan College was the last NYC based team to win a NCAA tournament game. In 2004, Luis Flores led the 12th seeded Jaspers to an upset victory over Florida. There have been quite a few losses from St. John’s, who made the last tournament (2019), but victories have been scarce for the once basketball capital of USA.
This year, unless a school, both men’s and women’s teams, has an upset in it’s conference championship, the weight of the city will be on Wagner College. The Wagner men’s team is the favorite out of the Northeast Conference. Go Seahawks!
The NYC Tournament
In the past 10 years there have been the NCAA, NIT, CIT, CBI, and Las Vegas postseason men’s college basketball tournaments. While we are at it, I am here to suggest a new one: the NYC Postseason Tournament.
This is a tournament featuring only teams from New York City and its surrounding area. Even without Columbia University playing this year, there are enough Division 1 basketball programs within an earshot of the city to have its own tournament. I present to you the first ever NYC bracket.
I split the bracket into two sections. The top half represents the teams from the five boroughs. The bottom half represents schools from nearby locales which are easily accessible via the PATH, Metro-North, LIRR, or NJ Transit. The bracket seedings were determined by the RPI metric, a stat which takes into account a team’s wins, losses, and strength of schedule.
Unfortunately for us city folk, this tournament will never happen. Instead, I had to simulate to see what might happen. Using the probabilities from RealTimeRPI Gamer Predictor, I ran 10,000 simulations to see the chances of each school advancing and winning.
St. John’s is the favorite to win the NYC part of the bracket, but South Orange’s Seton Hall, a Big East school with NCAA Tournament aspirations, is our tournament favorite.
NYU: What Could Have Been
Two major universities are missing from this hypothetical tournament. Columbia University cancelled all sports this year due to the virus, so we will see how they might fare in next year’s tournament. NYU, one of the largest private institutions in the country and one of my alma maters, will likely never return to Division I basketball.
If you do not know the story, NYU and a few other NYC basketball institutions were involved in a point shaving scandal, one of the biggest controversies in the history of college athletics. The scandal along with poor finance caused NYU to end its basketball program in 1971. Just a decade prior, the Violets were in the Final Four.
I wrestled with the question of what might have happened had NYU continued to be a Division I basketball program today. Using data science methods, I estimated the potential winning percentage of NYU for the past 50 years without Division I basketball. I selected a group of rivals based on common NYU opponents, and measured how NYU compared to them to predict theoretical success.
Since a lot can happen over the course of 50 years, I created three theoretical scenarios conditional on the university’s administrative vision for athletics. The first is if NYU decided to invest more into its basketball program and to compete with some of its early rivals such as Georgetown or Notre Dame. The second is if NYU decided to remain as more of an academic based university with nominal emphasis on sports. The third is if NYU wanted to emphasize itself as a NYC school for NYC students.
Below is a summary of what we might have expected from the university since 1985, when the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams:
You can see we likely missed out on success and some March appearances. In all three scenarios, the winning percentage is above 0.500, which means winning more than losing. Although the winning percentage is the worst in the athletic emphasized simulation, the competition is better, giving NYU a better shot at providing something to root for in March. What is not listed are the over 100 players who attended a NYS high school and made the NBA in this time period. It is likely a couple might have considered NYU.
Of course, not being in Division I does not mean lack of NCAA success. The highlight of the NYC college basketball scene over the past few decades is the 1997 DIII NYU Violet women’s championship basketball team!
MayorModel
As Andrew Yang continues to be the favorite, I wanted to link back to this GQ article analyzing his basketball skills.
In short, the scouts take is that Yang can ball. He probably would not be able to hold his own on one of the school teams mentioned above, but he would not be a liability in your pickup game. He can handle the rock and has decent form according to this article.
Meanwhile, back on the court:
"March Madness" was drawn by Ink&thyme, drawing life's unforgettable moments. For unique art drawn just for you, check them out on Facebook and on Instagram.
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