Not everyone enjoys the luxury of having a college basketball analyst at his disposal when filling out a bracket for March Madness, yet that’s exactly what I and three others had when Powerade hooked us up with CBS analyst Greg Anthony. Greg, having played for UNLV during their heyday and 1990 championship run, had plenty of opinions and advice on the field of 68. We met Greg in the very swank Bracket Lounge in the Time Warner building in New York earlier this week.
Greg mentioned Powerade ION 4’s Point Performance Rankings, which is a neat online app that ranks teams in the tournament with four different statistics–total points scored, win margin, turnover margin, and assist-to-turnover ratio. But Greg also mentioned the importance of a team’s senior leadership, success in road games, shooting ability and rebound ability.
We picked Greg’s brain on certain teams: he doesn’t think BYU is in the tank without Davies; they have a favorable draw and the team has played well without him. He doesn’t think Colorado was snubbed; their out of conference schedule was too weak (losing to Harvard probably didn’t help). Greg also cautioned about expecting too much from traditional tournament favorites Kentucky (“They finished third in their division this year! Not their league! Their division!”) and Michigan State (“They’re a jump shooting team that can’t shoot.”)
Thanks to Powerade and to Greg Anthony for the bracket help. I’m now even more excited to lose my bracket pool to some 16-year-old girl that picked her teams based on jersey colors.