Who Was the College Basketball Prediction King?

(St. Louis, MO) – It is time to give out the final grades for the preseason publications! Early fall arrives and we’re all running out to see what the experts say about our favorite basketball conferences, players and teams. But do we ever go back and find out if they knew what in the world they were talking about?

Here at Valley Hoops Insider, we do!

This is a ‘no holds barred’, ‘bare-knuckle’, ‘hard core’ look at what the EXPERTS thought last fall, and no, I didn’t watch Wrestle Mania Sunday night!

We will look at the national publications as well as the leagues themselves. How did the coaches rate the opposition? What about the beat-writers? And yes, we put our own predictions out there for your derision!

We checked out how the national publications rated the Missouri Valley and Ohio Valley Conferences, also, how they rated the national scene. We also mixed in our predictions and those of the regional media. Our grading scale was simple. We took the prediction and measured it against the final poll. When “Athlon” picked Villanova to finish eighth, and they finished first, they were give seven points. We followed that process for “Street & Smith’s”, “Lindy’s”, “Athlon” & “Blue Ribbon”. The closer an entity was to accurate, the smaller the number, so the lowest overall number would be the best aggregate score.

We looked at those same publications, the media predictions and my own concerning both the Missouri Valley and Ohio Valley Conferences to compare how we fared looking at our two primary leagues.

“Street & Smith’s” (a merger of Street & Smith’s & Sporting News) was clearly the best entity at predicting the season. They were the best among Lindy’s, Athlon and Blue Ribbon at the final 25 rankings. (Sports Illustrated only picked a top 10, so we eliminated them from the competition.  ‘Street’ was also best at predicting the OVC and while they were fifth at selecting the MVC final standings, they were only one point behind yours truly on that list.

Leading the way in the OVC, Street predicted three teams in their exact spot, including being the only publication to accurately predict Murray State’s regular season title.

Every entity had its high lights and failures. “Lindy’s”, who I highly respect, was the worst national publication predicting the national finishes. While Lindy’s picked the Valley the most accurately, they were, by far, the worst at predicting the OVC, and their overall score was the worst of all the combined scores of the noted publications, regional media and myself.

“Athlon” was second best nationally and predicting the OVC, but fifth in the Valley.

Not surprising at all, is the fact that the regional media members did a great job predicting their own league’s outcomes. Both MVC and OVC media members finished second best at predicting their own leagues.

Oh, how did Harry land in this study? Unfortunately I was a mixed bag too. While I tied for second best in predicting the OVC outcomes, I finished fourth in MVC issues. Here are the standings!

 

As you can see, this old boy wasn’t a star, but I wasn’t the worst either. By-the-way, when we compared Joe Lunardi (ESPN) and Jerry Palm (CBS) on their bracketology. Lunardi had more teams closer to their actual spot, but Palm had more teams in the actual bracket.

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