Last spring I once again joined the legions of backyard heroes who filled out an NCAA basketball tournament bracket in hopes of picking the most winners. Like going one-on-one against Larry Bird, it's a formidable task: 64 teams are involved and one miss in the early rounds can cost you dearly.
I've tried various methods of making my picks, from intuition (forget that) to choosing the top-seeded teams (better) to consulting the last poll of the season (better still) to going hi-tech. Hi-tech in this case means reading USA Today's computer rankings by MIT grad Danny Sagarin. In the last three years, his rankings have consistently beaten the others.
OK, so an MIT grad with a roomful of computers can rate teams better than coaches and sportswriters, but how about a small liberal arts college grad with a C-128? I wrote this program to find out. If you picked any team but Duke to win this year's NCAA championship, you need this program.
Roundball Roundup gives each team a power rating of .500 to begin the season. The ratings change as wins and losses accrue based upon team strengths, wins, point spreads and home-court advantages. I've found that even with this limited information, the program produces results comparable to Sagarin's.
You start by creating a league with up to 400 teams. Select Teams from the main menu to add teams. When you've finished, press the left-arrow key and return. Record each game's results by selecting the Scores option. Cursor through the team list and press return to select the first team. Use the cursor keys to enter the score: cursor up/down changes the score by ten points, cursor left/ right by one. Press return to enter the score.
Repeat the procedure for the opposing team. Once you've entered both scores, select the home/away teams, again using the cursor keys and return. You'll be given one final chance to edit. Don't rush through this step! Once installed, your results cannot be edited.
When you're finished entering scores, press escape to return to the main menu, and select Rank to calculate the team standings. (Unless you've typed in some scores, the program will have nothing to compare for ranking the teams.) You can view, print or save your results any time. Save often. Your league list is always presented in alphabetical, rather than ranked, order. Each time you save, the previous results will be saved as a backup with the file extension .bak. Also, you should always add the prefix rk. to your filenames. (The program prompts you to do so.) I'd recommend you experiment a bit before typing in three hours' worth of scores.
You can also use Roundball Roundup for baseball and football. You don't need a fancy degree, a roomful of technology, or even a pair of Air Jordans to predict this season's winners. All you need is Roundball Roundup.
