The grades are in for this season’s NIT brackets. I used the Paymon scoring that the Bracket Project uses to score NCAA bracket projections. The NIT ones were quite rough. Part of this is because every person had both Air Force and Arkansas in their field and the committee decided to go with other teams. Much like last season when no one had Cleveland State, this season no one had Detroit in their projections. Awesome.
It’s also worth noting that NIT bracketologists release their brackets at different times and this can radically impact how much a person gets right. In this case at least two brackets were released after the NCAA tournament field was revealed – there’s a 3-hour lag, people have time to kill. Those two brackets – The Bracket Project and D1scourse – both scored better than some other ones that might’ve included Middle Tennessee State for instance. I wish I could do a straight find/replace but it wouldn’t work in the sense that once that first bracket comes out your perception is altered. For instance, if I had gone back I wouldn’t have just given Tennessee MTSU’s 3 seed in my final bracket, I would’ve adjusted things.
Thus, brackets are scored as their final version for posterity. Even if they did go afterwards neither finished first. That honor belongs to Blake Hofstad of BracketologyExpert.com this season. He got 26 teams correct, but more importantly nailed 14 seeds exactly correct. His high score of 130 is way off the perfect bracket of 192 and just goes to show how hard predicting the NIT is. Blake is a recent addition to Twitter. So follow him!
Final Scores (bracket linked, Twitter handle, * for after NCAA Selection Show bracket):
- Blake Hofstad, BracketologyExpert.com (@blakesbrackets) – 130 points
- Bracket Project, The Bracket Project (@bracketproject) – 125 points*
- Patrick Stevens, D1scourse (@D1scourse) – 123 points*
- John Templon, Big Apple Buckets (@nybuckets) – 117 points
- Connor Pelton, Emailed Bracket (@ConnorPelton128) – 116 points
- Daniel Evans, BracketologyExpert.com (@bracketexpert) – 113 points
NYC Buckets Archive 