When Syracuse University’s men’s basketball team defeated No. 1 seed University of Virginia on Sunday, residents in the Sport Management Living-Learning Community in Flint Hall said they couldn’t believe what they were seeing on TV.

No one had brackets predicting Syracuse to be in the Final Four.

“I know that they went nuts,” said Christina Myers, a resident adviser of the learning community and a sophomore sport management major. “I think they have all stopped worrying about their brackets because nobody expected Syracuse to make this far.”

SU’s advancement to the Final Four caught many by surprise, so much so that even some professional bracketology experts — known as “bracketologists” — could not have predicted such a turn of events.

Rodney Paul, a professor of sport management in SU’s David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, said bracketologists take different factors into account, and thus come up with varying analyses.

Jerry Palm, a bracketologist at CBSSports.com, said in an email that he does not do much numerical analysis. Rather, he looks at what he has seen over the course of the season from the various teams to determine winners, he said.

Palm’s primary task is to predict which teams will get into the tournament and what number their seed will be.

“There is definitely some science to that, but there is also a lot of art,” Palm said. “The (selection) committee’s process is subjective, but guided by objective data.  I’m trying to read the collective mind of that committee.  There’s a lot of art in that as well.”

Palm, who watched all of SU’s games during March Madness, said his bracket was blasted before SU took the floor against Dayton.

Palm added that he was “stunned” not only by the fact that SU’s men’s basketball team won against UVA, but also by how the team won.

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“I was surprised that Virginia wilted under the pressure of the full court press, and was never able to right itself,” Palm said. “That’s a veteran team, especially at the guard position, and they allowed themselves to get so out of sync to the point that they never recovered.”

Patrick Walsh, an assistant professor of sport management in Falk, said bracketology has become somewhat of a “social phenomenon” in terms of individuals and experts filling brackets.

Filling brackets, he said, is something people can do to compete with friends and colleagues. It appeals to both fans and non-fans of basketball who may not know enough about numbers but may support their alma mater, he added.

Americans will wage $9.2 billion on this year’s NCAA brackets, which is more than the total amount of money spent on Powerball and Mega Millions lottery tickets last year, according to CNNMoney.

Walsh added that bracketology has expanded over the years because of increasing consumer demand.

Since so many people make their own brackets for the tournament, Walsh said media outlets like ESPN or CBS Sports need to provide their own bracketologists or make their own predictions as to who will win.

Published on March 31, 2016 at 6:33 pm

Contact Satoshi: ssugiyam@syr.edu | @SatoshiJournal