'Bracketologist' for ESPN.com sees into the future

The first draft of your NCAA bracket might have been drawn up Sunday night, with the final version molded and crafted this morning, just before the first tipoff.

Five days before the tournament field was announced, Joe Lunardi already was on his 20th version of how the 64 seeds would be doled out. Most basketball fans find a challenge in guessing which teams will win each game, but Lunardi's job, as official bracketologist for ESPN.com, is to know where teams are going to be before the field is announced.

"At 6:31 Sunday night, my expertise ends, and then I'm no better than the secretary in the office pool," said Lunardi, 42, who has followed college basketball religiously since his freshman year at St. Joseph's. "I've won more than my share of those, but I regularly lose to infants and pets."

The ability to anticipate exactly which teams will make the NCAA Tournament came out of necessity. When he was at the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook, the publication's tournament preview issue went to press the night the field was announced, so getting 1,500-word write-ups on all 64 teams required some precise anticipation.

Lunardi would assign teams to correspondents but needed to keep his costs low. Within a year or two, he was able to assign fewer than 70 stories one week out and be within a team or two of a complete field when the real 64 were unveiled.

For ESPN, he's had the added challenge of forecasting all 64 seeds for its Bracketology page, giving fans an idea of where their favorite teams might open the tournament. Conference tournament week warrants daily revisions and several updates. Lunardi doesn't get many surprises, but the news that Georgia, his No. 4 seed in the West, wouldn't be in the NCAA field created a domino effect.

That moved Notre Dame up from No. 5 and so on, until Minnesota joined the field. That is, until Gonzaga lost its conference final to San Diego, and the Zags then took an at-large berth that would have been Minnesota's.

As for his accuracy in determining the actual field, Lunardi said he has put in enough time, watching literally hundreds of games, to set his goals fairly high.

"I'm going to have all but one or two teams overall," he said. "I should have about half of them dead on the seed, and then another quarter of them I should be within one line, high or low. It's as good a guess as there is."

-- If you have a question or comment about the Internet or a site to suggest, e-mail staff writer Greg Auman at auman@sptimes.com .

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