Group D Scenarios

Group D is easy.

The Netherlands is already thru to the 2nd round.

Cameroon is already eliminated.

Denmark:

- Advances with a win

Japan:

- Advances with a win or tie

Group C World Cup Scenarios

Scenarios for Group C:

- Slovenia:

- Wins group with a win

- Advances with a draw

- Advances with a loss and a USA-Algeria draw

- Advances with a loss, an Algeria win, and a tiebreaker win over Algeria

- England:

- Advances with a win

- Advances with a draw, a USA-Algeria draw, and scores 3 more goals than the USA

- USA:

- Advances with a win

- Advances with a draw and a Slovenia win

- Advances with a draw, a Slovenia-England draw and having more total goals than ENG

- Algeria:

- Advances with a win and a Slovenia win or draw

- Advances with a win, an England win, and a tiebreaker win over Slovenia

Nate Silver's odds put Slovenia at 66.7%, USA at 63.2%, England at 52%, and Algeria at 18.1%.

Group B World Cup Scenarios

Scenarios for the last games in Group B:

- Argentina:

- Is through to the second round unless they lose and South Korea wins and they lose the 3-way goal differential tiebreaker between ARG, GRE, and SK (ARG currently at +4, SK at -1, GRE at -1). Which means ARG would have to lose to GRE by 3 to make this even a possibility.

- Greece:

- Is through with a win or draw and a Nigeria win

- Is through with a win and a Nigeria-South Korea draw

- Is through with a draw, a Nigeria-South Korea draw and Greece scores two more goals than South Korea

- Is through with a win, a South Korea win, and better goal differential than either South Korea or Argentina (GRE at -1, SK at -1, ARG at +4)

- Nigeria:

- Is through with a win and an Argentina win

- South Korea:

- Is through with a win and an Argentina win or draw

- Is through with a draw and an Argentina win

- Is through with a draw, an Argentina-Greece draw, and Greece does not outscore South Korea by 2 or more goals

- Is through with a win, a Greece win, and better goal differential than either Greece or Argentina (SK at -1, GRE at -1, ARG at +4)

Nate Silver's odds put Argentina at 100%, South Korea at 64.8%, Nigeria at 24.4%, and Greece at 10.9%. Somewhat unbelievable that Nigeria actually has a really good chance to advance with a win.

Group A World Cup Scenarios

Scenarios for the 4 teams in Group A to see who advances to the second round:

Mexico:

- Wins group with a win

- Finishes second in the group with a draw

- Finishes second in the group with a loss and a FRA-SA draw

- Finishes second in the group with a loss and a better goal differential than the FRA-SA winner (Mexico at +2, FRA at -2, SA at -3)

Uruguay:

- Wins group with a win or a draw

- Finishes second in the group with a loss and a FRA-SA draw

- Finishes second in the group with a loss and a better goal differential than the FRA-SA winner (Uruguay at +3, FRA at -2, SA at -3)

France:

- Finishes second in the group with a win, a loss by Mexico or Uruguay and a better goal differential than the MEX-URU loser (FRA at -2, MEX at +2, URU at +3)

South Africa:

- Finishes second in the group with a win, a loss by Mexico or Uruguay and a better goal differential than the MEX-URU loser (SA at -3, MEX at +2, URU at +3)

Obviously looks like MEX and URU will go through here. Only hope for FRA/SA is a big win and a similar score in the MEX-URU game. But MEX and URU have little incentive to open the game up.

Nate Silver's odds put MEX at 96.2% to go through, URU at 98.3%, FRA at 3.7%, and SA at 1.8%.

March Madness -- Day 1

I have become addicted to Ken Pomeroy's Ratings (http://kenpom.com/rate.php).

Using his percentages for likelihood of winning, we can compute just how likely (or unlikely) today's string of great games was. Of the 65536 possible combinations from today's 16 games, the outcomes we ended up with were the 690th most probable (0.014%). The most probable was 0.329%. The two biggest upsets based on his ratings were Ohio over Georgetown (naturally) and Wake Forest over Texas (really!).

If we look at Friday's games, if we end up again with the 690th most probable scenario, we would get:

- Pittsburgh over Oakland (yay!)

- Oklahoma St. over Georgia Tech

- Michigan St. over New Mexico St.

- Xavier over Minnesota

- Cornell over Temple (whoa!)

- Florida St. over Gonzaga

- Utah St. over Texas A&M

- Cal over Louisville

- Missouri over Clemson

- Purdue over Siena

- West Virgina over Morgan St.

- Maryland over Houston

- Syracuse over Vermont

- Ohio St. over UCSB

- Wofford over Wisconsin (whoa! whoa!)

- Duke over APB

And the probabilities for Saturday:

- Kansas over Northern Iowa (84%)

- Kentucky over Wake Forest (78%)

- Tennessee over Ohio (75%)

- Butler over Murray St. (68%)

- Baylor over Old Dominion (66%)

- Villanova over St. Mary's (60%)

- Washington over New Mexico (59%)

- Kansas St. over BYU (50%)

Destiny is Almost Ours

If the following happens next week, the Steelers will just need to win at Miami to get a playoff spot:

- Steelers beat Ravens
- Eagles beat Broncos
- Colts beat Jets
- Dolphins beat Texans
- Patriots beat Jags

None of these seem outside the realm of reasonable possibility.

Playoffs? Playoffs?

wishful thinking for this sunday...what the steelers need to make the playoffs:
- Win all of their last 3 games (Packers, Ravens, Dolphins)
- Ravens lose to either Bears or Raiders OR Denver loses 2 of their last 3 games (Raiders, Eagles, Chiefs)
- Jacksonville loses 2 of their last 3 (Colts, Patriots, Browns)
- Jets lose 1 of their last 3 (Falcons, Colts, Bengals) AND Dolphins win 2 games (Texans, Titans) OR Jets lose twice

- Texans lose 1 of their last 3 (Rams, Dolphins, Patriots) OR Titans win all 4 of their games (Rams, Dolphins, Chargers, Seahawks)

Analyzing the Trades

Given the rash of trades the Pirates have made, it is time to do some analysis on trades that the team has made over the last 5 years and judge them.

The methodology used for this analysis will be to look at the Win Shares of the players involved based on information at: http://www.hardballtimes.com/ Only time with the Pirates will be considered.

First up, is the momentous trade of 2003: Brian Giles to the Padres for Jason Bay, Corey Stewart, and Oliver Perez.

Since the database starts at 2004, we will discount 2003 from this analysis, which should be ok since it was only 1 month.

Giles: 122 Win Shares (2004: 25, 2005: 35, 2006: 23, 2007: 17, 2008:22)

Bay: 107 Win Shares (2004: 18, 2005:34, 2006: 24, 2007:13, 2008: 18)

Perez: 17 Win Shares (2004: 17, 2005: 1, 2006: -1)

Of course, the Pirates then dealt Perez and Roberto Hernandez to the Mets for Xavier Nady in 2006.

Nady: 31 Win Shares (2006: 5, 2007: 11, 2008: 15)

while Perez and Hernandex did:

Perez: 19 Win Shares (2006: 0, 2007: 11, 2008: 8)

Hernandez: 1 Win Share (2006: 1, 2007:0)

So, for the 122 WS that the Pirates gave up for Giles, they received 124 for Bay+Perez. And they turned Perez into an additional 31 with Nady.

Verdict: Good trade by the Bucs (no surprise). Giles played well in San Diego, but Bay has almost been his equivalent at a lower price, plus getting Perez was a boon. Perez never lived up to his first season with Pittsburgh, but flipping him for Nady was huge.

Of course, if we could go back and look at the Giles for Ricardo Rincon trade, that was the move that let this whole chain get started.

#1

- Unbelievably (ok, maybe not that unbelievably), the Pitt Panthers will likely ascend to #1 in the college hoops polls on Monday after they defeated Georgetown on Saturday and UNC fell to Boston College today. Will be the first time that Pitt has ever been #1 in basketball. Of course, being #1 at this point of the season will get you nothing except a note in the record books. The goal still needs to be reaching a Final Four for this team.



- Chargers vs. Steelers next week for the playoffs. Should be a whale of a game. Tought to say that anyone is a strong favorite in the game. Key will be making sure that Big Ben doesn't force the ball and get intercepted.

Remember when...

All the major bowl games were on Jan. 1? CBS would have the Cotton early in the day, ABC would have the Sugar at the end of the day, while NBC would have the tripleheader monster of the Fiesta, then Rose, then Orange.

Of course, the bowl system was a mess and only occassionally did we get the 1-2 matchup we wanted. The two that stick out are Miami-Penn State, when Penn State intercepted Testaverde to win the game. And West Virginia-Notre Dame where Major Harris could not pull out the win.

Now, we have the BCS. The positive is that we get something a little bit better than what we had before. At least we now have matchups not completely dictated by conference tie-ins.

The negative of course is that we still end up not having a true champion. Someone will have the courage to go to a playoff system. Will see who it is. They should revert to an 11 game regular season (although killing the 12th game will irk many schools since that is a direct revenue hit). And then a 16-team playoff. Takes four weeks. Would be a huge amount of excitement and the Cinderella stories would be magnificent.