Sweet Sixteen Update (Part 1)

The first half of the Sweet Sixteen games have been played, so here’s the update on the Prediction Machines thoughts:

Home	Away	Line	Pred	Delta	Result
Miami (FL)	Marquette	6	3.7	-2.3	-10
Louisville	Oregon	10	11.6	1.6
Ohio State	Arizona	3.5	5.4	1.9	3
Indiana	Syracuse	5.5	7.7	2.2	-11
Duke	Michigan State	2	4.3	2.3
Kansas	Michigan	2	4.9	2.9
Wichita State	La Salle	4	7.6	3.6	14
Florida	Florida Gulf Coast	12.5	20.2	7.7

The PM went 2-1 on betting predictions.  In its Tournament bracket, it correctly picked Marquette over Miami.  Unfortunately, in the most significant game of the night for the PM, it was very wrong on the Indiana game.  Indiana struggled all night against the Syracuse zone, and (particularly in the first half) Syracuse seemed to make every shot attempt.  Having watched Syracuse’s first two round games at San Jose, I was expecting the zone to cause Indiana more trouble than expected, but I didn’t expect Syracuse to look so good on the offensive end.  At any rate, unless something very unusual happens, that result eliminates the PM from contention in the Machine Madness Contest.  This will be the first year where the PM didn’t go into the final game with a chance to win the contest.
The Arizona-Ohio State prediction was too close to recommend a bet, but the PM ended up on the wrong side of the line there as well.   Ross’s defensive blunder on the next-to-last play of the game probably cost quite a few gamblers a payout.