• Bracket Science 2012 – Pete Tiernan joins WTKA

    Great to hear local boy Pete Tiernan of bracketscience.com join WTKA 1050AM this morning where he broke down Michigan’s NCAA tourney chances and added a variety of tendencies, trends, and tips for your 2012 bracket. Don’t know Pete?   His dad, Tom ‘Boom Boom’ Tiernan played hoops of Michigan in the early 1950s, check out my interview from 2009. You can sign up for bracketscience.com here

  • Beilein, Fisher among Highest Performing NCAA coaches

    A fabulous resource for the NCAA tournament is over at Pete Tiernan’s bracketscience.com.  I interviewed Tiernan, who lives in Saline, back in 2009 and today you can also find him on CBSSports.com dropping tourney knowledge. One interesting tidbit for U-M fans is the following table.  Coach Beilein remains among the top coaches in the NCAA tournament based on Tiernan’s ‘PASE’ (Performance Against Seed Expectation’) metric: Tiernan explains how PASE is determined: PASE is a simple concept. Every seed has recorded an average number of wins per tourney in the modern era. The average top seed wins 3.42 games per dance, two seeds win 2.43 (almost exactly one game less), three seeds win 1.84 and so on. When the coach of a top-seeded team wins four games to reach the Final Four, he overperforms by .58 games. If he wins the championship, he exceeds seed expectations by 2.58 games. Not surprising that Coach Izzo is #1 on the list, and Steve Fisher is firmly in the third slot when you factor in the 1989 and Fab Five runs.  Of course many fans have reminded Tiernan of the Ed Martin scandal and question whether it should count: (Many have emailed me to argue that he shouldn’t be on the list at all, given that the tainted Fab Five contributed to his overachievement.)…

  • Interview: Pete Tiernan of bracketscience.com

    This week I sat down with Pete Tiernan, founder of bracketscience.com, a website with a comprehensive database that allows subscribers to slice and dice historical NCAA tournament data.  Tiernan also provides statistical trends, charts, tips and strategies for busting up your pools. Over the past several years he’s contributed a column to ESPN.com insider$ and in 2009 will be featured at CBSSports.com. Tiernan holds two degrees from Michigan and taught for a while within the English department.   His ties to the M basketball program run deep as his dad, ‘Boom Boom’ Tom Tiernan, laced them up for the Maize & Blue back when they played at Yost Field House in the early 1950s. We met in downtown Saline at the excellent Brecon Grille and over a few pints, he was kind enough to answer questions about Beilein, Michigan, tourney trends, the selection committee and more.  We close with a cool story about his son who played for the Grand Valley State team that shocked Michigan State at Breslin last year.  Enjoy: MVictors: Michigan basketball is becoming relevant again thanks to John Beilein. Let’s cut right to it, how does Beilein’s tournament coaching record stack up? Tiernan: Michigan made a very good choice.   John Beilein is the top overperforming active coach of the modern tournament era. There’s a statistic that I have…