Research series · 1 installment

NCAA March Madness 2026.

The basketball model's first live tournament, graded in public: what the bracket picks returned, where March went wrong, and the input-layer fix tested across six re-run seasons.

← All research

01NCAAB · Methodology

You asked about the basketball model. Here are the answers, including the ugly one.

Three questions came up over and over after the first live season: was that a one-year fluke, how does the thing actually work, and what on earth happened in March? A six-season walk-forward, a diagnosis we could have ducked and didn't, and a fix we tested before we believed it.

57.1% on 2,017 live picks · 28–28 in the bracket · six seasons re-run · March mispricing cut 54%Jul 27 · 14 min