John Crudele

John Crudele

Business

How to win Warren Buffett’s $1B bracket

Warren Buffett wants to give away $1 billion. All you have to do is pick the winners of the 63 games in the NCAA’s March Madness basketball tournament.

Others have told you it can’t be done. The odds, these naysayers naysay, are one in 9 quintillion — almost as many zeros as the Mets’ offense will put up this season.

Well, people, that kind of attitude isn’t what made America great. Our forebears wouldn’t give up without giving Warren’s little game a shot.

But let’s be realistic. I don’t know about you, but my skills at picking winning basketball teams are about as good as my ability to dribble — which is to say, they’re nonexistent.

So I consulted an expert.

Not Dick Vitale, or any sports guy with blurred vision because of friendships or enemies.

Nope, I went to academia.

Barnard College math professor Dave Bayer’s all-brain, no-heart picks are to the right.

Bayer thinks Arizona will win the whole thing, by a score of 82 to 76 over Kansas. No shocker there.

And that would ordinarily be good enough for me if not for the 62 other games, some of which will — if the past is any guide — be upsets.

In fact, Bayer says only about two-thirds of all the tournament games are won by the favored team.That means one-third won by underdogs.

Okay, we’re already two-thirds of the way to Buffett’s billion. Now all we need to know is which underdogs will win.

“It’s a good lottery ticket,” says Bayer, after finishing his work. “If you actually know something, you have a reasonable chance to win.”

Bayer’s list doesn’t include stunning upsets. If the Wofford Terriers, for instance, upset Michigan, we are all screwed.

North Carolina Central? American U? St. Joseph’s? Ordinarily I’d pick a No. 13 seed David over a No. 1 Goliath. But not when I could make the Forbes list of luckiest all-time SOBs .

College teams are generally rated two ways — the newer College Basketball Power Index (BPI) and the Rating Percentage Index (RPI). The RPI is basically based on the win/loss ratio plus strength of schedule.

The more-in-fashion BPI calculates wins and losses plus scoring margin, blowouts, close games and key missing players.

That’s all you need to know here because that’s all I know. Prof. Dave used the BPI and then tweaked the numbers to give us some upsets. Our thinking would differ in the office pool in which you need to rack up the most points.

Here we don’t want points — we need perfection, or Buffett won’t cough up his money. So we don’t want to waste our time thinking Syracuse might suddenly rebound.

“I’m doing a very small number of upsets,” says Prof. Dave. “The way I played it, I just tweaked the power rating. And when the underdog met its match, it lost.”

The power rankings give New Mexico a big edge over Stanford in the first round, but the professor is calling it the other way. The same is true for Gonzaga over Oklahoma State.

Other mildly surprising first round calls: No. 10 Arizona State over No. 7 Texas, and No. 12 North Carolina State or Xavier over No. 5 St. Louis.

But if he’s right, there will no real surprises. The Final Four will be a pair of No. 1s (Wichita playing Arizona) and No. 2s (Kansas and Villanova). And Arizona cheerleaders like the one at left will probably have plenty to celebrate.

“I wanted to pick something that’s likely to happen,” he said. “If this were a horse race you’d win more money picking long shots. But we are after a fixed prize here, so we want to pick the most likely to win.”

If we win, there will no column of mine in this paper on April 8, the day after the final game.

Or the day after that, or after that, or the day after that. …