After Saturday, every team will have played every other team once, and this contest will open. You will predict each team's second half record and get bonus points if your correct prediction is far away from the team's first half record. As games are played, people's possible points will go down, but it's not standings that go progressively. It just gets evaluated after the season. Your score will be the sum of the points you got from each team. Here's the scoring:

Correct record: 5 points + maximum Bonus of 3
1 game off in either direction: 3 points + maximum Bonus of 2
2 games off in either direction: 1 point + maximum Bonus of 1
3 or more games off: No points for that team

Bonus:
For every game your predicted record is away from the team's first half record, you get up to 1 Bonus point per game depending on your potential from above. The Bonus points are limited so you can't predict Hofstra to finish 0-9 and get Bonus points for the difference between that and their first half record when their second half record will be way above 0-9. Here's an example. A team goes 6-3 in the first half, you predict them to go 3-6 in the second half, and they go 4-5 in the second half. You get 3 points for being 1 game off. Your second half prediction was 3 games off from the team's first half record, but your 1 game off gives you a maximum Bonus of 2, making a total of 5. I will explain more if necessary. You can give any combination of first half record, predicted second half record, and actual second half record and I will tell you how many points it will be worth.

The maximum score isn't known in advance because it depends on how far apart the first half records and second half records are. If every team was at least 3 games apart, the maximum would be 80. Furthermore, if nobody predicts a team to do at least 3 games better or worse in the second half, nobody can get 8 points from that team regardless of how they do.

I will evaluate each team separately and not care about the standings order. Therefore there is no need to think about standings tiebreakers.

Each team's second half record must be predicted before the second half starts on Thursday January 31 at 7:00 P.M. Like an NCAA Tournament bracket, this is a contest that has all predictions made before any games. Having from Saturday night through Thursday afternoon should be enough time to make predictions.

You are required to make the second half record add up to 45-45. If you want to post a predicted winner for each game, you can, but it is not required. If I see that you predicted a different record, I will tell you. If you do not correct an unbalanced record, I will adjust your predicted record up or down as necessary for the team you predicted to have the fifth best second half record. If your predicted second half records have fifth as part of a tie, I will break the tie using alphabetical order. Hopefully everybody adds right and this doesn't come into play.

So we arent picking games technically, just record for the last 9 games for each team, correct?

Yes.

I guess I will kick it off and see how this goes. In current order of the standings from the CAA website:

HU- 7-2
UD- 4-5
NU- 8-1
CoC- 8-1
DU- 5-4
UNCW- 4-5
WM- 5-4
Elon- 0-9
TU- 3-6
JMU- 1-8

Let's all use that order (the maximum Bonus is in parenthesis):

HU- 8-1 (loss at Northeastern) (1)
UD- 4-5 (2)
NU- 8-1 (2)
CoC- 7-2 (2)
DU- 3-6 (1)
UNCW- 2-7 (2)
WM- 2-7 (1)
Elon- 3-6 (0)
TU- 5-4 (2)
JMU- 3-6 (1)

We are three games off for WM and Elon. My maximum Bonus is 14. Your maximum Bonus is 2+2+2+3+1+0+2+3+0+1 = 16. The maximum Bonus is calculated by how far apart each team's current CAA record and your second half prediction are.

Yeah I was aggressive and realize there will be upsets. Chances of JMU and Elon basically not winning a game is about 0. You never know.

Hofstra = 7-2
Charleston = 8-1
Northeastern = 7-2
Delaware = 4-5
Drexel = 3-6
UNCW = 3-6
W&M = 6-3
JMU = 2-7
Towson = 3-6
Elon = 1-8

That gives you a maximum Bonus of 15. All of us predicted Delaware to go 4-5.

I won with 40, LeadBolt got 38, and dan10 got 28.

(03-04-2019 06:42 PM)EvanJ Wrote:  I won with 40, LeadBolt got 38, and dan10 got 28.

I knew i did horrible. Too much parity not accounted for. Can you post the first half and 2nd half records just so we have them as comparisons (Yes I am being lazy to do this myself)

Charleston: 5-4, 7-2
Delaware: 6-3, 2-7
Drexel: 4-5, 3-6
Elon: 3-6, 4-5
Hofstra: 9-0, 6-3
James Madison: 2-7, 4-5
UNC Wilmington: 4-5, 1-8
Northeastern: 6-3, 8-1
Towson: 3-6, 3-6
William & Mary: 3-6, 7-2

Thanks. I think that also shows the direction teams are going down the stretch too. Should be a fun weekend for all teams, even if there is not a lot of "upsets" Sunday and beyond