With Sunday’s announcement of the NCAA Tournament field, March Madness is officially upon us. As has been the case since before the Internet ruled our lives, Selection Sunday sparked a barrage of fan reactions and analyst prognostications.
This year — as is the norm nowadays — most of the conversation took place on Twitter. Fans griped and bragged, writers dropped knowledge, and players expressed their eagerness to get the madness started. Check out the gallery above for a flavor of the chatter in the hours following the Big Dance’s big announcement.
Who dominated the Twitter talk? Bubble teams. Iona, who many felt did not deserve an at-large bid, was mentioned nearly 12,000 times over two hours beginning with the commencement of the tournament selection show at 6 p.m. Eastern Time. Drexel, who many saw as an egregious snub, was mentioned more than 9,000 times during that span. Check out this chart from the social media research company Fizziology for more on which teams were Sunday’s hottest topics:
Tweets discussing Iona broke almost evenly between positive and negative sentiment (see pie chart at right), which makes sense given how many folks were also happy to see the exciting squad including in the field. Of the people who expressed negative feelings about Iona being Big Dance bound, 20% mentioned Marshall as a more deserving team, according to Fizziology. Drexel was identified as a worthy replacement by 11%, and Northwestern, Seton Hall, Nevada and Washington by 2% apiece.
The Twittersphere was less divided on Drexel, though. Of the Dragons’ 9,321 mentions, Fizziology counts 71% as positive — meaning people indicating they should be have received a bid. Just 5% were negative, arguing they were rightly excluded, and about a quarter took a neutral stance on the issue. Check out this comparison of how sentiment about Drexel and Iona compared:
Now that the tournament field is set, attention has started turning to March Madness’s second great tradition, after bracket bloviation — gambling. Head over to basketball data-visualization site Hoopism.com for a live-updating, interactive look at how fans are betting on the tournament’s first round games.
What were the best Selection Sunday tweets you saw? Does this data match what appeared in your feed? Who were the biggest snubs and most wrongfully-included teams? Let us know in the comments
No comments:
Post a Comment