Last year, PayScale predicted the winner of the Men's Division I NCAA basketball tournament based upon our favorite measure: salary. The 2010 winner was Duke Univeristy with an average salary amongst its grads of $104,000 per year. This year? We're not doing as well.
See our predictions for Salary Madness 2011.
The tournament is down to 12 teams, as the battle for the final four slots happens this weekend. The finalists for the West and the Southeast regional playoffs have been chosen.
In the West, Arizona and UConn remain. We had predicted Duke University and Bucknell to have those precious final spots. In reality, though, Bucknell didn’t even make it out of the second round, though Duke fought its way to the Sweet Sixteen, they lost to Arizona by nearly twenty points.
In the Southeast, Butler and Florida are still competing. We were counting on UCLA and Wisconsin to lead that region’s competition. Wrong again.
What about the four teams left in the East and Southwest? We were right about Marquette doing well in the East bracket. They play the University of North Carolina tonight to move forward – go Marquette!
We were way off in the Southwest. Graduates’ salaries just weren’t the right predicting factor. For example, we figured that Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) would be gone in the Play-In round. Instead, they beat USC there (despite a $30,000 difference in average graduate pay!), then went on to pummel Georgetown and Purdue.
So, the best we did was getting Marquette to our “Salary 16.” We’ll have to cut our losses and look forward to next year. How is your bracket doing?
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