📝 The Week That Was (March 17-21, 2025)

A roundup of what I wrote, read, watched, etc. over the past week.

Mar 22, 2025

In this space on Saturdays, I do a weekly round-up of sorts: Sifting through what I wrote that you might have missed during the week, what I’ve been reading and watching myself, and some other fun things that have been going on. Let me know what you think about the format in the comments (or email me!1), and if there are running sections you’d like to see on a regular basis.

What I did this week

Here are the things I wrote or podcasted about during the previous week, sorted in descending order by quality, popularity and/or current relevance. And yes, this was a notably basketball-heavy week! Apologies to readers who like the other sports; we’ll do more of them next week.

🏀 Rick Pitino and John Calipari’s Long, Strange Paths Cross Again - With St. John’s and Arkansas set to face off in the NCAA tournament this afternoon, I wrote about the trajectories of their two coaches — Pitino and Calipari — as friends, rivals and eventually whatever the hell it is that they are now.
What a photo, LOL.
🏀 Nikola Jokić Is Losing the NBA MVP Race — But Probably Not Because of Voter Fatigue - There’s a (not-unreasonable) narrative setting in that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is leading Jokić for the MVP because voters might be tired of penciling in the big Serbian’s name for the award every single year. But what does the data say about the effect of voter fatigue in the NBA?
🏀 Building the Perfect Men’s March Madness Lineup - Using some Bart Torvik stats, I plotted out the best players in the 2025 tourney field at a variety of different micro-positions/roles.
🏁Why Homestead can give us early clues about title contenders - At NASCAR.com, I wrote about why Homestead-Miami Speedway still has outsized influence on the Cup Series championship even though it no longer hosts the title race — nor is it even a part of the playoffs this year.
- 🏁🎧 A Berry Good Weekend - This week on
  Podracing
  ,
  Tyler
  and I talked about Josh Berry’s surprise win at Vegas — the seventh-most surprising win on an oval since 2006 according to predicted Driver Rating (see below) — plus we broke down this weekend’s race at Miami and made our one-and-done contest picks.
  Berry’s first career win came as a shock.
🏀 Duke Is the Right Favorite — But These Underrated Teams Could Win Your Pool - Jason Lisk of PoolGenius and I compared pre-tournament public picks with the statistical odds to find teams that were probably underrated by your tourney pool competitors — and thus would provide good value for your picks.
🏀 These 2025 NCAA Men’s Tournament Teams Are Set Up to Impress — Or Disappoint - Before the tourney tipped off, I used my NCAA Tournament Forecast model to look for teams who had the best chance of winning more — or less — than we would expect based on historical trends for their seed.
🏀 Programming Note: Be sure to check out my 🏀 2025 NCAA Tournament Forecast 📊 for a free, updating look at each men’s tourney team’s odds to advance through (and win) the NCAA championship.
🏒 Other Programming Note: I’m refreshing my 🚨 Ovi Tracker 🚨 after every Washington Capitals game to estimate Alex Ovechkin’s chances of tying or breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record, by any particular date, over the remainder of the 2024-25 regular season.
⚾️ Other Other Programming Note: I launched the ⚾ 2025 MLB Elo Power Rankings 📈 page to reflect the season starting in Japan this week. The ratings are still almost entirely based on regression from the end of last year, so keep checking in after the games begin stateside to track your favorite team’s progress throughout the season.

Some interesting things I read/watched this week

A collection of articles (with a heavy focus on my fellow Substackers), videos and other media that I enjoyed and/or found thought-provoking over the past week. I don’t always 100% agree with what’s linked here… but that’s also sort of the point.