Joseph Lunardi is an American college

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

analyst for

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

. He was born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

, attended Saint Joseph's Preparatory School in Philadelphia, as well as Damien High School in CA, and is a Saint Joseph's University alumnus. Lunardi currently lives outside of

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

. He is best known for creating

Bracketology Bracketology is the process of predicting the field of college basketball participants in the NCAA basketball tournament, named as such because it is commonly used to fill in tournament brackets for the postseason. It incorporates some method of p ...

, which he calls the "art and science" of predicting the teams that will be selected in the annual

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

Men's Basketball Tournament. He is well known as the resident bracketologist for ESPN. In addition to his duties at ESPN, he is the Assistant Vice President of Marketing Communications at Saint Joseph's University and does color commentary for men's basketball for the

Saint Joseph's Hawks The Saint Joseph's Hawks are the athletic teams that represent Saint Joseph's University of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Hawks compete in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association as a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference ...

. Lunardi correctly predicted all 65 teams to appear in the

2008 NCAA tournament The 2008 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament involved 65 schools playing in a single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball as a culmination of the 2007–08 basketbal ...

. Lunardi has stated that his first bracket for ESPN received 250,000 hits in the first 90 minutes posted. His brackets sometimes receive millions of hits over the course of a season. Since then, he has been a fixture on ESPN's ''Bracketology'' program and on '' SportsCenter'', especially during the months of February and March in the run-up to the NCAA Tournament.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lunardi, Joe Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Saint Joseph's University alumni American color commentators Television personalities from Philadelphia Sportswriters from Pennsylvania