• Home
• People
• Joe Lunardi

Joe Lunardi

Joseph Lunardi is a college basketball analyst for ESPN. He was born in Philadelphia, attended Damien High School in California, and is a Saint Joseph's University alumnus. Lunardi currently lives in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. He is best known for creating Bracketology, which he calls the "art and science" of predicting the teams that will be selected in the annual NCAA 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. Lunardi correctly predicted all 65 teams to appear in the 2008 NCAA Tournament, while correctly selecting 63 out the 65 teams in the 2009 field by placing both Creighton and St. Mary's incorrectly in his final bracket on March 15. Lunardi correctly selected 64 of the 65 teams in the 2010 NCAA Tournament, believing that Illinois would receive the final at-large bid, while in reality, Florida did. After making mistakes in both 2011 and 2012, Lunardi correctly predicted all 68 teams for the 2013 tournament. For 2014 March Madness, Lunardi came "close enough" by correctly picking 67 of 68 teams, with SMU as the only defect. Lunardi's 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.