THE POWER RANK

Check Out The 2013 Interactive Bracket for March Madness

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The Power Rank calculates the 416 win probabilities for March Madness, 2012.With every passing day in March, college basketball heats up that much more. Basketball junkies like us only have 16 days left until the committee announces the field of 68.

However, we couldn’t wait that long to see who would win the tourney. We took Jerry Palm’s bracket predictions from yesterday and calculated the win probabilities for each team to advance through each round. These odds are based on our college basketball team rankings, which give a win probability for each game.

We show these numbers in our interactive bracket (click here to open it up in a new tab). To unveil the win probabilities for a team to advance, hover over the team name. To discover the odds that a team wins a game, hover over the circle for that game.

Last year, Amy Nelson of SB Nation made this awesome video about our analytics and this interactive visualization.

You should draw your own conclusion from this year’s numbers. These 3 things jumped out at us.

Florida has largest chance of winning the tourney

What? The Gator team that has dropped 3 games in a weak SEC conference? The team that’s only 11th in the AP poll has a 12.8% chance of winning the tourney?

Florida is the top team in our college basketball rankings. Despite being more than a point and half better than even Indiana, they have lost 5 games this year because of their love affair with the 3 point shot. Over 40% of their shots come from behind the arc. Most nights, they shoot pretty well, hitting 38.4% of their 3’s for the season. However, they can also die by the 3.

Florida’s chance at winning the tourney would be even higher had Palm not put them in the Region of Death. The East region has Duke, Michigan and Syracuse in addition to Florida, all top 10 teams in The Power Rank. The committee takes geography into account when determining the bracket. Since most of the best college basketball teams are east of the Mississippi River, the bracket has regions of vastly differing strength.

Pittsburgh in the West

If the East is the Region of Death, then the West is the Region of Eternal Life. Due to geography considerations, the West has Gonzaga, New Mexico and Arizona as the top 3 seeds. While our numbers love Gonzaga (#3), New Mexico and Arizona are 19th and 15th respectively. One would expect the worst 2 and 3 seed to have a rank of 8th and 12th.

This unbalanced bracket opens the door for Pittsburgh, the 5 seed in the West. After an uncharacteristically poor season last year, the Panthers have surged back on the national scene with coach Jamie Dixon. Ranked 12th in The Power Rank, they have a 10.9% chance of making the Final 4 out of the West. It’s not as high as Gonzaga’s 25.3% chance, but it’s higher than most “experts” will give them.

First round upsets

The Madness of March starts that first Thursday (or Friday on a weird year) of the tourney when higher seeded teams get upset by double digit seeded teams. In Palm’s bracket, Oregon and Butler look most vulnerable.

Oregon has been overrated all year, rising to 19th in the most recent AP poll but only 49th in The Power Rank. They got exposed last night at Colorado, losing by 23. Wichita State has a 55% chance of upsetting Oregon in the first round.

Most people remember Butler for their consecutive championship game appearances from a few years back. However, this year’s team doesn’t have the same defensive toughness as those teams. Middle Tennessee State, who was our highest ranked team not to make last year’s tourney, has a 51% chance of knocking off Butler in the first round.

Interactive Bracket

What jumps out at you in our numbers? (Here’s that link to the interactive bracket again.) Let us know in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

College Basketball Wrapup, 2011

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Dependent on three
Butler comes so close again
Fifty-eight percent

In the national championship game, Butler hit a three point shot at the beginning of the second half to go up 6 against Connecticut. While this might seem like a good thing, it wasn’t. Butler built that lead on three point shots, making only one two point basket up until that point. And Butler is not a three point shooting team. Their signature is hard nosed defense. Sure enough, Connecticut slowly crawled back into the game as Butler couldn’t make any shots in the lane and went cold from 3 point land. It’s bad when one can easily recall all of a team’s two point baskets in a game: an Andrew Smith jump hook in the first half, an Andrew Smith layup after an offensive rebound, and a Shawn Vansant jumper. UConn wins comfortably by 12.

Usually, we like to highlight the predictive capabilities of our analytics and mention how the algorithm predicted a UConn win. But predictions are hard and don’t always work out. Kevin Hwang filled out a bracket on espn and yahoo using the rankings (higher ranked team as the winner of each game) and ended up 33.6% and 32% respectively. That’s bad. The brackets were hurt when BYU and San Diego State lost close games in the Sweet Sixteen. The bracket were decimated when none of the one seeds made the Final Four, leaving the bracket with no teams for the last weekend of the tourney. At the beginning of the tourney, Ohio State had separated from the pack but the next 13 teams were separated by only 4 points in their ratings. So the higher ranked team in many tourney games had only a slight edge. Imagine drawing a line in your bedroom that splits it into regions of 60% and 40% of the floor space. If one spun around and randomly flung pieces of clothing around, it’s unlikely that they all land in the 60% region. It’s analogous to picking the higher ranked team in each game in your bracket. We’ll work on something better for next year.

However, The Power Rank did much better on a game by game basis. In our tournament preview, we highlighted 6 teams seeded higher than 10 that might pull a first round upset. Three of these teams won, the number we expect if each team had an equal chance of winning the game. Overall, we went 34-24-1 against the line, passing on the remaining 8 games. This corresponds to a 58.6% winning percentage.

Sweet Sixteen Predictions, 2011 Tournament

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We were out dinner during the Pittsburgh Butler game last Saturday night. As the clock wound down, I did what any self respecting Dad would do and picked up my son out of his high chair so he could watch the game. Eli would have none of it. All through the last ten seconds of the game, which saw an amazing play for the go ahead layup by Butler and two controversial fouls, Eli kicked and fussed, clearly upset about my insistence that he watched this game. He didn’t seem to understand that he would ask me about this night a decade from now. Really, people thought Pitt was a bunch of chokers before Jamie Dixon’s team won a national championship? After the game, we headed out to my mother-in-law’s van to head home. Since Eli crawled into the back seat to play with some toys, I headed back to the restaurant to use the restroom. As soon as I left, he crawls up into his car seat and says “Bye, Daddy.” So much for showing my two year son the glory of March Madness.

In the Round of 64 and 32, The Power Rank went 24 for 42 against the line with 1 push and 5 games in which our prediction was too close to the line. That’s a 57.1% winning percentage. We found the wins by Butler, Michigan, Marquette and George Mason in the Round of 64 particularly gratifying, as The Power Rank called these winners while Vegas listed them as underdogs. However, we were humbled by the spectacular play of VCU and Florida State on Sunday night. Here are our Mountain West flavored predictions for the Sweet Sixteen:

San Diego State will beat Connecticut by 2.0

Duke will beat Arizona by 6.8

Brigham Young will beat Florida by 2.4, upset by lower seed.

Wisconsin will beat Butler by 4.6

Kansas will beat Richmond by 6.7

Florida State will beat VCU by 0.1

North Carolina will beat Marquette by 1.4

Ohio State will beat Kentucky by 5.1