To win your bracket pool, you’ve gotta pick the right champ (in standard scoring formats). The final game is worth as much as the first 32 games combined.
This year’s model has been trained and the simulation of the tournament completed. According to the simulation results, these are the teams with the best chances to win the tournament.
Continue readingWin your bracket pool by using simulation results from BracketResearch.com’s computer model that amazingly predicts NCAA Tournament outcomes.
The South Region is the most competitive this year. By that, I mean there is only a 42% chance one of the top 2 seeds will win the region – the lowest chance of any region. There is a 95% chance the winner will be one of nine teams…
Continue readingCorrectly picking the champ is the most important part of winning any bracket competition. Hitting on a Final Four pick or two is also key to having a top scoring NCAA Tournament bracket. Identifying teams that don’t measure up in some way to past Final Four teams can help. Here’s a thread where I list 18 teams (seeded 3-11) that should at least think twice about before making them our Final Four picks.
Continue readingWe already know teams from mid-major conferences don’t win the NCAA Tournament. More than that, though, we can set a minimum conference strength for a team to have a shot at winning it all.
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With 2 weeks and some change until Selection Sunday, Providence has built an excellent resume. Projected as a 4-seed in the Bracket Matrix, Providence is:
…and yet, receive little-to-no love from the computers. Providence is ranked 28, 31, 41, and 46 in the NET, Sagarin, BPI (ESPN), and KenPom rankings – not even close to what we’d expect from a 4-seed.
Continue readingLast week’s AP Poll narrowed our list of contenders to 12 teams. 30 of the last 32 champs ranked in the top 12, seven weeks before the tournament started. At the end of the regular season, we’ll be able to narrow the list to the key handful of teams that are built like a champ.
Continue readingI’ve gathered bracket probabilities from other websites to compare with my model’s results. Here are the numbers from those models as well as a composite (average of all the models) probability for every team reaching each round. Apologies to the other play-in teams, but I assumed Michigan State, Wichita State, Mt St Mary’s, and Appalachian State win their First Four games.
I’ll show the numbers in a few different looks – Champs, First Round Upsets, Bracket Busters, Cinderellas, Busts, Dark Horse Final Four, and a composite for All Teams/All Rounds – get your scrolling fingers ready!
IMPORTANT NOTE: the probabilities for 14-Colgate are significantly inflated by the shocking numbers the model from The Power Rank gives them.
I was able to find predictions at the following websites:
Continue readingAn early exit for a top seed is losing in the first weekend of the tournament, or in other words failing to reach the Sweet 16.
Only 67% of 1-3 seeds reach the Sweet 16, so this happens often enough that you should at least consider it while making your picks. This year, we have 2 top-seeded teams that are likely not going to survive the first weekend (greater than 50% chance). Here are the most likely top-seeded teams to make an early exit.
Continue readingA dark horse Final Four team is a 5+ seed that reaches the Final Four
Even though 83% of all Final Four teams have been seeded 1-4, 9 of the last 10 tournaments have had at least 1 5+ seed in the Final Four. The following teams have the best chances among this year’s “longshots.”
Continue readingBracket Buster definition: a 6+ seeded team that reaches the Elite 8
Most bracket fillers conservatively stick to the highest seeds when picking their Elite 8 teams, and rightly so – about 81% of all Elite 8 teams were 1-5 seeds. So when a 6+ seed reaches the Elite 8, most people’s brackets are busted.
Last tournament was the only one in the last 10 that did not have a bracket buster. Here are this year’s most likely Bracket Busters (teams with at least 10% chance):
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