Log 5 season: winning is everything
by Ken Pomeroy on Monday, February 27, 2012
Tonight, the Big South tournament tips off with 2012 tournament play officially beginning at 7 pm ET at cozy Cameron Hall in Lexington, Virginia. That means it’s time for the annual tradition of log5-style conference tournament predictions to begin.
For the uninitiated, I’ll be using Bill James’ log5 equation (it makes theoretical sense!) on the pythagorean rating from my system to give appropriate estimates on the chances of conference tournament participants advancing to each round.
Why do this? Mainly to know who should win, so that when they don’t win you can express the appropriate level of surprise to your friends and co-workers. (Last year’s most improbable occurrence as UConn winning the Big East tourney at 2.0%.) But we also use it because it works really well. Better than seeding anyway. Take a look at this chart based on last…