March 12-16. All games at Madison Square Garden.
All-kenpom: Russ Smith, Louisville (kPOY); Otto Porter, Georgetown; Michael Carter-Williams, Syracuse; Tray Woodall, Pitt; Gorgui Dieng, Louisville.
Louisville is working on its second-consecutive adjusted defensive efficiency title and may be the best team in the country. They’re certainly in the discussion with Indiana and Duke right now, or at least should be. Even if one assumes this, there’s no guarantee the Cards emerge from MSG with three wins. According to this analysis, the chances are slightly against them. Consider this the annual reminder that unexpected things can and will happen in tournament play. The one-seed does Georgetown no favors here as they figure to have a more difficult semifinal game than Louisville. This will be the last five-day event for the Big East tournament for a while, and with matchups like Rutgers-DePaul and Seton Hall-South Florida in the first round of this event, that part of the tourney won’t be missed.
St. John’s gets half of a home-court share in this analysis.
Numbers listed are the probabilities of a team advancing to each round. Unfamiliar with log5? Here’s more than you want to know.
Rd1 Qtrs Semis Final Champ 2 Louisville 100 100 88.0 71.4 49.8 4 Pittsburgh 100 100 63.0 41.7 19.5 1 Georgetown 100 100 69.7 29.8 11.0 5 Syracuse 100 89.0 36.1 20.8 8.0 3 Marquette 100 100 60.8 15.7 6.0 6 Notre Dame 100 80.9 36.0 8.0 2.7 9 Cincinnati 100 58.5 19.5 5.3 1.3 7 Villanova 100 64.6 9.1 3.8 1.1 8 Providence 100 41.5 10.8 2.3 0.4 10 St. John's 100 35.4 2.9 0.8 0.2 11 Rutgers 61.1 13.3 2.4 0.2 0.03 12 Seton Hall 57.6 7.1 0.6 0.1 0.01 14 DePaul 38.9 5.8 0.7 0.04 0.003 13 S. Florida 42.4 3.9 0.3 0.03 0.002