If you’re into the twitter scene like I am, you’ve noticed Gary Parrish tweeting after each round where the remaining teams were ranked in his pre-season top 25 (and one).  That got me to thinking about the old issue of the pre-season poll versus the final poll. It’s been another good year for pre-season polls. […]

The field has been rid of the longshots. At this point, there aren’t any true surprises left in the field. Final4 Final Champ Start 1 in… 1S Kentucky 76.6 57.2 33.6 19.7 3 2E Ohio St. 64.4 41.2 24.8 19.3 4 2MW Kansas 53.0 22.5 10.9 9.1 9 1MW N. Carolina 47.0 18.7 8.5 6.6 […]

Hot off the presses, we have the log5 analysis for the 16 remaining teams. These teams comprised 81% of the title-winning chances before the tourney started, up from 69% last season, indicating that this year’s group was more expected than last season’s. (Pre-tournament chances are indicated in the ‘Prev’ column.) Michigan State received nearly 6% […]

Swt16 Elite8 Final4 Final Champ 1 in… 1S Kentucky 81.5 60.0 48.5 31.9 19.3 5 2E Ohio St. 81.2 65.8 44.4 29.9 18.6 5 1W Michigan St 71.1 52.7 39.0 24.0 14.1 7 2MW Kansas 73.6 49.5 31.9 16.3 8.6 12 1MW N. Carolina 76.6 62.1 34.2 16.3 8.0 13 4E Wisconsin 64.5 38.5 19.1 […]

It was high comedy on Sunday when the brackets revealed that Memphis and Saint Louis were forced to play each other in the round of 64. I haven’t done the research, but it would be hard for any previous round-of-64 game to top this one in the overall strength of the competing teams. Once my […]

Full disclosure: Every year I love the prospect of a 16 winning its first-ever game over a one-seed. Loyal readers will recall my irrational exuberance regarding Oral Roberts in 2006. This is not without reason, though. If you run the numbers, the chances of all of the one-seeds getting to the Final Four are typically […]

What follows is log5-style predictions of each team’s chance of advancing to each round in the tournament. The full list of 68 follows the regional analysis. [Corrected tables due to error in UNC’s rating -kp 3/12] South – I agree with Luke. Kentucky has the easiest path for a one-seed. The reputations of Duke and […]

Congratulations to Tommy Lemoine of Manchester, New Hampshire who earned himself a lifetime subscription to my site by virtue of winning the Mountain West tourney contest. Tommy is a recent Michigan State grad and here was his winning scorecard: Question Pick Result What will be San Diego State’s largest lead against Boise State? 12 11 […]

Conference tourney season ends today, seemingly hours after it started. And that means it’s time to look back on the successes and failures of the system. The chart below attempts to summarize the performance of the log5 method vs. the seeds. For instance, 12 teams won a title that were deemed the most likely to […]

New Mexico beat San Diego State 68-59 in a 68-possession game Saturday night. I was there. This is what I saw. Good defense or bad offense? Before Chase Tapley entered beast mode late in the game, the Lobos were putting up some gaudy defensive stats. The Aztecs weren’t taking many threes and facing the usual […]