With a nearly complete database of win probability calculations for each possession played last season, it’s time to do something reasonably fun with the data. What follows is not a compendium of the biggest comebacks in terms of points. It is a mix of those kinds of situations and cases where an underdog spotted its […]

There have been a few write-ups on the Isner/Mahut marathon tennis match already. Most notably this one by Carl Bialik of the Wall Street Journal. None have addressed the core issue – was this a conspiracy just so John Isner could appear on Letterman? Unfortunately, tennis stats are not sophisticated enough to do a proper […]

(For a more detailed explanation on how these were derived: see also this.) Well, nearly every game. You’ll have to look hard to find the missing games involving two D-I teams. Just head over to your favorite team’s page and click on the score of the game. Since these are adjusted win probabilities, games involving […]

The 2010 title game was pretty boring from a win probability perspective. So much so, that I questioned whether my code was working correctly at halftime of my live WP experiment. As it turned out, I almost picked the worst possible game for semi-live win probability to make its debut. It seemed unusual for a […]

This will have to stand as representative of the many e-mails that my computer received in February and March from people claiming their eyes were soooo much better. A computer has to vent, sometimes, and in light of recent events, my computer finds the subject matter especially amusing. from Somebody to ratings@kenpom.com date Tue, Feb […]

I’ve created a crude graph on which I plan to plot in-game win probabilities for the title game. (It looks best in something other than Chrome.) I’ve updated my methodology so that I can plot the win probability for the beginning of every possession during the game. I’ll attempt to update the plot at each […]

Remember when Billy Packer declared the 2008 Final Four game between Kansas and North Carolina over? Billy got a bit of blowback for that, especially after UNC was able to pull within four points midway through the second half. I always felt like Billy was on safe ground with his statement. Granted, I supposed “over” […]

I tried a variation of this in the past and it didn’t go so well, but I stand behind my reasoning. The way Kyle feels about brackets in general is the way I feel about “expert” brackets. Yes, thanks guys, Kansas is the best team. We didn’t need your expert opinion to figure that out. […]

In many ways, conference tournaments get a bad rap. When somebody like Houston wins the Conference USA tournament, we are forced to try and make sense of how a team that had a losing conference record could be declared its champion. However, in the vast majority of situations a tournament is not a bad way […]

I am throwing a little Saturday morning reading out there in response to the fine posts authored by Gasaway, Hanner, and Jen regarding whether the selection committee should include margin of victory in their deliberations. Let’s do this with bullet points. Consider it Pomeroy’s wish for a brighter bracketing future. 1) This should not be […]