Here at kenpom.com, we care deeply about how well our predictions do. It’s one thing to say you’ve picked 76% of winners, but that’s a meaningless statistic, especially in a sport with as many mismatches as college hoops.

That’s why this season we are tracking the performance of our forecasts. Eventually, we’ll use this information to calibrate the model a little better. I think people that follow this stuff closely understand that the percentages given to winning in my system are a little too aggressive. (For this reason, I water down the initial chance of winning in the win probability graphs.) But I won’t know how much until I aggregate the performance of predictions over the course of the season.

Here’s the breakdown on predictions through Tuesday’s games.

Prediction    W-L    Pct
  50-55%     38-32  .543
  56-60%     34-29  .540
  61-65%     38-28  .576
  66-70%     56-24  .700
  71-75%     50-24  .676
  76-80%     51-13  .797
  81-85%     67-17  .798
  86-90%     67-19  .779
  91-95%    130-5   .963
   96+%     194-5   .975

Ideally, predictions of a win chance of X% should hit X% of the time. Based on that, the predictions are holding up fairly well which to me means the pre-season ratings were well worth it. Actually, the pre-season ratings have helped keep the predictions from being too aggressive early in the season. Of course, I am pre-conditioned to want my choice to use pre-season ratings to be justified, so take my opinion in that context.

The top upset so far has been Texas Southern over Oregon State, where the Tigers cashed in on a 2.1% chance for victory. Undoubtedly, there are bigger shockers to come. (No, a team with a 43% chance to win doesn’t qualify.)