The round of 32 was a bad scenario for the victorious teams from the East Region. While other regions were going up in flames to varying degrees, giving remaining favorites Florida, Louisville, and Ohio State a decent boost to their title chances, the East has gone to form. Previous odds that built in the potential for chaos have been revised. In Indiana’s case, it didn’t help they had to squeak by the lowest-rated at-large team in the field. That’s true to a lesser extent for the other three teams in the region. None of the top four seeds in the East improved their rating, while the opposite occurred in other regions.
Strong Bad’s school has gone from a 1-in-827,000 shot before the tourney to a 1-in-48,000 shot before the round of 32, to a 1-in-14,000 shot now. (What will they be talking about on the campus radio station today? If only it was real…) Their log5 chances of reaching the Sweet 16 were 2.1 percent, more than I would have expected. Keep in mind, too, that professional oddsmakers are giving CGNU a much better shot of beating Florida than this analysis – around 13 percent. Given how they’ve destroyed two quality opponents, that revision makes some sense. (As Kevin Pelton pointed out on twitter, the Dumples, er, Eagles, have won their first two games by more points than one-seed Kansas.) So their true chances are of winning a title might be like 1-in-1000 or something.
Finally, there’s good news for Chuck Barkley. The Big Ten only has about a 29 percent chance of winning a title. The chance of an all-B1G Final Four is a mere 1-in-156, or roughly the chance of CGNU making it to Atlanta.
Seed Team Elite8 Final4 Final Champ 1 in… Prev 3S Florida 94.9 68.2 46.4 29.2 3 24.1 1MW Louisville 85.1 58.1 43.5 25.3 4 20.1 1E Indiana 66.8 48.8 23.8 13.0 8 15.2 2W Ohio St. 65.3 48.3 20.2 8.5 12 7.0 2MW Duke 53.7 21.1 12.7 5.3 19 4.0 3MW Michigan St. 46.3 16.7 9.5 3.7 27 2.8 4S Michigan 51.2 16.2 7.6 3.2 31 1.9 1S Kansas 48.8 15.0 6.9 2.8 36 2.8 2E Miami FL 64.5 23.5 7.2 2.6 38 2.6 4E Syracuse 33.2 19.2 6.3 2.4 41 3.1 6W Arizona 34.7 21.0 5.9 1.7 59 1.3 9W Wichita St. 62.4 21.5 5.2 1.2 81 0.4 3E Marquette 35.5 8.6 1.7 0.4 235 0.5 12MW Oregon 14.9 4.1 1.5 0.3 325 0.1 13W La Salle 37.6 9.2 1.5 0.2 414 0.1 15S CGNU 5.1 0.6 0.07 0.007 14504 0.002