{"id":452,"date":"2012-01-19T02:16:59","date_gmt":"2012-01-19T08:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/67.227.157.91\/~kenpom\/wp_blog\/the-sixgame-tournament\/"},"modified":"2012-01-19T02:16:59","modified_gmt":"2012-01-19T08:16:59","slug":"the-sixgame-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/the-sixgame-tournament\/","title":{"rendered":"The six&#45;game tournament?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Ivy League likes to fancy its regular season as the \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ivyleaguesports.com\/sports\/mbkb\/2010-11\/releases\/Mens_Basketball_Weekend_Preview_Jan._14-16\" title=\"14-game tournament\">14-game tournament<\/a>\u201d because it doesn\u2019t have an actual tournament and thus its 14-game regular season determines the conference champion. Technically, though, this is a misnomer. The Ivy League regular season is comprised of 56 games. The West Coast Conference has a tournament, but I\u2019ve been wondering if you could call the regular season a six-game tournament in Ivy terms. <\/p>\n<p>The WCC is composed of nine teams, but it spits in the face of the <a href=\"http:\/\/mathworld.wolfram.com\/NormalDistribution.html\" title=\"normal distribution\">normal distribution<\/a> by having three teams &#8211; Saint Mary\u2019s, Gonzaga, and BYU, which I\u2019ll call the Top 3 &#8211; that are much stronger than the other six, a.k.a. The Bottom 6.&nbsp; Thus far the Top 3 have gone 13-0 against the Bottom 6. There are three games tonight and the Top 3 are heavy favorites in each. But will the WCC truly be decided solely by the six contests between the Top 3? <\/p>\n<p>This is a question only the simulator can answer. At least right now. Simulating the remaining conference schedule using Wednesday\u2019s ratings resulted in the following records for the Top 3 in games against the Bottom 6.<\/p>\n<pre>Record    Occurrences\n 36-0        1229\n 35-1        2753\n 34-2        2919\n 33-3        1891\n 32-4         833\n 31-5         278\n 30-6          81\n 29-7          12\n 28-8           4\n<\/pre>\n<p>Despite the fact that the WCC takes top-heavy (perhaps \u201cbottom-light\u201d is more appropriate) to the extreme, the simulation reveals that there&#8217;s an 88% chance that at least one of the Top 3 loses a game they shouldn\u2019t. <\/p>\n<p>St. Mary\u2019s is now the favorite to win the regular season, having won both of the games involving Top 3 teams to this point. The fact that both games were on the Gaels\u2019 home floor devalues those wins somewhat, but not completely. The home team has about a 60-65% chance to win games against an evenly-skilled opponent and the Gaels\u2019 have turned that uncertainty into 100% by virtue of their wins. They need only split road games against BYU and Gonzaga to win the six-game tournament and give them a great shot at the regular season title. <\/p>\n<p>But despite the chasm that exists between the two sets of teams in the conference, the six-game tournament isn\u2019t quite the end of the story. While most games against the Bottom 6 will be lopsided, chances are that at least one of the Top 3 will be the victim of a major upset before the end of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Ivy League likes to fancy its regular season as the \u201c14-game tournament\u201d because it doesn\u2019t have an actual tournament and thus its 14-game regular season determines the conference champion. Technically, though, this is a misnomer. The Ivy League regular season is comprised of 56 games. The West Coast Conference has a tournament, but I\u2019ve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}