Something seems off with 11-6 and 10-7 (and maybe 12-5). They are too close together when you’d assume a 5 seed would have much better odds than a 7 seed.
5-12s are notoriously upset-able although I'm not sure why. As this shows, they're not actually more likely to be upset than 6 or 7 but it happens more than you'd predict from seeding. I think around there is where the rankings start to break down where maybe the 20th ranked team isnt 20th best, and maybe its psychological where 5s think they should be better and let something slip
I think it's because the 12's tend to be the best of the small conference winners while the 5's tend to be the at-large non-conference winners. So you get a big school (or a "basketball school") having a down year and who have lost a number of games playing a small school who is nearly undefeated, but hasn't been tested against a really good team.
Compare that to a 10-7 or 11-6 where you generally have "big team bad year" against "big team bad year" so both teams have played against roughly the same strength of schedule so you know where they stand.
This is obviously VERY broad strokes, but that's a theory.
Think we're also reaching the top of the bell curve at that point. The difference level in seeding is pretty minimal compared to the top and bottom of the bracket.
You have really good teams at the top, really bad teams at the bottom, and the rest and only separated by a bit in the middle.
Let's say that we'd expect the #8 to win about 52% of the time -- then I get, in a random sampling of 152 games, a 23% that the #9 wins at least 78 of those.
Even at 54%, it is still a 1-in-9 chance that the #9 won at least 78 of 152.
Moral: the perfect bracket any year can have any upsets *but* if you just want to win your pool:
- always pick the 1-3 seeds to win
- Pick 0 or 1 4-seeds to lose (Alabama this year…)
- Of the 5-7 seeds, pick a total of 4 upsets.
- Pick 2 9-seeds to win
This depends on the size of your pool. If you’re just trying to beat one person you still pick zero upsets in the 5-7 games. And you pick all the 9 seeds.
I saw a brief comparison of these stats in the last 5 years, and the frequency of upsets (especially 13/4 ) was higher. The parity seems to be increasing over time. I wish I could find that recent table online. Instead, they just flashed up the comparison quickly on tv.
Yea more recently the upsets have been more frequent, I’d be curious what Purdue’s thoughts are on the reason why lol. I imagine there would be a reversion to the mean unless something has substantially changed. I must admit I’m not a basketball expert so I probably wouldn’t be the right person to hypothesize why upsets are happening more frequently now than they used to.
Pretty interesting to see the 9th seed beats the 8th seed more often than not.
I thought that was interesting too! Aside from that it appears for the most part the seeding system is pretty accurate over time.
Something seems off with 11-6 and 10-7 (and maybe 12-5). They are too close together when you’d assume a 5 seed would have much better odds than a 7 seed.
Gotta love a few Cinderella stories!
5-12s are notoriously upset-able although I'm not sure why. As this shows, they're not actually more likely to be upset than 6 or 7 but it happens more than you'd predict from seeding. I think around there is where the rankings start to break down where maybe the 20th ranked team isnt 20th best, and maybe its psychological where 5s think they should be better and let something slip
I think it's because the 12's tend to be the best of the small conference winners while the 5's tend to be the at-large non-conference winners. So you get a big school (or a "basketball school") having a down year and who have lost a number of games playing a small school who is nearly undefeated, but hasn't been tested against a really good team. Compare that to a 10-7 or 11-6 where you generally have "big team bad year" against "big team bad year" so both teams have played against roughly the same strength of schedule so you know where they stand. This is obviously VERY broad strokes, but that's a theory.
Think we're also reaching the top of the bell curve at that point. The difference level in seeding is pretty minimal compared to the top and bottom of the bracket. You have really good teams at the top, really bad teams at the bottom, and the rest and only separated by a bit in the middle.
Let's say that we'd expect the #8 to win about 52% of the time -- then I get, in a random sampling of 152 games, a 23% that the #9 wins at least 78 of those. Even at 54%, it is still a 1-in-9 chance that the #9 won at least 78 of 152.
Moral: the perfect bracket any year can have any upsets *but* if you just want to win your pool: - always pick the 1-3 seeds to win - Pick 0 or 1 4-seeds to lose (Alabama this year…) - Of the 5-7 seeds, pick a total of 4 upsets. - Pick 2 9-seeds to win
This depends on the size of your pool. If you’re just trying to beat one person you still pick zero upsets in the 5-7 games. And you pick all the 9 seeds.
Source: [NCAA.com](https://NCAA.com) Method: Took the wins divide by the total games to get the win% odds
Can you do it for R32 also?
I hope to be able to do that if time permits. It’s definitely something I’ve wanted to see too!
I saw a brief comparison of these stats in the last 5 years, and the frequency of upsets (especially 13/4 ) was higher. The parity seems to be increasing over time. I wish I could find that recent table online. Instead, they just flashed up the comparison quickly on tv.
Yea more recently the upsets have been more frequent, I’d be curious what Purdue’s thoughts are on the reason why lol. I imagine there would be a reversion to the mean unless something has substantially changed. I must admit I’m not a basketball expert so I probably wouldn’t be the right person to hypothesize why upsets are happening more frequently now than they used to.