Category Archives: NCAA Basketball

Cinderella or Fairytale: March Madness v. the FA Cup

by Julian Ryan In America, March is the month of the Cinderella story for even the most casual of college basketball followers.  Millions of fans will turn on their televisions in the hope of watching the next Butler make a … Continue reading

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Links We Like: 3/29/13

It’s been a while since our last set of links, but we’re back in force to bring you the best reads from around the web for your weekend reading. – Jeff Sullivan analyzes Justin Verlander’s $180 million contract at FanGraphs … Continue reading

Posted in March Madness, MLB Baseball, NBA Basketball, NCAA Basketball, NFL Football, Weekly Links | Tagged | 1 Comment

Survival of the Fittest: Predicting the 2013 NCAA Tournament

The goal of every team in the NCAA tournament is to survive and advance. And, if you want to win your March Madness pool, your goal should be to predict which teams will do just that. Most prediction systems view … Continue reading

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Predicting the Madness: 2013 Upset Edition

For the past two years, I have worked on a model that predicts NCAA Tournament upsets using the gospel of tempo-free basketball stats, the Four Factors. Over that time, the model has gone a perfect six for six in predicting … Continue reading

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The Best Home Court Advantage You’ve Never Heard About

Ask any player or coach in the Ivy League which gym is the toughest to play in, and you will get a near unanimous response: Jadwin Gymnasium at Princeton University. The Palestra may get (a lot) louder, and the road … Continue reading

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The RPI is Not the Real Predictive Indicator

Despite taking quite the beating recently, the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) is still the official and favored ranking system of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Selection Committee. The RPI does not take into account margin of victory, making its predictive accuracy … Continue reading

Posted in March Madness, NCAA Basketball | 22 Comments

Crowdsourcing Divinest Sense from March Madness

By David Roher “thumbs up if u know JB’s haters are pathetic… when he is all about the love” — SkilletBiscuitCrew on Baby There are two ways to manage internet commentary. You can restrict the conversation to an elite group, or … Continue reading

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Survival of the Fittest: A New Model for NCAA Tournament Prediction

(Editor’s note: You can see the model’s 2012 1-68 rankings here and full bracket here) Every year, millions of Americans tune in to watch the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, colloquially known as March Madness. And every year, millions participate in Bracket Pools, where … Continue reading

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2012 NCAA Survival Model Full Rankings

Below is my full Survival Model rankings for the NCAA tournament in 2012. The numbers are tough to interpret, but they represent the relative risk of failing (losing) at a given time period. Lower numbers represent better chances to advance:

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Predicting NCAA Tournament Upsets: The Importance of Turnovers and Rebounding

For the past two years, I have attempted to systematically predict First Round NCAA Tournament upsets using a dataset of match-ups from 2004 onward. Last year, I improved the model by adding opponent Four Factors data, and the model correctly … Continue reading

Posted in NCAA Basketball | Tagged | 39 Comments