By the Numbers: Filling Out the Bracket, For Real This Time

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The Jayhawks won it all in 2008. Can they make another run to the title?

Now that the field of 65 has been announced, it’s time to fill out the bracket and attempt to forecast what will happen over the next couple of weeks. Clearly, no one has a foolproof way to predict how the tournament will unfold – if they did, they would take it to Vegas and make millions instead of spreading it across the Internet. So I’m not going to tell you that my bracket is invincible. I’ll be lucky if I can get 75% of the games right. But I’ve gone with this strategy for several years now, and not only has it consistently picked the champion, but it usually predicts underdogs that make big runs (like Davidson in 2008).

So what’s the secret? I base my bracket picks, for the most part, on just one statistic: adjusted scoring margin. The number of points a team outscores its opponents by, on average, is a stronger indicator of their strength than any other factor. It’s more accurate than their win-loss record, their seeding, or anything else. Granted, the quality of the opponent makes a difference here. Beating Duke by 20 points means a lot more than beating Marist by 20 points. To compensate for different opponents, I use a formula that adjusts the scoring margin based on the team’s strength of schedule. It’s not foolproof, obviously, but it’s a fairly reliable way to separate the contenders from the pretenders. So let’s take a look at the top ten tournament teams based on their adjusted scoring margin.

The teams you might expect make an appearance, including all of the 1 seeds, but we see three major surprises. BYU checks in as the #4 team by this metric despite being a 7 seed. Utah State, a 12 seed, isn’t far behind at #6. Consequently, I have them making fairly deep runs in the tournament. If I’m right, it should be a happy year for the state of Utah.

I won’t post my entire bracket here, although I have taken the liberty of posting it on ESPN.com’s Tournament Bracket Contest under the group “How to Watch Sports.” Feel free to join and submit your own bracket so you can show me how much better you are at making picks. (My wife has submitted her own bracket, based solely on feminine intuition, in an effort to show me that I shouldn’t spend so much time assembling a database.)

Instead, I’m going to write about a few games of interest that we might see in the next few days, including their seeding, adjusted scoring margin (ASM), and rank out of the field of 65.

8 UNLV (6.8 ASM, #38) VS. 9 NORTHERN IOWA (6.8 ASM, #37)

This could very well be the best game of the first round. UNLV and UNI are about as evenly matched as you could hope for. In fact, they were so evenly matched that I ended up flipping a coin to pick the winner. I went with UNI, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see UNLV win it.

5 BUTLER (8.0 ASM, #25) VS. 12 UTEP (8.8 ASM, #17)

With their experience in the tournament and their close location to Indianapolis, Butler is a trendy pick to make the Final Four. That said, my system isn’t especially impressed with them. It loves UTEP, though, which was criminally underseeded thanks to a close loss to Houston in the C-USA title game. UTEP is a dangerous team, and I expect them to catch Butler napping in the first round.

4 VANDERBILT (6.6 ASM, #39) VS. 13 MURRAY STATE (8.9 ASM, #16)

Pretty much the same scenario as above, which is fitting, since they’re in the same pod. Vanderbilt received a generous seed considering their play this year, and I think their run ends early, much the same as it did in 2008 against Siena.

5 TEXAS A&M (6.0 ASM, #44) VS. 12 UTAH STATE (10.3 ASM, #6)

This game is interesting, since my rankings suggest that the seedings might be more appropriate if they were switched. Not a lot of love here for the Texas Aggies, despite their strong strength of schedule. I expect Utah State to roll here and surprise a lot of people. Fear the Utah Aggies.

6 NOTRE DAME (6.0 ASM, #45) VS. 11 OLD DOMINION (8.2 ASM, #24)

Notre Dame made a surprisingly deep run in the Big East tournament and seems to have impressed the committee, picking up a 6 seed. Less impressive was the scoring margin for Notre Dame. While they kept winning games, they did so in tight fashion, never really distancing themselves from their opponents. They’re talented, certainly, but luck played a big factor in winning so many close games. Old Dominion should put an early stop to the luck of the Irish.

5 TEMPLE (7.1 ASM, #34) VS. 12 CORNELL (6.8 ASM, #36)

Another coin-toss game. Temple has had an incredible year, but Cornell might be the best team no one is paying attention to. Temple’s slight edge in ASM and much stronger schedule earn them the nod here, but Cornell should give them all they can handle in this dynamite first-round matchup.

16A ARKANSAS-PINE BLUFF (-0.4 ASM, #65) VS. 16B WINTHROP (0.4 ASM, #64)

This game probably won’t be very interesting, but I think it’s noteworthy that the selection committee correctly identified the two worst teams in the field for the play-in game. In my years of ranking the tournament teams, this is the first time I’ve actually seen that happen.

Consider this a taste of what we can expect from the first round of the tournament, which is, in my mind, the two greatest days of the sporting year. Will I pick them all correctly? Almost definitely not. That’s why they call it March Madness. And when my bracket goes to pieces, you can all watch with me as my wife cruises to victory.

Isn’t March great?