Soon we will begin the important Spring ritual of filling out the brackets -- choosing 63 winners in 63 games to be played over three hoop-filled weekends. As we all know, the winner of the pool is not always a person that follows college basketball closely. In fact, the winner of the office pool always seems to be a person who hasn't watched a game all year, picks winners based on mascot or uniform color and thinks Pepperdine is a children's cough syrup. The bottom line is that anyone can win the NCAA college basketball pool with a little luck and that's what makes it so interesting. The goal of the following analysis was to examine the factors that affect who wins and who loses those key NCAA Tournament matchups. Seeding remains the most important indicator of a team's chances to advance, but there are many other factors that can help determine who will win these games. I have analyzed nearly two decades worth of tournament results and team records in an attempt to find out which factors matter the most. The following is a synopsis of my findings.

Disclaimer

Let me start by saying that this site does not support or encourage gambling. I have provided this information for the amusement of college basketball fans and more specifically, stat junkies like myself. If this helps you fill out your brackets, that's great, but I would never advise anyone to gamble with money that they cannot afford to lose. The beauty of the NCAA pool is that it is very low risk with a possible high reward and the tournament is much more interesting when you have someone to root for. The following information is based on trends in the tournament over the past 15-18 years. There is no guarantee that these trends will continue this season. More importantly, even if these trends do hold true, they give you only a slight edge. Most of what happens in the tourney is pure chance and it takes a lot of luck to do well in your NCAA pool. Please feel free to email me and let me know what you think about the results. However, if you complain to me because you used these trends and they did not work, I will not listen. Use this information at your own risk. Now on to the results.

Rule #1 - Know Your Seeds

The first step in filling out your bracket is to understand the importance of seeding. Unless you are a complete novice to the religion that is March Madness, you know that in general the better the seed, the better the team. There are of course exceptions to this rule. At times the committee loses its mind, but in general the seeding is a fairly accurate representation of the quality of the teams. Here is how the seeds have performed on a round by round basis since 1995.

First Round

The following are the won-loss records of the better seeds in Round One (1995-2009):

• Number one seeds are 60-0 over the past 15 years and a perfect 100-0 since the tournament switched to 64 teams in 1985
• Number two seeds are nearly as strong, winning 97% of first round games since 1995
• The #13 and #14 seeds have had some success in the first round, winning 20 of 120 games (17%)
• In the past ten years, #14 seeds are 2-38 in the first round (but were 6-26 between 1992 and 1999)
• Interestingly, #12 seeds have performed better than #11 seeds (38% vs 28%)
• The #7 and #8 seeds are 62-58 against the #9 and #10 seeds since 1995

Second Round

Some interesting patterns also emerged in Round 2.

• #1 seeds have advanced to the Sweet Sixteen 53 of 60 times since 1995 (88%). Two #1 seeds lost in the second round in 2004 but all 20 have advanced to the Sweet Sixteen since.
• #6 seeds were 16-14 against #3 seeds between 1995 and 2007, but are 0-6 in the past two years.
• #2 seeds are 24-9 (73%) against #7 seeds but only 13-12 (52%) against #10 seeds
• #4 seeds are 13-16 (45%) against #5 seeds and 13-5 (72%) against #12 seeds
• Since 1995, only one #14 seed and three #13 seeds have advanced to the Sweet Sixteen (one of those was a #13 seed that beat a #12)

Third Round

By the time the third round (also known as the Sweet Sixteen) is complete, most of the major upset specials have left the tournament. Here are some patterns:

• Since 1995, a total of 43 #1 seeds have advanced to the Final Eight (just under three per year).
• #2 seeds account for 29 Elite Eight slots (about two per year).
• Predictably, #3 seeds were next with 16 slots followed by #4 seeds with eight. Not so predictably, #6 seeds reached the Elite Eight more times than #5 seeds (five to four).
• Seeds 7 through 11 have combined for only 15 trips to the Regional Finals (Final Eight) since 1995 (exactly one per year).
• In 2002, Missouri became the first team seeded 12 or higher to reach the Elite Eight since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. Teams seeded 12 to 14 are 1-19 in the third round over that time.
• During the past three years, 23 of 24 teams reaching the Elite Eight were seeded either 1, 2 or 3.

Final Four

It has been my experience that it is very difficult to win a large office pool without correctly picking at least three of the Final Four participants. This is because most pools allocate a greater amount of points to the later rounds. Although it is tempting to pick several upsets in hopes of stealing some key bracket points, the truth is that it is rare for more than two teams seeded lower than a #2 seed to reach the Final Four. The obvious exception to this rule was 2000 when two #8's and a #5 joined #1 Michigan State. In 2006, #2 UCLA, #3 Florida, #4 LSU and #11 George Mason reached the Final Four. Since 1995, 27 of the 60 Final Four participants were #1 seeds (see the table below for a complete breakdown). Number 1 seeds have also won the most championships over the past 15 years, taking 10. The other winners were #3 Florida in 2006, #2 Connecticut in 2004, #3 Syracuse in 2003, #2 Kentucky in 1998 and #4 Arizona in 1997.

Seed Differential

As we have seen, seeding is the greatest predictor in determining who will win tournament games. The #1 seeds have performed significantly better than #2 seeds and #2 seeds have performed much better than seeds 3 through 6. However, these numbers have also shown us that when seed differential (the difference between the seeds of the participants in a given game) is small, the advantage for the team with the better seed diminishes. Here are the breakdowns by seed differential since 1995:

As you can see, when the two teams have a seed differential of two or less, the team with the better seed (ie. the lower seed number) won just 51.4% of the time. This tells me that in matchups between teams with a seed differential of less than three, seed is not the primary factor in determining the winner. So you might ask, "What is?". The following is an analysis of NCAA results and team records for the past 15 years. I tried to develop analysis to support my gut instincts about why some teams perform well and some do not in the NCAA Tournament.

Road and Neutral Court Record

Another of the major criteria used by the Selection Committee in determining who is invited to the "Big Dance" is a team's road/neutral court record. The conventional wisdom states that tournament games (which are of course played on neutral courts) are a lot more like road games than home games, so the teams that have played well on the road will, in theory, be better prepared for the tournament. In this analysis, I compared teams with road/neutral winning percentages 20% better or worse than their NCAA Tournament opponents. When the seed differential was 2 or less, the team with the better road/neutral record (min 20% difference) won about 56% of the time (29-23). Even though we are talking about a small number of games, I do feel that this lends some strength to the argument that teams who have shown the ability to win on the road have a better chance to win against equally strong teams that have not performed as well away from home.

I also looked at 51 games where the seed differential was 3 and the road/neutral gap was 20% or more. It will come as no surprise that the favorite (better seed) had the better road/neutral winning percentage in 42 of those 51 games. It is also not surprising that the favorites were 24-18 (57%) in NCAA tournament games when they had a better away-from-home record during the season than the opponent. (I mentioned above that when the seed differential is 3, the favorite wins 58% of the time). The interesting part is that seven of the nine underdogs with the better road/neutral record won their game. I don't know how much stock we should put into the outcomes of nine games but I would certainly be more comfortable picking a 10 seed over a 7 seed or a 6 over a 3 if that team has shown the ability to win away from their home court.

Record Against the RPI Top 50

A long suspected barometer for potential success in the tournament has been the team's record against the RPI Top 50. Most of the teams in the RPI Top 50 wind up in the NCAA Tournament so this measure shows how each team has performed against tournament caliber competition. With seed differentials of 2 or less and the aforementioned 20% gap between the competing teams' winning percentage against the RPI Top 50, the team with the better RPI Top 50 winning percentage won a solid 58% of the games (33-24). I feel that a team's performance against the top RPI teams is a useful measure of potential March Madness success, but one would be advised to examine each team's schedule because many tournament teams are very different in March - for better or worse - than they were in November and December when many of the nation's top teams meet in non-conference battles.

For the record, I also looked at 51 games in which the seed differential was 3. The team with the better seed also had the better RPI Top 50 record (min 20% gap) 40 times. They were 22-18 in those 40 games. The underdog had the better RPI Top 50 record 11 times but were only 4-7. This doesn't really support or detract from the value of the RPI Top 50 stat.

Conference Tournament Fatigue

It has always been a theory of mine that teams who play three times in three days in their conference tournaments perform poorly the following week in the NCAA Tournament, especially in the second round as the fatigue caused by the previous week sets in. Thus, losing early in a conference tournament may be a blessing in disguise. This was certainly true of my Boston College Eagles, who were demolished by Georgetown in the first round of the 1994 Big East Tournament, but entered the NCAA tournament on fire, beating #1 North Carolina in the second round and coming within a few points of reaching the Final Four. The first round Big East Tournament loss meant that the Eagles played just one game in a two week span heading into the tournament, giving them much-needed rest at the end of the season. The humbling loss may have also forced the players to be more focused heading into the NCAA Tournament. This contrasts sharply with the 2001 BC Eagles who roared through the Big East Tournament, easily winning three games in a row on their way to a #3 seed in the NCAA Tournament. However, the same Eagle team did not show up the following weekend as they nearly lost a first round game to #14 Southern Utah and looked sluggish in a three point loss to USC two days later. The combination of fatigue and perhaps a loss of focus following the huge conference tournament championship likely contributed to the team's poor play.

To test my theory, I pulled conference tournament results from the past 17 years for the Big East, Big Ten, Pac Ten, ACC, SEC and Big 12/Big 8. I then compared the number of conference tournament games played with each team's success during the following weekend in the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament. The tables below show a mixed bag for the first round of the tournament. For teams seeded #5 and #6 (from the six conferences mentioned above), the extra tournament games didn't appear to have much impact on success in the first round. As the table shows, 5/6 seeds who played three or four conference tournament games won 69% of their first round games as compared to 67% for all teams. Teams seeded #3 and #4 who played three or more conference tournament games the previous weekend had a lower winning percentage than all teams seeded #3 or #4 (77% vs 83%). On the other hand, teams seeded between 7 and 10 who played three or four conference tournament games had a first round winning percentage well above the 50% we've seen for all teams.

The more interesting results appeared when I looked at second round games. As the table below shows, teams from the six major conferences seeded 3 through 6 who played three or four conference tournament games survived the first two rounds (ie. the first weekend of the tournament) less often than the overall population (35% vs 43%). The differences were most dramatic for teams seeded 5th and 6th. Overall, #5 and #6 seeds advanced to the Sweet Sixteen 37% of the time and teams who played only one or two conference tournament games advanced 38% of the time. However, teams seeded #5 or #6 who played three or more conference tournament games advanced to the Sweet Sixteen only 26% of the time. On the other hand, #2 seeds who played 3 or more conference tourney games performed better than the overall population.

This data leads me to conclude that conference tournament fatigue does in fact have an adverse impact though it is not likely to appear until the second round. I suspect that if a team comes into the NCAA Tournament a little tired, they should have enough energy to get through the first round but the fatigue may catch up to them by the end of the second round game (which would be the team's fifth or sixth game in just over a week). Based on the data, I would have to conclude that the top two seeds are largely unaffected by the extra conference tournament games. This is not at all surprising for a few reasons:

1. The #1 and #2 seeds are usually the best teams in the country and thus they should have enough talent to rise above the fatigue.
2. The best teams often have the deepest benches. If a coach can rotate eight or nine players in and out the lineup and rest his starters, fatigue becomes less of a factor.
3. The #1 and #2 seeds have the easiest path to the Sweet Sixteen. The 1's play the "sacrificial lamb" #16 seeds in the first round then get the winner of the 8/9 game. The #2 seeds won't have to worry about a team seeded better than 7 until at least the third round.

Record in the Last 12 Games -- No longer a strong indicator?

One of the major criteria used by the NCAA Selection Committee to determine who gets a tournament invitation is a team's record over its last twelve games. At one point, the Committee was using a "last ten games" metric so my analysis is actually a mix of "last 10" and "last 12". I analyzed the instances where one team had at least two more wins than their tournament opponent over the last 10 or 12 games. In other words, if Team A won of 10 of 12 games heading into the tournament and Team B came in winning only 8 of 12, there would be a 2 win gap and that matchup would be included in the analysis for this category. I found that where the seed differential was 2 or less, the team with the better "last 10/12" record won 52.6% of the time (41-37). However, the record for the team with the better record is only 5-10 in the past two years. I also examined first round games between teams seeded 5-12 where one team had a losing record in their last 10/12 games. The team with the losing record was 15-16. So, right now there is no strong evidence to support a big advantage for the team with the better record down the stretch.

Experience

It always occurred to me that another key factor in determining NCAA Tournament success was experience. Teams playing in their first NCAA game often have that "deer in the headlights" look. Meanwhile, experienced teams seem to be able to hold their composure in any situation. Not only are Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky and Michigan State great teams but they have been exposed to so many tourney games that they probably feel little additional pressure. Smaller schools like Gonzaga have been able to do extremely well, presumably having learned from their initial tournament experiences. I tested this theory by looking at all tournament games that matched one team that played in the previous year's NCAA Tournament and one team that did not. I found that teams with experience in the prior year won 74% of these matchups. This clearly is not meaningful in itself because teams with the better seed are generally the ones with more experience. However, I found that the team with experience won 61% (39-25) of the games involving teams with seed differentials of 2 or less. This supports the benefit of experience in the NCAA Tournament.

First Round Upset Profiles (note: the section includes data through 2007)

Perhaps the greatest lure of the NCAA Tournament is its unpredictability. The single-elimination, "do-or-die" format creates an excitement that is rarely matched in professional sports. The beauty of March Madness is that a tiny, unknown college from the middle of nowhere can beat a top ten program on a national stage. For one day, a school like Weber State or Hampton could be the lead story on ESPN. Based on past results, we can expect one or two major first round upsets each year (wins by small conference teams seeded 13 or above). This leaves the bracketeer with two choices: (A) Play it safe and take the favorites, knowing that you will probably absorb one or two losses but will not fall too far behind the competition or (B) Try to pick one or two major upsets and attempt to get an early lead in your bracket pool (assuming that you don't miss too many picks among seeds 5-12). I suppose there is always strategy C. An example of strategy C is the person who picks a dozen upsets just so they can boast about picking a team like Hampton in 2001. This is bracket suicide. No one will be impressed when this person finishes dead last in their pool. My goal in this particular analysis was to find out why these upsets occurred. I wanted to know if there is a profile for the Davids that won and the Goliaths that lost. The results, unfortunately, were not all that meaningful. The favorites among 2, 3 and 4 seeds that lost first round games had similar RPI rankings, Top 50 RPI records and records in the last ten games. What did jump out at me were their road/neutral records. Teams seeded 2-4 that were upset in the first round had an average road/neutral winning percentage of 61% as opposed to 66% for the favorites that won. This again supports the conventional wisdom that road and neutral court record does matter and that teams who have been shaky on the road could also be shaky in the NCAA Tournament, even when they are heavy favorites. On the other hand, I could not develop a true profile for the underdogs who won. The winners did have a slightly better RPI (74, compared to 93 for those that lost) but had similar road/neutral records and records in their last ten. The records of these teams against the RPI Top 50 were not very relevant because they played so few games against these teams during the regular season.

Further Analysis

I have two more theories that I do not have data to support.

• Theory 1: Teams that play in physical conferences like the Big East will be less likely to win if (a) the officiating crew is from a conference that isn't accustomed to physical play and (b) the opponent does not play a physical style. For example, a physical team like Pittsburgh will be in big trouble in the NCAA Tournament if they face a Pac Ten team in a game officiated by Mountain West referees. It's not that the referees would be biased against Pittsburgh, but if the game is officiated like most Mountain West games (where there is far less physical play than the brutal Big East), Pitt's starters (normally given leeway to bang around quite a bit) could quickly get themselves into foul trouble if they don't adjust quickly enough. Even if Pittsburgh does adjust, they will be forced to play a style that doesn't cater to their strengths. Unfortunately, this type of data may be hard to come by and it would be difficult to define exactly which conferences (and teams) play a physical style and which do not.
  
• Theory 2: Teams traveling from one coast to the other are at a disadvantage when playing teams that haven't changed time zones. For example, a California team might be forced to play an East Coast team in a Noon game on the East Coast. A Noon tipoff on the East Coast is 9:00 am on the West Coast so the California players would be suffering from serious jetlag, not to mention the negative impact of a five-hour flight. Similarly, an East Coast team might have a hard time adjusting to West Coast time if the situations were reversed. Fortunately, this situation does not happen very often and now occurs even less frequently with the pod setup that allows for more teams to play closer to home.

Conclusions

As I stated earlier, seeding coupled with pure chance are still the overwhelming factors in deciding who will advance in an NCAA Tournament game. There are factors like injuries, foul trouble, unusually poor shooting, unusually hot shooting, officiating and more that will impact a game. In short, the better team does not always win. My only goal in doing this analysis was to give myself a slight edge on the competition and to prove or disprove my usual logic in filling out my brackets. Based on what I discovered, I believe that a team's road/neutral performance and experience are the two most important factors other than seeding. Teams that played long into their conference tournaments obviously had trouble getting out of the second round but this should be examined on an individual basis because teams with deep benches will be far less susceptible to this problem. Record against the RPI Top 50 should be considered but taken with a grain of salt if the wins or losses were early in the season (let's not forget that Ball State beat UCLA and Kansas to start the season in 2001, then proceeded to lose five games to teams with RPI rankings above 100). I hope you have found this analysis to be informative. You can find breakdowns of the tourney teams on many of the large sports websites such as ESPN.com and CBSSportline.com. The best resource for team record, schedule and RPI information is collegerpi.com. I also recently discovered a great site called statsheet.com.

More Analysis

I have also updated my analysis of tournament performance based on team statistics (free throw shooting, field goal percentage, turnovers, etc). For this analysis, I used data from 1998 to 2007. March Madness Trends Analysis Part II is available now.

Good luck with your brackets.
Patrick Reilly
pjreilly@dublin.com