3/25/24 Pre-Sweet 16 Checkin

Checking in after the opening weekend, and all six of the identified teams have survived, and five of the six are favorites in the Sweet 16 round.

• UConn is a 11-point favorite over SDSU and sitting with a 25.5 percent chance of winning it all, according to Nate Silver.
• Purdue is a 5.5 point favorite over Gonzaga with a 17.7 percent chance.
• Arizona is a 7 point favorite over Clemson with a 13.8 percent chance.
• Houston is a 4.5 point favorite over Duke with a 12.5 percent chance.
• Marquette is a 6.5 point favorite over NC State with a 3.9 percent chance.
• Creighton is the lone underdog, getting 2.5 points from Tennessee. Creighton has a 3.1 percent chance.

If you do the math on those chances to win, that adds up to a 76.5 percent chance the system identified the champion pre-tournament. I have been doing moneyline rollovers on all six of these teams, instead of taking futures bets on any of them. I’ll likely continue to do that for all six at least one more round.

3/18/24

A few weeks back, I wrote about the teams that met the minimum KenPom National Champion Qualifier list. The criteria were in that post, but for those who don’t want to click a link, it is a minimum rating every national champion over the last two decades has met.

Well, not that the regular season is over and we are heading into the NCAA Tournament, it is time to take a final look at the qualifiers and see who makes the cut.

We previously used the minimum standards. For this exercise, we are going to knock out a couple outliers. 95 percent of the champs were 21st or better in adjusted offensive efficiency. 2014 UConn was the lone exception. 95 percent ranked 37th or better in defense. 2021 Baylor was the lone exception.

So, using that criteria, we have eight possibilities

1. UConn (1st Off, 11th D)
2. Purdue (4/21)
3. Duke (7/26)
4. Arizona (8/12)
5. Auburn (10/4)
6. Creighton (12/24)
7. Houston (17/2)
8. Marquette (21/19)

Some of the more notable teams that did not make the criteria but will be popular picks (all eliminated because of defensive ranking) include: Iowa State, Illinois, Alabama, Kentucky and Baylor, all top four seeds. UNC just missed the cut on offense with a rank of 24, meeting all other criteria.

If we add back in the strength of schedule eliminator for the previous post (top 45 SOS), Auburn and Duke get eliminated. Auburn was 53, Duke was 75 with the ACC down this year and a nonCON SOS of 199.

So, we have six contenders, sorted by 538 Probabilities to win the championship are (seed in bracket):

1. UConn (1)
2. Purdue (1)
3. Arizona (2)
4. Houston (1)
5. Marquette (2)
6. Creighton (3)