March Madness is sneaking upon us NCAA men’s basketball casuals.
It’s time for a crash course on what the hell is going on.
Let me be clear about one thing.
I have no idea what the hell is going on.
And that’s OK. We’re going to let the data do the work for us.
We can’t all be Jon Rothstein or John Fanta.
Or any other John variant.
Nothing but respect, but absolute LUNATICS to be up on 364 teams year in and year out.
For those of us that have some semblance of a life, we’re going to cheat.
The end goal here is to find out who might be sneaky good / sneaky bad for our brackets.
Without having to watch 43,429 games every night.
My special secret model uses four key components in developing a team’s true rank.
Opponent’s win percentage.
And opponent’s average NET ranking.
So, I guess the secret is out.
Why these four factors?
Think about how you might ask yourself how good a team really is.
First, you might ask how many games they won/lost.
Then you might wonder how bad they beat their opponents.
But just as records aren’t everything alone for a team, same goes for their opponents.
That’s the line of logic were going with here.
Seems like a mistake to me.
Point differential is meaningful in sports.
That’s going back in.
Then you have the Ratings Power Index.
That takes into account win percentage, opponents' win percentage, and opponent’s opponents' win percentage.
Let’s hit it.
Auburn is that team
ESPN losing the feed of the second half of Kentucky/Auburn was pretty sad.
Either that or some fan ran out on the court with the Epstein list.
But one thing is clear - Auburn is a tier above everyone else.
This is important info for us casuals.
Auburn is that big dog this year.
I don’t know how you could justify picking anyone else to win it all.
Duke is all the talk of the town.
Easy to see why too.
They’ve been clobbering opponents.
By far the biggest point differential (+639) of any team.
This is especially weird to see Duke ranked so low since we added point differential to the model.
But look at the two numbers on teams they’ve played.
Opponent win percentage only 56% with an average NET ranking of 166.
Pretty close to the worst opponents overall even if they’ve won some big games.
Meanwhile, Alabama faced much better opponents.
Will be fun to see these two teams meet deep in the tournament.
I’m siding Bama if they do.
Did YOU see it?
OK - yeah they did.
If they can escape whatever region Auburn gets in, they can make some noise.
They even beat Duke too so who knows!
Purdue, Michigan, Texas A&M all with some value here too.
Actually, pretty much every team with a Stathole rank of 8-14.
Memphis jumps out a bit there too.
Maybe an opening weekend darling play.
Then you have your dud candidates.
Iowa State / Texas Tech / Gonzaga all standing next to one another being prime examples.
But I do want to draw attention to one team us casuals might want to really avoid.
Pretty much rated in line with the big model in the mid-30s.
Let’s not all into the Dan Hurley trap.
He can brag about having two rings all he wants this year.
He’ll be using the same brag next year as well.
Anyway, thought this would be a fun exercise for us casuals.
Get those brackets ready.
