(Eds.: The following is written by JP Claybourn)
Congratulations, you’re in … kind of
A recent Indy Star article discussed the disappointment felt by the Niagara team after learning that their Metro Atlantic Conference Tournament Championship had only earned them the an invitation for Tuesday night’s NCAA Tourney play-in game. A disappointment that is certainly warranted.
Since the inception of the play-in game, I have been amazed by the apparent lack of time that went into calculating how to include an extra team in the field of 64, as well as nearly everyone’s infatuation with the idea. Commentators, analysts, and schools all love the idea of including more teams, but essential questions seem to go unasked and unanswered each spring.
Why have only one play-in game? There are four 16 team brackets, but only one top seed plays the play-in winner. Wouldn’t having a play-in game for each bracket allow more of the bubble teams to play in the tournament? It would seem more fair then to have the last eight at large teams (currently the last four in and last four out) who make the list of 68 participate in a play-in game that determines who is deserving of the bid. If Pre-Tourney Tuesday featured bubble teams like Syracuse, Drexel, K State, Purdue, and Texas Tech, wouldn’t we see better basketball? The winner of those games could then become a predetermined mid-range seed in each bracket.
This assumes that adding more teams is beneficial to March Madness and college basketball. Tennessee Coach Bruce Pearl is a proponent of going with an 80 team tournament. Aside from the added complications that this presents mathematically, being forced to incorporate byes, etc., I fear that we would be pushing college basketball even more towards an NBA environment, where underachieving is rewarded (see the Isaiah Thomas contract extension) and regular season games lose value.
My advice: Cut the field back to 64. The tournament works, and small conference champs deserve to get pummeled by a number one seed without a play-in game.
Calculating March Madness
Posted by Joshua Claybourn on 15 March 2007 | one response
As millions of Americans fill out brackets online and for office pools, Kevin Cornwell points to several methods of mathematically improving your chance at winning. Some methods claim to have netted over $250,000 for its users. However most pools do not give additional points for upsets or margin of victory, and therefore picking the highest seed is still the best method under the point system of most pools. (John McCain takes the conservative approach.)
Of course, the calculations and predictions all depend upon the number of teams playing, and for an analysis of that process we turn to resident ITA sports guy JP Claybourn, whose post is below the fold.
(Eds.: The following is written by JP Claybourn)
Congratulations, you’re in … kind of
A recent Indy Star article discussed the disappointment felt by the Niagara team after learning that their Metro Atlantic Conference Tournament Championship had only earned them the an invitation for Tuesday night’s NCAA Tourney play-in game. A disappointment that is certainly warranted.
Since the inception of the play-in game, I have been amazed by the apparent lack of time that went into calculating how to include an extra team in the field of 64, as well as nearly everyone’s infatuation with the idea. Commentators, analysts, and schools all love the idea of including more teams, but essential questions seem to go unasked and unanswered each spring.
Why have only one play-in game? There are four 16 team brackets, but only one top seed plays the play-in winner. Wouldn’t having a play-in game for each bracket allow more of the bubble teams to play in the tournament? It would seem more fair then to have the last eight at large teams (currently the last four in and last four out) who make the list of 68 participate in a play-in game that determines who is deserving of the bid. If Pre-Tourney Tuesday featured bubble teams like Syracuse, Drexel, K State, Purdue, and Texas Tech, wouldn’t we see better basketball? The winner of those games could then become a predetermined mid-range seed in each bracket.
This assumes that adding more teams is beneficial to March Madness and college basketball. Tennessee Coach Bruce Pearl is a proponent of going with an 80 team tournament. Aside from the added complications that this presents mathematically, being forced to incorporate byes, etc., I fear that we would be pushing college basketball even more towards an NBA environment, where underachieving is rewarded (see the Isaiah Thomas contract extension) and regular season games lose value.
My advice: Cut the field back to 64. The tournament works, and small conference champs deserve to get pummeled by a number one seed without a play-in game.
One Response to “Calculating March Madness”
Finally got around to reading this post. I agree with JP completely. The 65-team field has never made sense to me. No one really cares about the play-in game, so it’s as though the team that loses it wasn’t ever in the tournament in the first place. Small conference champions deserve to have their own spot on the bracket.