March Madness 2023

Usually I post a March Madness thread before the first game, so I apologize for not doing so this year. As I write this, we are down to the Final Four. The semi-finals will take place on April 1.

As you may know from previous years, I'm very interested in the relationship with a teams seed and their probability of winning. Here are some random observations from the games so far:

• Round 1: The average surviving seed is 5.969. This includes a 13, 15, and 16 seed winning. This is only the second time a 16 seed won, the other time being in 2018. However, despite all the "bracket busting" hype, the average surviving seed was not very unusual. Since for tournaments inception in 1985, the average surviving seed is 5.84. Not much off the 5.97 this year.
• Round 2: Our 16 seed loses, but the 15 seed survives. However, a 15 seed also survived the last two tournaments, as well as other years. The average surviving seed is 4.88. Not much more than the 4.58 since 1985.
• Round 3: After the third round the surviving seeds are a 5, 6,9,3,5,2,4,3. As the eternal champion of the underdog, I love to see all the #1 seeds eliminated! The average surviving seed is 4.625. That is significantly higher than the 3.329 average since 1985. A great round for underdogs!
• Round 4: The final four are a 5, 9, 5, and 4 seed. I love it! The average seed is 5.75. The tournament average since 1985 is 2.93.

I welcome all comments. Was this just a great late season for underdogs or is some change in the seeding rules at play? To be honest, I'm not much of a college basketball fan, so am eager to hear thoughts on what is going on this season.

The question for the poll is who is your favorite Muppet? Multiple votes not allowed.

Quote: Wizard

Usually I post a March Madness thread before the first game, so I apologize for not doing so this year. As I write this, we are down to the Final Four. The semi-finals will take place on April 1.

As you may know from previous years, I'm very interested in the relationship with a teams seed and their probability of winning. Here are some random observations from the games so far:

• Round 1: The average surviving seed is 5.969. This includes a 13, 15, and 16 seed winning. This is only the second time a 16 seed won, the other time being in 2018. However, despite all the "bracket busting" hype, the average surviving seed was not very unusual. Since for tournaments inception in 1985, the average surviving seed is 5.84. Not much off the 5.97 this year.
• Round 2: Our 16 seed loses, but the 15 seed survives. However, a 15 seed also survived the last two tournaments, as well as other years. The average surviving seed is 4.88. Not much more than the 4.58 since 1985.
• Round 3: After the third round the surviving seeds are a 5, 6,9,3,5,2,4,3. As the eternal champion of the underdog, I love to see all the #1 seeds eliminated! The average surviving seed is 4.625. That is significantly higher than the 3.329 average since 1985. A great round for underdogs!
• Round 4: The final four are a 5, 9, 5, and 4 seed. I love it! The average seed is 5.75. The tournament average since 1985 is 2.93.

I welcome all comments. Was this just a great late season for underdogs or is some change in the seeding rules at play? To be honest, I'm not much of a college basketball fan, so am eager to hear thoughts on what is going on this season.

The question for the poll is who is your favorite Muppet? Multiple votes not allowed.
link to original post

At least temporarily, the transfer portal/one and done players/NIL money has created MORE parity. I expect the pendulum will swing back towards the ‘name’ schools when they figure out better how to outspend/out recruit the FAU’s, FDU’s, SDSU’s, etc….

I think a fair amount of it might actually be coaching. Coaching actually matters more now. A lot of major college coaches are just plain BAD strategically at coaching modern basketball, pre-NIL they were great recruiters or leaders of men but just mediocre to poor coaches. This is being exposed with the talent gap less wide.

Roy Williams of UNC was a BAD basketball coach always living off UNC and Kansas rep. Tom Crean is an example of just an awful basketball coach great talent evaluator, look at the spacing of his offensive sets the lack of spacing is laughable. John Calipari is a bad coach, good hype man. X and O’s wise after decades Roy and John still couldn’t think up a decent after time out play if their life depended on it.

All of the above. The rule is that players can now transfer between schools at least once without any need to justify it. A team, like Kansas State had only two holdovers from the previous year and filled their roster with transfer players from other schools. Ditto Arkansas.

The result of player mobility has been to greatly level the playing field. The outcomes of games between the top 50 teams are all much closer to 50-50 than they were in prior years.

As far as the poll goes,my favorite muppets were the old men the hecklers who always sat in the balcony on the muppet show. I can't remember their names for the life of me,but a lot of times their comments were priceless.

I enjoy seeing the underdogs win as well. I'll be rooting for an all south Florida final.

Quote: avianrandy

As far as the poll goes,my favorite muppets were the old men the hecklers who always sat in the balcony on the muppet show. I can't remember their names for the life of me,but a lot of times their comments were priceless.
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Statler and Waldorf -- named after iconic (at the time) NYC hotels. Yes, they would have gotten my vote as well if they were included in the poll. I also noticed there was no love (or room) for Scooter or Animal.

Quote: avianrandy

As far as the poll goes,my favorite muppets were the old men the hecklers who always sat in the balcony on the muppet show. I can't remember their names for the life of me,but a lot of times their comments were priceless.
link to original post

Their names were Waldorf and Statler.

Quote: Wizard

I welcome all comments. Was this just a great late season for underdogs or is some change in the seeding rules at play? To be honest, I'm not much of a college basketball fan, so am eager to hear thoughts on what is going on this season.

The question for the poll is who is your favorite Muppet? Multiple votes not allowed.
link to original post

Is Oscar the Grouch considered a muppet? My favorite. He was never on The Muppet Show.

Two things this season. 1) allowing players to transfer without restrictions, and 2) there was no 'super team(s)' this season.

I do not think the market adjusted to (1) as I was able to ride a wave of underdogs this season, especially SDSU. It will be interested to see if people will adjust. Or if the tournament heavily influenced by uninformed bettors who tilt towards favorites no matter what.

Mike, I would think your favorite Muppets are WILKINS and WONTKINS. As a young black kid my favorite Muppet was ROOSEVELT FRANKLIN from 1970-1973. Disappeared for reason unknown and better unsaid !

Quote: Wizard

As you may know from previous years, I'm very interested in the relationship with a teams seed and their probability of winning. Here are some random observations from the games so far:

• Round 1: The average surviving seed is 5.969. This includes a 13, 15, and 16 seed winning. This is only the second time a 16 seed won, the other time being in 2018. However, despite all the "bracket busting" hype, the average surviving seed was not very unusual. Since for tournaments inception in 1985, the average surviving seed is 5.84. Not much off the 5.97 this year.
• Round 2: Our 16 seed loses, but the 15 seed survives. However, a 15 seed also survived the last two tournaments, as well as other years. The average surviving seed is 4.88. Not much more than the 4.58 since 1985.
• Round 3: After the third round the surviving seeds are a 5, 6,9,3,5,2,4,3. As the eternal champion of the underdog, I love to see all the #1 seeds eliminated! The average surviving seed is 4.625. That is significantly higher than the 3.329 average since 1985. A great round for underdogs!
• Round 4: The final four are a 5, 9, 5, and 4 seed. I love it! The average seed is 5.75. The tournament average since 1985 is 2.93.

link to original post

Now that the tournament is over, let me complete this list.

• Round 5: With a 4 and 5 side, the average surviving seed is 4.5. It was also 4.5 last year, with a 1 and 8 seed. Average to date for round 5 is now 2.41. I thought this year might set a record for the highest lower of the two seeds. However, that record is held by 2014, with a 7 and 8 seed.
• Round 6: The winner is a 4 seed. The average winning seed goes up to 1.97. #1 seeds have won 63.2% of the time. #4 seeds have won 5.3% of the time. The lowest ranked team, with an 8 seed, to have won the tournament was in the first year of 1985.

After mixing in new data, my probability of a perfect bracket has been adjusted to 1 in 1,411,767,179.

Here is the adjusted expected wins by seed.

Seed	Avg wins
1	3.29
2	2.32
3	1.85
4	1.55
5	1.16
6	1.07
7	0.90
8	0.74
9	0.59
10	0.61
11	0.63
12	0.51
13	0.25
14	0.16
15	0.11
16	0.01
Overall	1.00

Quote: Wizard

After mixing in new data, my probability of a perfect bracket has been adjusted to 1 in 1,411,767,179.

Here is the adjusted expected wins by seed.

Seed	Avg wins
1	3.29
2	2.32
3	1.85
4	1.55
5	1.16
6	1.07
7	0.90
8	0.74
9	0.59
10	0.61
11	0.63
12	0.51
13	0.25
14	0.16
15	0.11
16	0.01
Overall	1.00

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Thank you! This is great as there were many "O/U wins by conference" wagers out there. And a number of "O/U lowest seed to make final four" wagers as well. Need to bring this data out next March.