The Madness has begun
Live in Tucson, and you’re expected to be a UA fan. When March rolls around, the Madness begins and brackets are filled. As an Arizona fan, you’re supposed to pick the Wildcats.
But that doesn’t complete the bracket — there are 57 other spots to consider. Fans are often left choosing teams purely based on intangibles such as records, style of play, or the prestige of a program.
But there’s another option — statistics.
“I think one of the biggest things that numbers do is it helps move you away from your personal allegiance to schools,” said Tim Chartier, a math professor at Davidson College whose analytical approach to March Madness put his bracket in the 97th percentile of ESPN’s competition.
This numerical breakdown does just that. It strips the bracket of team names, stats and conference and simply looks at the past 30 years (since the tournament has expanded to 64 teams) based on seeding.
The findings are about what you’d expect. The top seeds have the highest chance of winning. In the past 30 years, a No. 1 seed has won the tournament 18 times. Beyond that, the only seeds that have won the tournament more than once are Nos. 2 and 3, which have each won four times. Teams seeded fourth, sixth, seventh and eighth have each won the tournament once.
Other things are tougher to explain, such as how the winner has come out of the Midwest regional 11 times.
There are plenty of other ways to look at the bracket from a numbers perspective — the No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup in the Elite Eight is particularly intriguing — but still, sometimes the numbers can lie. Out of the common winners (the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 seeds), the No. 2s fare the worst in the Elite Eight. They have only advanced to the Final Four 45 percent of the time.
Until last year, a No. 7 seed had never won it all.
“Numbers won’t tell you everything,” Chartier said. “There’s always some human element, even if it’s just the randomness of the game. But in the sense it’s another opinion that makes you stop and look.”
Here’s a round-by-round look at the numbers:
