By Shawn Siegel
shawn@collegehoops.net
March 20th, 2006
2006 NCAA Tournament: Nothing Mad About It
Shortsighted commentators like Billy Packer, Jim Nantz,
and Dick Vitale would have you believe that this is an absolutely crazy
March full of unexpected upsets and Cinderella runs. Of course, they think
this because their understanding of the college basketball landscape is
misguided at best and foolish at worst.
A simple look at the reality of the college basketball pecking order shows
that most of these so-called upsets are really not surprising. Despite what
the seeding says, the higher ranked teams are winning just about
every game. The key though is which ranking you use. Not the committee’s
subjective seeding, nor the polls voted on by coaches who don’t watch games,
nor the ones voted on by the same misguided big-city media members who have
the same mindset as Packer, Nantz, and Vitale, and not even the popular
computer rankings (like the overall RPI) that take into account
in-conference performance that predicts absolutely nothing.
It is Non-league rating that consistently impresses in
its ability to predict the outcome of tournament games.
A simple glance at non-league rankings shows that George
Mason SHOULD have beaten both UNC & Michigan State, Bradley SHOULD have been
Kansas, and Texas A&M SHOULD have beaten Syracuse. In fact, there have been
only 5 upsets in the entire tournament so far, and those upsets were not
surprising at all based on non-league rankings.
In the analysis below, I use an average of a team’s
Non-League RPI (http://teamrankings.com/ncb/22powerratings.php3)
& Non-League Power Ranking (http://teamrankings.com/ncb/4powerratings.php3)
and use that as a team’s overall Non-League Ranking (NLR). For example,
Duke, which ranks 1 and 3 respectively in NL-RPI and NL-Power Rankings has
an average rating of 2 (the best of any team in the country), while Southern
ranked 193 and 226 has a rating of 209.5. The teams are then ordered from 1
(Duke) through 65 (Hampton) based on their NLR. (The complete NLR is
included below.)
Many teams fall just where you expect them in the NLR:
Duke is 1, Memphis is 2, while Southern is 64 and #65 Hampton turns out to
be by far the worst team in the tourney. However, many teams good in
the polls and in public perception, actually have quite bad NLR’s. It turns
out Kansas was only the 53rd best team in the field, the 2nd
worst at-large team (just barely ahead of 55th ranked
California), while Iowa was 40th.
So the overall question is: Despite the notion that
this has been a wild tournament, how many games really have been upsets?
Amazingly, the NLR predicted the outcome of the games in
42 of the 48 games so far, meaning that there have been just 6 upsets in the
entire tournament. Just 3 in out of 36 first round, and 3 out of 16 in the
second. In fact, only 2 of the upsets were really noteworthy
according to the NLR. #36 Montana over #21 Nevads is a difference of 15
spots, and the biggest one was #24 Georgetown over #5
Ohio State (19 spots).
Here are the 6 upsets. I’ve divided the field of 65 into
seeds using a strict ordering of the NLR.
Only 3 First Round Upsets:
Montana over Nevada - 9 seed over 6 seed
Georgetown over Northern Iowa – 6 seed over 4 seed
Northwestern State over Iowa – 12 over 10
Only 3 Second Round Upsets:
Bradley over Pitt – 5 over 2
WSU over Tennessee – 5 over 4
Georgetown 6 over 2
As you see, even the six upsets that did occur are not
that big of a deal as they were all between teams that the NLR seeds within
4 levels of each other. Iowa, for example, despite being given a 3 seed is
ranked just 40th in the field according to the NLR, while
Northwestern State is 47th. Thus the Demons win was just a mild
upset.
The only real Cinderella team in the tournament, who has
beaten two higher ranked teams is Georgetown (wins over UNI and Ohio State).
The Field According to the Non-League Ranking
Rank-Seed Team Rating
1-1 Duke 2
2-1 Memphis 4.5
3(t)-1 Villanova 5
3(t)-1 Washington 5
5-2 OSU 5.5
6-2 UCONN 8.5
7-2 Florida 9.5
8(t)-2 Pittsburgh 11
8(t)-3 Gonzaga 11
10-3 UCLA 12.5
11(t)-3 Illinois 14.5
11(t)-3 Texas 14.5
13-4 Arizona 15
14-4 Northern Iowa 15
15-4 Tennessee 22
16-4 George Mason 24
17-5 Bradley 27.5
18-5 BC 28
19-5 Bucknell 28
20-5 Wichita St 28
21-6 Nevada 30
22-6 Kentucky 31.5
23-6 Michigan St 32.5
24-6 Georgetown 34
25-7 Indiana 37.5
26-7 NC State 38
27-7 Xavier 38
28-7 LSU 38.5
29-8 Texas A&M 40
30-8 UNC 41
31-8 Syracuse 43.5
32-8 UWM 45.5
33-9 GW 50.5
34-9 Wisconsin 50.5
35-9 Utah State 50.5
36-9 Montana 51
37-10 Iona 53
38-10 Seton Hall 55.5
39-10 Air Force 56
40-10 Iowa 58.5
41-11 Arkansas 70
42-11 West Virginia 72.5
43-11 Oklahoma 78
44-11 UAB 79
45-12 Winthrop 80.5
46-12 Alabama 83.5
47-12 NW State 84
48-12 SIU 88
49-13 Marquette 88
50-13 So Alabama 100.5
51-13 UNCW 101.5
52-13 Davidson 103.5
53-14 Kansas 109
54-14 Murray St 115.5
55-14 California 118
56-14 Penn 118.5
57-15 Pacific 122.5
58-15 Kent State 145
59-15 Oral Roberts 149
60-15 Monmouth 161
61-16 Albany 166
62-16 Belmont 167
63-16 San Diego St 185
64-16 Southern 209.5
65-17 Hampton 319.5
Since the NLR has done such a great job so far predicting
the tournament’s outcome, what should we expect in the coming rounds?
Duke and Texas should both win their Sweet Sixteen games
to meet in the Elite Eight. Memphis should beat Bradley by a decent amount,
while Gonzaga/UCLA is basically a pick’em with the Zags holding a very
slight edge. According to the NLR, Gonzaga is tied with Pitt in 8th,
while UCLA is 10th.
In the bottom of the bracket, UW is expected to just edge
UCONN, but again these two have very similar rankings so a UCONN win would
not really be an upset. UW is the 4th ranked team, while UCONN
is 6th. UW/UCONN features by far the highest ranked NLR teams,
and the quality is more worthy of the Elite Eight. In the other Washington,
DC game, George Mason is predicted to just barely edge WSU, though these two
teams are also ranked very similarly. Both Villanova and Florida are
expected to win their games.
The Final Four according to the NLR will shape up as
Duke, Memphis, Washington, and Villanova. Unfortunately for Memphis,
despite being the 2nd best team, they will face #1 Duke in the
semifinals and not the National Championship game. Villanova and Washington
are actually tied in 3rd place, so there’s no way one can be
chosen of the other. Regardless of whether either Washington or Villanova
wins, Duke is expected to win it all.
Of course, as the teams get whittled down and only the
very cream of the crop remains, the NLR should be expected to be less and
less effective. That is because the difference in quality between competing
teams shrinks. Ie, #16 George Mason beating #30 ranked UNC is more likely
to occur than #1 Duke beating #2 Memphis.
All in all, the point of this article is to show how the
tournament has been rather in tame in reality. Yes, there have been some
awesome finishes, but the results have not been very surprising despite what
the talking heads tell you. Taking the subjective power conference
preference of many analysts away, the higher ranked team has most often won
games in this year’s tournament.
Bubble Note:
You may be wondering what teams according to the NLR
deserved to be in the field. According to the NLR, the last seven teams in
the field were Oklahoma, UAB, Alabama, Marquette, SIU, Kansas, and
California. Those seven teams combined for just 1 win, and that’s only
because Alabama got lucky to face one of the only 4 worse at-large teams in
the field.
The 7 teams that should have gotten in (or at least would
have fared better than the 7 above) are Missouri State (NLR of 8, the 6th
best of any team in the country!), Michigan (20.5), Louisville (24.5), St
Joseph’s (25.5), Houston (30.5), Cincinnati (32), and Creighton (33). Just
missing out are Hofstra (42), Minnesota (42.5), Clemson (46), FSU (47.5),
and DePaul (48), though all of those rank higher than many teams that
actually made the field.
Final Note:
The ratings used here are from AFTER the completion of
the first round, as there was not enough time to get archived Non-league
ratings in time to get this article online. This means that the
numbers may be slightly tilted more in "my" favor now then they were before
the first round outcomes occurred. The best example of this is Texas
A&M who is ranked 2 spots ahead of Syracuse with a rating difference of 1.5.
This ranking includes Texas A&M's win over Syracuse so I speculate prior to
that game Syracuse probably had a slightly higher rating than the Aggies.
Thus Texas A&M's win may very well have been a very slight upset between
closely ranked teams. However that one example seems to be the only
case where this matters.
