Here’s the list of probabilities generated from my ratings. I hope to have larger thoughts on the selection process tomorrow. But a couple of points:
It’s quite possible this is wrong. The 10-seeds getting the play-ins might have messed things up. I think I got the regions matched up, but who knows! It always seems like I screw this up. Things appear close to the market, so hopefully it’s fine.
We’ve written about it before in more high-profile places, but people obsess over seeding for the top teams, and yet a team’s chance of winning the title is surprisingly insensitive to its seed. For instance, Auburn, as a four-seed but yet fourth in my ratings, still has the fourth-best chance of winning it all per this analysis. And the top 20 teams here are largely in the order of my ratings.
Because seeding is only loosely related to team ability, it matters much more to the top seeds who is in their region. So even though UConn enters as the highest-rated team on my site, Houston ends up being essentially a co-favorite because UConn was placed in the region of death.
Finally, a personal pet peeve of mine. The way to evaluate the bracket produced by any ratings system is not to create one bracket with the higher-rated team advancing in every case. It’s to create a whole bunch of brackets from a Monte Carlo simulation using the probabilities of each team winning specific matchups in each round, then evaluate how well those brackets did on average (or some other percentile). Any other approach is garbage.
Speaking of garbage, the following table is probably unreadable on a mobile device. Enjoy!
Rd2 Swt16 Elite8 Final4 Final Champ
1S Houston 96.2 76.8 54.4 41.2 26.8 16.4
1E Connecticut 98.2 81.0 52.7 36.5 25.8 16.3
1MW Purdue 98.2 77.4 56.9 36.8 21.5 12.0
4E Auburn 88.1 66.9 32.8 20.6 13.2 7.4
2W Arizona 96.4 70.1 46.4 28.6 13.4 6.8
2MW Tennessee 95.6 67.5 43.6 23.1 11.9 5.7
2E Iowa St. 92.8 69.6 43.2 19.2 11.3 5.7
1W North Carolina 98.1 62.3 38.2 20.6 8.7 4.0
4S Duke 84.9 55.5 23.7 14.7 7.3 3.3
3MW Creighton 86.5 61.0 30.8 14.5 6.6 2.8
2S Marquette 91.0 56.6 34.7 13.9 6.2 2.5
3E Illinois 86.9 55.0 28.4 10.8 5.6 2.5
3W Baylor 88.3 53.2 24.6 12.5 4.7 1.9
4W Alabama 84.1 52.0 25.8 12.5 4.6 1.9
5MW Gonzaga 70.2 43.4 16.9 8.0 3.3 1.3
3S Kentucky 86.7 51.0 24.9 8.3 3.2 1.1
6E BYU 76.3 36.4 16.3 5.1 2.3 0.9
5S Wisconsin 68.0 31.1 10.5 5.4 2.2 0.8
5W Saint Mary's 63.5 31.0 13.6 5.8 1.9 0.7
4MW Kansas 73.4 37.0 12.4 5.2 1.9 0.6
9W Michigan St. 54.8 21.9 10.9 4.6 1.5 0.6
6S Texas Tech 63.1 32.2 14.6 4.6 1.6 0.5
5E San Diego St. 79.2 26.6 8.1 3.3 1.4 0.5
11W New Mexico 55.1 25.8 9.7 4.0 1.2 0.4
7MW Texas 58.1 20.0 9.4 3.3 1.2 0.4
7S Florida 51.7 22.0 11.0 3.3 1.1 0.3
8S Nebraska 55.0 13.1 5.4 2.5 0.9 0.3
8W Mississippi St. 45.2 15.8 7.1 2.7 0.8 0.2
7W Dayton 51.1 15.4 6.7 2.6 0.7 0.2
9MW TCU 55.4 13.3 6.2 2.3 0.7 0.2
10S Colorado 27.9 12.2 6.2 1.9 0.7 0.2
6W Clemson 44.9 19.1 6.5 2.5 0.6 0.2
10W Nevada 48.9 14.0 5.9 2.2 0.6 0.2
6MW South Carolina 53.7 19.8 6.4 1.9 0.5 0.1
7E Washington St. 53.5 16.3 6.1 1.4 0.5 0.1
9S Texas A&M 45.0 9.5 3.5 1.4 0.4 0.1
10MW Colorado St. 27.3 8.4 3.7 1.2 0.4 0.1
9E Northwestern 49.3 9.4 2.8 0.9 0.3 0.08
8E Florida Atlantic 50.7 9.3 2.8 0.9 0.3 0.08
10S Boise St. 20.4 7.9 3.6 1.0 0.3 0.08
8MW Utah St. 44.6 9.1 3.7 1.2 0.3 0.08
11MW Oregon 46.3 15.2 4.3 1.1 0.3 0.06
10E Drake 46.5 12.5 4.2 0.8 0.2 0.06
12W Grand Canyon 36.5 12.6 3.7 1.1 0.2 0.05
11S N.C. State 36.9 14.0 4.5 1.0 0.2 0.05
12MW McNeese St. 29.8 12.2 2.7 0.8 0.2 0.04
12S James Madison 32.0 9.3 1.8 0.6 0.1 0.03
10MW Virginia 14.7 3.5 1.2 0.3 0.08 0.02
13MW Samford 26.6 7.4 1.2 0.2 0.04 0.007
11E Duquesne 23.7 5.6 1.2 0.2 0.03 0.005
13E Yale 11.9 4.0 0.6 0.1 0.02 0.005
13S Vermont 15.1 4.1 0.5 0.1 0.02 0.003
13W Charleston 15.9 4.4 0.8 0.1 0.01 0.002
12E UAB 20.8 2.5 0.3 0.04 0.006 0.001
14MW Akron 13.5 4.0 0.6 0.07 0.009 <.001
14E Morehead St. 13.1 3.0 0.5 0.04 0.006 <.001
14S Oakland 13.3 2.8 0.4 0.03 0.004 <.001
14W Colgate 11.7 1.9 0.2 0.02 0.002 <.001
15S Western Kentucky 9.0 1.4 0.2 0.02 0.002 <.001
15E South Dakota St. 7.2 1.6 0.2 0.01 0.002 <.001
16S Longwood 3.8 0.6 0.07 0.009 <.001 <.001
15W Long Beach St. 3.6 0.5 0.06 0.005 <.001 <.001
15MW Saint Peter's 4.4 0.6 0.07 0.004 <.001 <.001
16MW Montana St. 1.2 0.1 0.01 <.001 <.001 <.001
16E Stetson 1.8 0.2 0.01 <.001 <.001 <.001
16MW Grambling St. 0.6 0.04 0.002 <.001 <.001 <.001
16W Howard 1.0 0.05 0.002 <.001 <.001 <.001
16W Wagner 0.9 0.05 0.002 <.001 <.001 <.001