What is a better seeding position

[macrae1234]

in the bottom tier to advance the furthest?
8-9 where if you win you play 1 to get to the sweet 16
10 where you play 7 then 2 to get to the sweet 16 then 3
11 where you play 6 then 3 to get to the sweet 16 then 2
12-13 where you play 5 or 4 then 4 or 5 to get to the sweet 16 then 1

[andrewjackson]

in the bottom tier to advance the furthest?
8-9 where if you win you play 1 to get to the sweet 16
10 where you play 7 then 2 to get to the sweet 16 then 3
11 where you play 6 then 3 to get to the sweet 16 then 2
12-13 where you play 5 or 4 then 4 or 5 to get to the sweet 16 then 1

I read somewhere that 5 seeds are just over .500 against 12 seeds. and 12 seeds are better than .500 if they make it to the second round so 12 looks like it has done the best in the past. If I'm a 12 seed making it to the Sweet 16 is my goal. I don't care who I play once I get there.

For some reason 6 seeds are much better at advancing than 5 seeds. To me the scenario for an 11 seed looks the best but it hasn't worked out that way.

Frankly, I would never want to be an 8 or 9 seed. I'd much rather be an 11 or 12 than that. 10 isn't much better. 1s and 2s are the teams you want to avoid.

[gsabc]

I was thinkin' standing up for lawn grass, but kneeling for tulip bulbs.

[luv2jog]

in the bottom tier to advance the furthest?
8-9 where if you win you play 1 to get to the sweet 16
10 where you play 7 then 2 to get to the sweet 16 then 3
11 where you play 6 then 3 to get to the sweet 16 then 2
12-13 where you play 5 or 4 then 4 or 5 to get to the sweet 16 then 1

I read somewhere that 5 seeds are just over .500 against 12 seeds. and 12 seeds are better than .500 if they make it to the second round so 12 looks like it has done the best in the past. If I'm a 12 seed making it to the Sweet 16 is my goal. I don't care who I play once I get there.

For some reason 6 seeds are much better at advancing than 5 seeds. To me the scenario for an 11 seed looks the best but it hasn't worked out that way.

Frankly, I would never want to be an 8 or 9 seed. I'd much rather be an 11 or 12 than that. 10 isn't much better. 1s and 2s are the teams you want to avoid.

I looked it up.

#5 seeds are 63-29 against #12 seeds
#12 seeds are 14-15 in the second round

#6 seeds are 63-29 against #11 seeds
#11 seeds are 11-18 in the second round

[DadofTwins]

One reason 12's have been so successful is the historic undervaluing of mid-majors by the committee. Typically, the 11-slots are filled by the last teams on the at-large board, i.e. middling teams from big conferences.

The 12-line (and occasionally the 13) is where the best of the mid-majors end up. Most of the 12- and 13-seeds are actually better than the "bubble teams" seeded ahead of them, but since they aren't able to generate the "at-large profile" the committee is looking for they end up lower.

This may be changing, though. Last year the committee did a much better job than they usually do of seeding. Winthrop, VCU, and George Washington all got 11-seeds and Gonzaga was a 10 while Illinois and Arkansas were 12's.

[andrewjackson]

in the bottom tier to advance the furthest?
8-9 where if you win you play 1 to get to the sweet 16
10 where you play 7 then 2 to get to the sweet 16 then 3
11 where you play 6 then 3 to get to the sweet 16 then 2
12-13 where you play 5 or 4 then 4 or 5 to get to the sweet 16 then 1

I read somewhere that 5 seeds are just over .500 against 12 seeds. and 12 seeds are better than .500 if they make it to the second round so 12 looks like it has done the best in the past. If I'm a 12 seed making it to the Sweet 16 is my goal. I don't care who I play once I get there.

For some reason 6 seeds are much better at advancing than 5 seeds. To me the scenario for an 11 seed looks the best but it hasn't worked out that way.

Frankly, I would never want to be an 8 or 9 seed. I'd much rather be an 11 or 12 than that. 10 isn't much better. 1s and 2s are the teams you want to avoid.

I looked it up.

#5 seeds are 63-29 against #12 seeds
#12 seeds are 14-15 in the second round

#6 seeds are 63-29 against #11 seeds
#11 seeds are 11-18 in the second round

Hmm. I must have heard a stat from a particular set of seasons. Or I mis-heard it. Not much difference there.

[peacock2121]

I was thinkin' standing up for lawn grass, but kneeling for tulip bulbs.

How funny is this? I had a similar thought and could not think how to express it.

Great job, gs!

[Appa23]

One reason 12's have been so successful is the historic undervaluing of mid-majors by the committee. Typically, the 11-slots are filled by the last teams on the at-large board, i.e. middling teams from big conferences.

The 12-line (and occasionally the 13) is where the best of the mid-majors end up. Most of the 12- and 13-seeds are actually better than the "bubble teams" seeded ahead of them, but since they aren't able to generate the "at-large profile" the committee is looking for they end up lower.

This may be changing, though. Last year the committee did a much better job than they usually do of seeding. Winthrop, VCU, and George Washington all got 11-seeds and Gonzaga was a 10 while Illinois and Arkansas were 12's.

Several years ago, that was true. It no longer is. Gonzaga has drawn #3 seeds. MVC teams have drawn high seeds .(Creighton was about a #4 seed or so when Kyle Korver was a Senior. Their reward was to play a Western Michigan team that upset them.) Drake likely will be around a #4 or #5 seed, as will Butler.

[TheCalvinator24]

As a Baylor alum, I was hoping they would either play well enough (read win the Big 12 tourney) to move up to a 7 (or even a 6 seed), OR to do poorly and drop out of the 9 where they were being projected. I would rather be a 10, 11, or 12 than an 8 or 9.

[Appa23]

As a Baylor alum, I was hoping they would either play well enough (read win the Big 12 tourney) to move up to a 7 (or even a 6 seed), OR to do poorly and drop out of the 9 where they were being projected. I would rather be a 10, 11, or 12 than an 8 or 9.

Congrats, they did poorly, losing to Iowa State somehow.

I do like Baylor's team. Tweety Carter played in a High School Basketball Classic here in Omaha a couple years back, and he was fun to watch.

They have come a long way in a short time.

[silverscreenselect]

If I could pick in the second tier, I'd pick a 10 slot. 10 vs. 7 is almost a pick game. The number 2 seeds are either teams that faded late in the season from a #1 (possibly an early round wipeout in their conference tournament) or teams that got more than a deserved boost from winning a conference tournament.

[DadofTwins]

One reason 12's have been so successful is the historic undervaluing of mid-majors by the committee. Typically, the 11-slots are filled by the last teams on the at-large board, i.e. middling teams from big conferences.

The 12-line (and occasionally the 13) is where the best of the mid-majors end up. Most of the 12- and 13-seeds are actually better than the "bubble teams" seeded ahead of them, but since they aren't able to generate the "at-large profile" the committee is looking for they end up lower.

This may be changing, though. Last year the committee did a much better job than they usually do of seeding. Winthrop, VCU, and George Washington all got 11-seeds and Gonzaga was a 10 while Illinois and Arkansas were 12's.

Several years ago, that was true. It no longer is. Gonzaga has drawn #3 seeds. MVC teams have drawn high seeds .(Creighton was about a #4 seed or so when Kyle Korver was a Senior. Their reward was to play a Western Michigan team that upset them.) Drake likely will be around a #4 or #5 seed, as will Butler.

As I said earlier, this may be changing. But remember that as recently as 2 years ago, the so-called "Year of the Mid-Major" where George Mason went to the Final Four, the MVC got four bids. Wichita State was a 7, Creighton a 10, SIU an 11 and Bradley a 13. Air Force was also a 13 in that bracket.

Creighton was a 6 the year Western Michigan got them. That was the only year they got a single-digit seed.

Aside from Gonzaga between 2004 and 2006, the only mid-majors to get a top-5 seed were Princeton in 1997 and Butler last year.

In the tournament is better than out, but I'll be surprised if the committee "sees the light" on mid-majors. Drake deserves a 4, Butler a 5, and Davidson an 8. South Alabama and Illinois State deserve double-digit at-large seeds.

But we shall see.

[TheCalvinator24]

As a Baylor alum, I was hoping they would either play well enough (read win the Big 12 tourney) to move up to a 7 (or even a 6 seed), OR to do poorly and drop out of the 9 where they were being projected. I would rather be a 10, 11, or 12 than an 8 or 9.

Congrats, they did poorly, losing to Iowa State somehow.

I do like Baylor's team. Tweety Carter played in a High School Basketball Classic here in Omaha a couple years back, and he was fun to watch.

They have come a long way in a short time.

They lost to Colorado.

[Appa23]

As a Baylor alum, I was hoping they would either play well enough (read win the Big 12 tourney) to move up to a 7 (or even a 6 seed), OR to do poorly and drop out of the 9 where they were being projected. I would rather be a 10, 11, or 12 than an 8 or 9.

Congrats, they did poorly, losing to Iowa State somehow.

I do like Baylor's team. Tweety Carter played in a High School Basketball Classic here in Omaha a couple years back, and he was fun to watch.

They have come a long way in a short time.

They lost to Colorado.

D'Oh! I was starting to watch the start of Kansas thrashing Nebraska (as usual) when it hit me that I had Baylor losing to the wrong "bad" Big XII team.

[gotribego26]

in the bottom tier to advance the furthest?
8-9 where if you win you play 1 to get to the sweet 16
10 where you play 7 then 2 to get to the sweet 16 then 3
11 where you play 6 then 3 to get to the sweet 16 then 2
12-13 where you play 5 or 4 then 4 or 5 to get to the sweet 16 then 1

This article appeared in the WSJ today:

The Bracket, Cracked
By RUSSELL ADAMS
March 14, 2008; Page W4

This Sunday evening, the NCAA men's basketball selection committee will announce the field for this year's tournament -- at which point millions of people will begin filling out their own brackets using flawed logic and selective memory as their principal guides.

Not you. Not this year.

To inject some common sense into the field of bracketology, we performed a deep analysis of the last 23 NCAA men's tournaments, logging the participants and results in 1,380 games. The goal was to find some hidden truths, broad patterns and statistical oddities that might be helpful to anyone who wants to dominate the office pool. The good news: We managed to find a few of them.

By measuring the distance each tournament team has traveled for each game since 1985 and then relating that distance to its performance, we discovered that flying across the country to play a game can cost a team as many as three points. We noticed that No. 10 seeds are more than five times as likely to get to the third round as No. 9 seeds, that the Big Ten has outperformed expectations lately and that Wake Forest is, hands down, the most overrated team in the modern history of the tournament. Not far behind them in dashed expectations -- Stanford.

The most-emphatic result was this: While the NCAA tournament's television ratings may turn on newbies and Cinderellas, the numbers show that any enlightened bracketologist should be wary of trendy teams du jour that don't have long track records as high seeds. For every tournament game since 1985, we compared the seed each team was given with the seeds of all the teams it played, and then correlated the difference between those seeds to the final score. This gave us a previously unknown figure -- what the final margin of victory should be for any tournament game based on all the previous matchups between teams with those seeds. From there, we were able to see which teams have outplayed these averages and which ones haven't.

Looking at the tournament this way reveals one truth you can take to the bank: The selection committee sometimes doesn't give the big schools with the fancy basketball pedigrees enough credit. Since 1985, the teams that have most-consistently outperformed their seedings are Kentucky and Kansas -- which are two of the winningest teams in college-basketball history. Since 2000, UCLA and Georgetown also crack he top five.

Here's something to make North Carolina fans spit out their coffee: Since 1985, Duke has played more than 60 tournament games as a No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3 seed and in those games, it has beaten its expected performance by an average of three points. In other words, Duke isn't as coddled and overrated as some people think and -- for the purpose of filling out a good bracket -- they're a pretty good bet to live up to their seeding.

The data show that the most overrated schools are second-tier teams from top conferences. Exhibit A is Wake Forest, which has probably burned more brackets than any other team in three decades. Since 1985, the Demon Deacons have ranked between a No. 1 and No. 4 seed six different times, and only once, in 1996, did they advance beyond the third round. That year, Wake got blown out by 20 points in its quarterfinal matchup against Kentucky. In all those games Wake played 5.5 points below the average and never beat a higher-seeded team. "I'm glad we're number one in something," says Ron Wellman, Wake's athletic director. Mr. Wellman says the school has probably benefited from playing in the rugged Atlantic Coast Conference.

Since Wake probably won't be heading to the tournament this year, the team to be wary of is Stanford -- another serial bracket-killer. Since 2000, Stanford has underperformed its seed by an average of 6.4 points a game -- the worst showing by any team with at least eight games over that span. In 2004, when Stanford was a top seed, it lost to Alabama, a No. 8 seed, in the second round. No. 2-ranked Memphis, with a history of playing below the average for its seed, is another team to keep an eye on this time. The Tigers are a likely No. 1 seed.

The data also show that travel takes a toll. A regression analysis of travel distances and game scores shows that every 967 miles a team travels is equivalent to spotting one extra point to its opponent -- which means a full cross-country trip can dock a team three points. (In other words, you might think twice before picking Gonzaga to win a tight game in Raleigh, N.C.) An addendum to this rule: Teams that don't travel much -- look at Duke -- seem to be more likely to outperform their seedings.

One team that looks better when you factor in these travel figures is UCLA. From 2000 to 2005, the Bruins traveled an average of 1,683 miles per game -- the most of any team with at least six games. But the team still managed to outperform its seeding in 60% of them. In fact, in the Bruins' last 18 tournament games they've beaten the expected scoring margin by an astonishing seven points per game -- which suggests they might be a good team to count on in a close matchup, provided it's not being held in Kazakhstan. (Greg Shaheen, an NCAA senior vice president, says UCLA's schedules were a byproduct of the team being a low seed in many of those years and the lack of spots at nearby regionals.)

Players and coaches do turn over regularly in college basketball, which makes it difficult to make assumptions based on history. The NCAA downplays the impact of travel, noting that games are played on neutral courts with mostly neutral fans. And the selection committee's seeds aren't always far off. Last year, the committee had its best year in decades -- there were only 12 games won by the lower seed. Robert Walker, the race and sports book director for MGM Mirage in Las Vegas, says more often than not, "the committee gets it right."

Nevertheless, there are patterns to the committee's decisions that any astute bracketologist should recognize. For stretches of the 1990s, for example, the committee was overseeding teams from the Big Ten, who accounted for five of the 10 biggest underachievers of the decade. More recently the committee has been selling these teams short, especially Purdue and Michigan State, who have vastly outperformed their seeds since 2000. So if you're picking a close game involving the Boilermakers or Spartans, it might pay to be bullish.