Who Gets Into The NCAA Tournament? Version 3.0

Mar 3, 2015; Athens, GA, USA; Georgia Bulldogs guard Kenny Gaines (12) and Kentucky Wildcats guard Devin Booker (1) and forward Karl-Anthony Towns (12) reach for a rebound at Stegeman Coliseum. Kentucky defeated Georgia 72-64. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

With the college basketball season quickly heating up and the America East tournament starting Wednesday, I thought I would take the opportunity to again update my tournament-making projections. If you are unfamiliar with these numbers, they are the calculation of each Division 1 team’s chances of making the NCAA tournament, calculations that are influenced by a team’s predicted ability to win the games on the rest of their schedule, a team’s predicted ability to win their conference bid, and a team’s predicted fortune of earning an at-large bid from the NCAA selection committee. If you are interested in a more in-depth explanation of both the basic college-game-result model and the bid-predicting model that helps to calculate these numbers, please see the original post here.

An update of each team’s chances are detailed below. Below the numbers are a few notes of interest.

Ivy League races:

The Ivy League, which uses the conference standings of its members in lieu of a conference tournament, has become a two horse race between Harvard and Yale this year. Luckily for college basketball fans, Harvard and Yale are currently tied at 10-2 and still have another game to play against each other. Both Yale and Harvard play sub .500 teams to round out the season (Brown and Dartmouth) so the result of the Harvard/Yale game is likely to determine the conference’s bid.

Kentucky’s Undefeated Season:

Kentucky only has to beat Florida to go undefeated on the regular season. Heavily favored against Florida, I project their chance at an undefeated regular season to be 85.60%.

Teams rooting for conference stability:

The structure of the tournament screws over several teams a year. Depending on the year, roughly 20 or so worthy teams can be completely boxed out by the automatic conference bid system, which allows for weaker teams from lesser conferences to enter the tournament. But non-favorites winning big/medium-sized conferences can make things even worse for the teams in the 40th-50th best team range. If a big team like Kentucky is knocked out of their conference tournament, teams like Louisiana Tech (50.72%) Cincinnati (50.85%), and Texas A&M (55.35%) would be the first to lose their at-large bid spots.

Checking in on old champs:

On my first iteration of these predictions, UConn’s chances of making the 2015 tournament were 48.81%, and that number was buoyed by a strong at-large bid chance that leaned heavily on preseason rankings, a trait the tournament committee historically considers when giving at-large bids. After dipping to as low as 37.36%, a big win against SMU this past week has helped UConn’s chances, and their projected chance of making the tournament is back to 49.93%, a true coin flip. UConn has only a 5.71% chance of winning their conference bid, and right now they are on the outside looking in, in prime position to be boxed out further by surprise conference winners.  (I have a rep for betting against UConn, and look how far that’s gotten me.)