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2008 NCAA Tournament
Full video coverage of the Kansas Jayhawks in the 2008 NCAA Tournament
Politicians' brackets
The mathematicians at the College of Charleston aren't the only ones weighing in on the NCAA tournament. A smattering of politicians also are letting their sports allegiances out into the public light.
Barack Obama has KU losing to North Carolina in the Final Four. No word on how that will affect his support in the Sunflower State, but North Carolina doesn't vote until May, so perhaps Obama is looking to one-up candidate Hillary Clinton.
Speaking of Clinton, Bloomberg reports that she has deferred to her husband, Bill Clinton, to make the picks. Bill Clinton, in turn, has passed on sharing a bracket publicly.
John McCain also has KU in the Final Four and also losing to North Carolina. Could it be payback for Kansas lending its support to Mike Huckabee?
As for Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, she had all her bases covered this weekend. The Wichita Eagle reported she wore two jackets in Omaha, Neb.: one purple and one blue.
If 1+1=2 and 2X3=6, then Kansas will win the NCAA championship this year.
No joke.
A pair of mathematics students at the College of Charleston in South Carolina have developed several extremely complex algorithms that accounted for more than 5,000 regular season and conference title games for most of the NCAA men's basketball teams. When Neil Goodson and Colin Stephenson put it all together using various models, one team kept coming out as the winner: Kansas.
"We looked at it like an RPI (Ratings Percentage Index) ranking. The team that was ranked higher in each match is going to go on," Stephenson said.
In essence, the No. 1 ranked team will be the champion every time, but there could be upsets along the way based on the pairings set by the NCAA search committee versus the way the computer system would have seeded a bracket.
"Kansas is No. 1 the most out of all of the teams," Stephenson said. "They were first 10 or more times out of the 30 or so brackets. All together, we've had UNC, Kansas, Memphis not so much, Texas, Duke, Tennessee and UCLA win it all."
All this mathematical work isn't done purely for the sake of beating Vegas or winning bragging rights with friends; Goodson and Stephenson developed this research as part of a class project for their operations research class. Operations research involves applying mathematical models to real-world situations.
Self-described basketball nuts - Stephenson for Duke and Goodson for Tennessee - went a different path than their classmates when they decided to do a sports-related project.
"We're not sitting here thinking we're going to have a perfect bracket," Stephenson said. "We just want to see how we score against an average person."
Of the four different primary models they've used, the system that's proven most successful thus far is one that gives double weight to wins in the last two months of the season.
"We think a game that's been played at the end of the year is more important. A team that's hot at the end of the year is going to do better than a team that wins in November," Stephenson said.
That bracket, which is in the upper echelon of the rankings on ESPN.com, has all four No. 1 seeds in the Final Four and KU winning it all. Lending credence to its validity, it also predicted Kansas State's victory over University of Southern California and Texas A&M's victory over Brigham Young University.
More like this
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- Fresno juicy, but Dayton stacked March 13, 2007
- Jayhawks tumble to 14th December 3, 2002
- Not many selection surprises March 17, 2008
- Woodling: Carolina matchup not likely February 15, 2006
UPDATED: 2008-09 Kansas Men's Basketball: Past, Present and Future March 11, 2009
Sherron Collins: One-on-One November 3, 2008
KU trumpets its triumphs with new I-70 turnpike signs July 2, 2008
Jayhawks up for ESPY honors July 1, 2008
Bill Self at the White House June 3, 2008
Comments
jayhawker_97 (anonymous) says...
I'm all for the theory if it's Jayhawks that'll come up as the winner, but Duke??? sounds like it's a half-baked cookie.
it would be interesting if the prediction/calculation throws some factors like who the referees are in each game, who play less than 100%, etc..
March 25, 2008 at 4:05 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
yates33333 (anonymous) says...
Jayhawker_97, absolutely correct. I don't know why the refs don't call regular season games the same way they do the playoffs. Perhaps, they are afraid there would be no "student athletes" left standing by season's end.
March 25, 2008 at 7:14 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Lebowski (anonymous) says...
What are you guys talking about? I think the refs have been as equally inconsistent in the tourney as they were in the regular season. They have been consistently inconsistent.
March 25, 2008 at 8:42 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
justanotherfan (anonymous) says...
The officiating has gotten worse since the tournament started in my opinion. It's been called tight all game, then in the last couple of minutes they allow outright muggings. I hate that type of inconsistency. I'm just glad we have enough guys that one guy picking up two quick fouls doesn't bury us like it would a team like UNC (Hansborough) or Davidson (Curry) or UCLA (Love) or Texas (Augustin).
March 25, 2008 at 9:17 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
tashe2 (anonymous) says...
The refs just try to take the spot light away from the players. They feel like they have to make so many calls a game. The worst officiating I have ever seen is last year. I was in Allen Fieldhouse when we hosted Texas A&M or should I say when we hosted Acie Law. We lost the game, and im not saying we lost the games to the refs but it was the worst Officiating EVER. It went both ways to. So im not being bias! If we get screwed because of the officiating, I don't think I would be able to handle it.
As far as this little theory goes, KU winning it all. Thats all good and well, But numbers are numbers. There little theory cannot be accurate at all. I like the fact it comes up showing KU winning it all though.
Rock Chalk Title Talk!!
March 25, 2008 at 9:17 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
BannerforKirk (anonymous) says...
Bill Clinton picked G'town over KU in the Elite Eight. Google it.
March 25, 2008 at 9:38 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
lalawguy (anonymous) says...
Did these guys predict the refs no-foul-call for A & M at the end of the UCLA game?
March 25, 2008 at 10:46 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
wcormode (William Cormode) says...
lalawguy- That and the UCLA shot over the backboard were two of the worst calls I have ever seen.
March 25, 2008 at 11:25 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
JBurtin (anonymous) says...
Sounds like a fun project for an otherwise boring profession.
In response to the bizarre outcome of having Duke win it all, remember they are testing several different models to see which one is most accurate. With over thirty different models, they're sure to have some that don't work at all. It's a shotgun approach. It's nice to know that no matter how they try and model it, Kansas has a good chance of winning.
To date, Jeff Sagarin from MIT has the best mathematical model. His Predictor poll consistently gets better results than other polls.
So who wins in the Sagarin Predictor poll?
#1 Kansas.
Even if you figure in a home court advantage for Wisconsin in the Elite eight. Kansas still comes out of their bracket, then goes on to beat the rest of the teams at a neutral site. Furthermore, being in San Antonio will likely mean a slightly Kansas biased crowd.
As a side note, it also correctly predicted K-state over USC and Texas A&M over BYU. In all, it has 12 of the sweet 16 predicted correctly when homecourt advantage is ignored.
Many of the first round choices it got wrong in are predictable when you figure in the likely crowd sway and give the lower team an extra 4.11 for home court advantage.
Villanova played in Tampa with their conferencemate UConn likely swaying the crowd to a Big East crowd.
Vanderbilt was barely picked to beat Siena (the lowest prediction score of any team predicted to win their game in the tourney), and their fans probably don't travel well. The Big East crowd would love the underdog and was likely cheering for Siena to meet up with Villanova.
Similar deal for Western Kentucky vs. Drake. I don't believe UConn had lost yet, so they and their conferencemate Villanova would love to see the lower seed knocked out.
Two notable exceptions:
Indiana has not played well since Sampson left, so Arkansas took them out. This is a factor outside the realm of the equation.
and
San Diego over Uconn is the only one that makes no sense. I guess if the Villanova fans turned against their conference later in the game simply to see two big upsets in one day, then it could happen. But Uconn was predicted to win that game even in a hostile environment so it's just an impressive win.
In the second round, Davidson at home is predicted to win over Georgetown on the road. North Carolina fans in Raleigh would love to see Georgetown out, so that one plays out as predicted.
Western Kentucky and Villanova were just the better teams than their second round matchups.
and
Everybody hates Duke, so West Virginia essentially got a home game against them, winning as predicted.
All in all, Sagarin is having one hell of a day in the office pool.
March 25, 2008 at 12:45 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
robot (Robin Smith) says...
for good measure, I'll mention that Pomeroy Ratings, which are an intelligently designed predictor like Sagarin's, also predict KU to win it all.
March 25, 2008 at 4:25 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Strikewso (anonymous) says...
Of course Bill Clinton picked had Alma Mater, that's a no brainer. A lot of non-G'town alumns picked them, too, so it was a solid pick. What is more suspect it Barrack Obama picking UNC to win it all. Since NC is still a big primary coming up, that pick appears to be politically motivated (even if they are #1 and look unstoppable). I'm actually surprised BC didn't go that route, but good on him for being true to his school.
March 25, 2008 at 7:47 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
scootja32 (anonymous) says...
sorry to be a downer, but uh . . . . this article sucks.
March 25, 2008 at 9:58 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
bbeachy (anonymous) says...
Sounds like they stole their stats from Kenpom.com. I picked my bracket based on his rating system and it had most of the same picks.
March 26, 2008 at 9:15 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Tuskin (anonymous) says...
So, why didn't the Journal World mention that a KU grad did the same kind of thing? I have an analysis program that I often post here... Is a program better because it's by students at the College of Charleston?
My computer system also picked the K-State and Texas A&M wins. A few years back I compared it to Sagarin's, and most of our ratings were very similar. For those teams where our results were significantly different, mine did a better job of predicting the results of upcoming games. (Boston College was not as good as he thought it was, for example.)
My system can generate odds, rather than running a simulation several times to see varying results. The odds of KU winning the tourney are 34% now, slightly better than the 31.65% before the tourney began. My results are at http://home.gci.net/~gruhn/bball/inde...
Also very interesting is that ESPN found some results of another simulation that was run 10,000 times, and they said that 31.6% of the time, KU won. Interesting how the various computer programs are getting about the same results.
All this is well and good, unless KU's players hear about it and think they don't have to play their best. This time of year, everyone remaining is really good, and teams that don't bring their best will go home.
March 26, 2008 at 4:53 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )