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Message: [QUOTE="jleves, post: 4644003, member: 757"] Based on the thread about total seeds beaten, I decided to do some extra math and analysis. First of all, using total seeds beaten to determine the hardest paths is worthless. A 1 or 2 seed accumulates more points just getting through the first weekend than the 8th seed 85 Nova team beat for the entire tournament. ie. Of course higher seeds have a tougher path on paper. So I looked at a couple other metrics. All of these are based on the champions since 1985 when the tournament went to 64 teams. The first is the difference between the lowest number you could face based on seed vs what you actually had to play. The champions for the 38 years averaged playing 10 points over the minimum they could face in a chalk bracket. ie if a 1 seed plays a 9 instead of an 8 in the second round, that's +1, a 3 faces an 11 instead of a 6 in the second round, that's plus 5, etc. Next I took the 4 hardest games to see how things stack up as a 1 seed could face a 1, a 1, a 2 and a 4. Then just cause it was easy, how many top 4 seeds did they beat. Based on the results, there is a pretty good argument that UConn has had some above average easy paths. Only the 2014 team faced the average of + 10 (also the only UConn team to face 4 top 4 seeds). The other four were all over the average: 1999 +13, 2004 +12, 2011 +14 and 2023 +15. 2023 is one of only two teams that only faced one top 4 seed en route to the trophy. Nova and UNC have had the 4 hardest paths with a +1 and +2 for each. I'll put the complete chart in the next post, but here is the lowest possible score for each seed. 1: 32 2: 28 3: 25 4: 23 5: 21 6: 19 7: 18 8: 18 9: 17 10: 15 11: 14 12: 14 13: 14 14: 14 15: 15 16: 17 [/QUOTE]

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