Seeds, reseeding, human vs data projections

[BRS24]

Well, I should be planting my micro green seeds that are sitting on the counter, but for now, let's have some fun with bids, seeds, and other things to keep us busy until Saturday, unless you are a MBB fan, then the fun starts in 2 days.

For starters, 11 of the top 16 seeds are still alive. From a conference perspective, here's CC's projections, actual bids, and where it stands today:

Conference	Projected	Actual	1st round	2nd round
SEC	9	8	4	2
ACC	8	8	5	4
Big Ten	6	6	5	4
Pac 12	6	6	3	1
Big 12	6	6	6	2
Big East	3	4	3	2
	38	38	26	15​

Here's a look at ESPN's reseeding of remaining 16 teams, with Stanford taking the overall #1 spot :

And in perusing some articles and websites, here's a comparison of The Athletic's reseeding from #1 to #16, and 538's projected win probabilities inserted in between opponents, which shows some interesting things on human analysis vs statistic modeling. For instance, TA has Stanford and Maryland as the top two seeds, however 538 is giving Stanford a huge edge on victory in their upcoming game.

And lastly, ESPN's top 25 players in Sweet 16, versus original top 25 list.

Have fun!

 

[UcMiami]

Again just stupid.
UNC and ND played tougher opponents and dominated while TN and Indiana struggled with 'lesser' teams - if you are going to reseed based on performance to date, TN and Indiana should be 4 seeds and Uconn should likely drop a bit as well.

 

[veryolddog]

It also implies that the Big East should have had 4 or 5 teams go to the tournament and the ACC and SEC should have been less.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

It also implies that the Big East should have had 4 or 5 teams go to the tournament and the ACC and SEC should have been less.

Not really. That may be true, although I'm not looking back at the criteria at this point. All it really says is:

• some teams were probably mis-seeded
• some teams ran into other teams that were either seeded wrong, were bad match-ups or were just hot at the time - upsets happen
• conference affiliation is not a predictor of success

You can't extrapolate out how other BE teams would have done, nor does losing in the 1st or 2nd round (which happens to 48 of the 64 teams) imply that you didn't belong in the tournament.

What you might extract, over all, and with detailed analysis (really, of the whole season) is some feeling for how various conferences fare against specific other conferences. You can't get there on one game, or one team, but for example, for many years the Big Ten's style of play did not predict success against teams from other conferences. With the arrival of Maryland, particularly, as well as coaching changes at most programs, that style has changed.