2019 Bracket Advice: Don't Make Houston or Texas Tech Your Final Four Sleeper

While this is primarily a college football blog, around March or April over the past two years, I have deviated from the offseason script and penned a few college basketball pieces. Two years ago, I looked at how football expansion was making the March experience worse for mid-majors and last year, I examined college basketball tiers. Those posts both came out around Final Four weekend, but this year, I want to help you fill out your bracket. This post will point out some teams you should probably avoid christening as Cinderellas when you make your bracket picks. Next week, I’ll take a look at the ebbs and flows of at-large bids in the power conferences and hopefully talk Pac-12 fans down from bridges and overpasses. After that, we’ll resume football-centric posts and continue our slog through the ten FBS conferences with a look back at the MAC. As always, thanks for reading.

Which college basketball poll is more accurate: the preseason AP poll or the one put out mere days before the tournament starts? If you guessed the most recent poll, you are a moron you would be incorrect. Despite having a season’s worth of data, the final poll of the season is less accurate than the preseason poll in terms of identifying your national title contenders. Other researchers have written about this phenomenon and why it exists, so I won’t steal their thunder. However, I did conduct some research of my own in an attempt to identify teams that are more likely to be upset in the early rounds of the tournament. Read on for my analysis.

In 2001, the NCAA tournament expanded to 65 teams by adding a play-in game on the Tuesday before the real tournament starts. The play-in game pitted the two lowest rated teams in the field with the winner advancing to face prohibitive odds against a number one seed. While I dislike the play-in game and its successors, three other play-in games that were added when the field expanded to 68 teams in 2011, it is a nice arbitrary demarcation date. With that arbitrary date in mind, I decided to examine every tournament beginning with 2001. As the year is currently 2019, that means eighteen tournaments have been played since the field expanded. In those eighteen tournaments, there have been 171 teams to take the court while ranked in the most recent AP poll (and final as the AP does not vote on teams after the tournament) that were not ranked in the preseason AP poll. To determine how those teams fared in the tournament, I conducted a rudimentary examination of their expected number of wins based on their seed. For example, a number one seed is expected to win their quadrant of the bracket, so their expected number of wins would be four. Were they to lose in the first round (as Virginia famously did last season), they would finish four wins short of expectations. If they lost in the second round, they would finish three wins short and so on. As I mentioned, this analysis is very basic and ignores things like quality of opponent. When Virginia was vanquished in the first round, it made things much easier for the other teams in their quadrant, but that is not taken into account here. In addition, this analysis is only concerned with winning a quadrant (or region) of the bracket and advancing to the Final Four.

So how did those teams perform? Collectively, those 171 teams won about four tenths of a game less than would be expected based on their seed. While four tenths of a win may not sound like much, it means those teams are not living up to their seed in the aggregate. In addition, nearly half of those teams (85) finished at least one game worse (i.e. lost at least one round early) than would be expected based on their seed. Around 30% of those 171 teams (52) won exactly as many game as expected based on their seed and only 20% (34) performed above what would be expected. Those results are summarized in the table.

Still not convinced? Wait, there’s more. Since 2001, 91 teams seeded sixth or better have lost in the first round (about five per tournament on average). Of those 91 teams, 36 (nearly 40%) were ranked in the final AP poll despite not being ranked in the preseason AP poll. Those 36 teams are listed chronologically below. Relive your best (or worst March memories).

I’m not done yet. Since 2001, 56 teams seeded third or better have lost in the second round (about three per tournament). Of those 56 teams, 21 (about 38%) were ranked in the final AP poll despite not being ranked in the preseason AP poll. Once again, here they are. 

I try to be transparent around here, so I will point out the success stories of teams that entered the tournament ranked despite not appearing in the preseason poll. Six teams (out of 171) advanced to the Final Four. They are listed below along with the number of future NBA players on their respective teams.

Every team had at least two future NBA players (Michigan has an asterisk as some additional players from their 2018 runner-up squad may eventually play in the NBA) on their roster and some (looking at you Florida) had an embarrassment of riches. Obviously, the exception to this rule is if a team has a decent amount of future NBA talent, the fact they were not ranked in the preseason poll may not matter as much.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you that currently ranked teams that did not appear in the preseason poll are not good bets to go a long way in March (provided they don’t have a lot of NBA talent). But who fits the bill this year? Here are all the teams ranked in the most recent poll that were not ranked in the preseason poll along with their seed.

Texas Tech is the lone member of this group with a player likely to be drafted in June. Wofford's Fletcher Magee, Houston's Corey Davis, and Wisconsin's Ethan Happ may wind up on an NBA roster, but this group of teams is not brimming with NBA talent. I'm not implying they are all going to lose in the first round, but I would advise against predicting them to exceed the expectations associated with their seed.

Hopefully this analysis helps you win your bracket pool. If so, feel free to send me a percentage of your winnings. If not, well you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet.