NCAA Tournament

While many people feel like March Madness doesn't begin until the first Thursday of the NCAA tournament, real college basketball fans know calamity hits its stride during conference-tournament season, in which Championship "Week" is actually 13 days long and more than 300 teams try to play their way into the Big Dance.

But how much do the conference tournaments actually matter when it comes to filling out your men's NCAA tournament bracket?

If a team gets (or stays) hot and wins its major-conference tournament, is it more likely to make a deep run? Conversely, if a team immediately gets eliminated from its conference tournament, does it translate to a higher probability for an early exit from the NCAA tourney?

To answer those questions, I went back through the past decade of NCAA tournament and conference tournament data for the six major conferences: the ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-10/Pac-12 and SEC. That's a combined total of 60 conference tournament champions and 285 teams that earned at-large bids.

Here are some observations from that research. Keep them in mind when making your Final Four selections in a couple of weeks.

        

As a Whole, Conference Tournament Champions Are Substantially More Successful

There's no sense in burying the lede here. This is the biggest takeaway.

Of the aforementioned 60 conference tournament champs, 15 (25.0 percent) made it to the Final Four, 40 (66.7 percent) reached the Sweet 16 and only eight (13.3 percent) were eliminated in the first round. The average expected win total for teams in this group is 2.38.

Maybe those numbers don't sound impressive, but just wait until you see them in contrast to the others.

In the past 10 years, 89 teams have received at-large bids despite not winning a single game in their conference tournament. Only four (4.5 percent) of those teams reached the Final Four. Twenty-four (27.0 percent) made it to the Sweet 16, and 34 (38.2 percent) were eliminated in the first round. Their average expected win total is a mere 1.07. None of them won a national championship.

Teams that win at least one conference tournament game before falling short of the title haven't fared much better. A whopping 196 fit that description, resulting in 14 (7.1 percent) Final Fours, 69 (35.2 percent) Sweet 16s and 80 (40.8 percent) immediate eliminations. The expected win total there is a mildly more respectable 1.26, but that's still more than a full win behind the conference tournament champions.

Of course, significant outliers exist.

Texas Tech darn near won it all last year after losing its Big 12 opener. Among the conference champs who lost right away, you've got 2018 Virginia (UMBC), 2016 Michigan State (Middle Tennessee) and 2012 Missouri (Norfolk State). But as a general rule of thumb, conference champions are more successful.

There are a few intriguing caveats, though.

         

NCAA No. 1 Seeds Are Slightly Better Off Not Winning Conference Tournaments

Excluding the four mid-major No. 1 seeds—Gonzaga in 2013, 2017 and 2019; Wichita State in 2014—36 major-conference squads have sat on the top line in the past decade. Most of them (22) won their conference tournaments, but that still leaves 14 that earned a No. 1 seed despite faltering at some point in the final few days before Selection Sunday.

And that latter group has been a little more successful.

The 22 conference champs have produced eight Final Four teams and three national champions. The expected win total is a strong 3.10. The only ones to bow out before the Sweet 16 were Virginia in the UMBC fiasco, Villanova in both 2015 and 2017 and Kansas when it got Ali Farokhmanesh'd by Northern Iowa in 2010.

But there have been four national champions among the 14 No. 1 seeds that didn't win their conference tournaments, and only two of the 14—2011 Pittsburgh and 2018 Xavier—failed to reach the second weekend. That group has an expected win total of 3.36, and it's hard to say why that's the case.

It's a small enough difference that it might just be a wrinkle we can attribute to sample size. Or maybe there is some sort of motivational advantage that comes from losing in your conference tournament and realizing you aren't invincible. Either way, it's an interesting set of data points.

As far as this season is concerned, that could be pertinent information in the Big 12, as both Baylor and Kansas are firmly entrenched on the top line and can't possibly both win the conference tournament. I'm not suggesting the loser of the possible rubber match in the Big 12 title game is destined to make a deeper run than the winner, but I am suggesting there's no good reason to assume the loser is going to get bounced in the second round.

         

Among Top 4 Seeds, No Back-to-Back One-and-Dones

To reiterate a previous note, of the 89 major-conference teams in the past decade to earn an at-large bid in spite of an immediate exit from their conference tournament, 34 also lost in the first round (or the First Four) of the NCAA tournament.

However, that evidently does not apply to teams that earn a No. 4 seed or better because there have been 25 such teams, and not a single one lost in the first round. Meanwhile, of the 119 teams to win at least one conference tournament game prior to earning a top-four seed, 17—one out of every seven if you're a fan of reduced fractions—lost in the first round.

Granted, 25 teams (2.5 per year) is only a slightly bigger sample size than our above look at No. 1 seeds. But when you're trying to forecast those elusive, colossal first-round upsets, you'll probably want to avoid the teams that went 0-1 in their conference tournaments even though you would think those are the obvious candidates to lay eggs.

Two other thoughts on this particular subset of the data:

1. While none of the 25 lost in the first round, 2019 Texas Tech was the only one to reach the Final Four. If we end up with any top-four seeds who lose their only conference tournament game, play the odds and take those teams exactly to the Sweet 16.
2. This means that of the teams to earn a No. 5 seed or worse after an immediate exit from their conference tournament, more than half (34 of 64) proceed to lose in the first round of the NCAA tournament. While there have been a few incredible runs from that group—2016 Syracuse and 2017 South Carolina, in particular—the expected win total there is 0.72. Look elsewhere for your sleeper picks.

         

Feel Free to Fade This Year's Big Ten Tournament Champion

While most conference tournament champions enjoy a fair amount of success in the Big Dance, the team that survives the toughest gauntlet rarely has enough left in the tank for a deep run.

Per KenPom.com, the Big 12 was rated as the best conference in 2010, as well as each year from 2014-19. The Big Ten held down the top spot from 2011-13, and it is clearly locked in at No. 1 this season.

Of the teams that won those 10 conference tournaments, four failed to reach the Sweet 16 (Kansas in 2010; Iowa State in 2015, 2017 and 2019), and only one went to the Final Four (Kansas in 2018). Those Jayhawks had to survive a minor miracle in the Elite Eight, too, only beating Duke in overtime when Grayson Allen's would-be game-winner at the end of regulation rolled around the rim twice before falling out.

In the past decade, the tournament winner of the toughest conference has an expected win total of just 1.8.

But you can already assume with near-100 percent certainty that everyone in the national media is going to fall head-over-heels in love with whoever wins the Big Ten tournament because that team is going to win at least three tough games in consecutive days on a neutral court. As long as it isn't Nebraska, Northwestern, Minnesota or Purdue, it is also likely going to end up with a top-four seed and will rank among the 10 betting favorites to win the title.

Just try to remember there's a fine line between battle-tested and downright exhausted. The Big Ten has already produced a brutal conference season with virtually no freebies, and this tournament is liable to sap what little energy these teams have left in their reserves.

                

Kerry Miller covers men's college basketball and college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.  

Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying, "By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."

While he obviously wasn't referring to a tournament in a sport that wasn't invented until a century after his death, that wisdom does apply to filling out your bracket(s) for the men's NCAA tournament.

Disclaimer: Properly preparing does not guarantee you will put together the winning bracket. There's a good chance you're still going to lose to someone who makes first-round picks based on jersey colors, second-round picks based on theoretical mascot fights, etc.

But you can increase your odds of winning by increasing your knowledge of the national landscape of college basketball in the remaining window between now and Selection Sunday on March 15.

We'll include specific references to teams in the projected 2020 field, but this is advice that applies to any year.

       

Know Thy Cinderellas

First and foremost, spend some time in these final few weeks familiarizing yourself with the top mid-major teams.

You might already be in the habit of flipping between ESPN and FS1 for four hours on most nights of the week, soaking up a ton of games involving the likes of Duke, Kentucky and Villanova. But have you watched any Northern Iowa or East Tennessee State? How about Utah State and Vermont? Heck, have you even sought out a BYU or Saint Mary's game that wasn't played against Gonzaga?

Unless you have been intentional about it, chances are you haven't watched a single game played by half of the teams in the running for the No. 12 and No. 13 seeds, which is a popular spot for significant first-round upsets. And by the time the bracket is announced, it's too late to apply the proper due diligence in deciding whether you like a particular matchup for the underdog.

Degenerates like myself can put together any number of Cinderella rankings to let you know which small schools are the biggest threats and why, but your eye test might find additional strengths and weaknesses that help you decide between chalk and an upset.

If you don't have time to watch a ton of game tape on teams that might not even make the Big Dance if they falter in their conference tournaments, at least make sure to read up on them here as February rolls into March. You don't need tape to figure out that BYU is lethal from three-point range or that Northern Iowa has a bad habit of losing the turnover battle. Factoids like that can help in a big way.

Just don't go falling in love, though.

Wish I could abide by my own advice on this one, but there's always a mid-major team or two that I end up talking myself into as a Sweet 16 team before we even see the bracket—and it rarely ends well. Over the past seven years, my man crushes on the likes of Bucknell's Mike Muscala, Eastern Washington's Tyler Harvey, South Dakota State's Mike Daum and Belmont's Dylan Windler ruined my bracket before the first Thursday was even finished.

        

Don't Forget About the Nos. 7-9 Seeds

In addition to the top mid-majors, make sure you're paying some mind to the middling majors.

Over the remaining days until Selection Sunday, you're going to hear a lot of banter about potential No. 1 seeds and the bubble. For the former, that means a ton of information about Baylor, Kansas, Gonzaga, San Diego State, Dayton, Duke and Maryland. For the latter, it'll be a bunch of 13-loss teams who deserve to get in because of ABC and deserve to be left out because of XYZ.

By the end of it, you might unintentionally memorize the best wins and worst losses for all of the No. 1, No. 2, No. 10 and No. 11 seeds, as well as a few of the No. 1 seeds in the NIT.

But there are about 30 teams between those two groups that won't receive as much attention in the final couple of weeks—particularly the ones in the Nos. 7-9 seed range that are neither in the AP Top 25 nor perilously close to the bubble.

We're talking about LSU, Xavier and a handful of Big Ten teams, among others. 

Maybe you watched a fair number of those squads earlier in the season, but how do they look now? Are they heating up and maybe on the verge of toppling a No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the second round? Or are they a bit disjointed and all but certain to get bounced by a decent opponent in the first round?

Oregon was the only team seeded lower than No. 5 to reach the Sweet 16 last year, but the 12th-seeded Ducks only surprised those who weren't paying attention. They rode an eight-game winning streak into the tournament, blowing out most of their competition along the way. On the flip side of that coin, Louisville lost eight of its final 12 games, ended up with a No. 7 seed and didn't even come close to beating a Minnesota squad with virtually no bench.

It's not a perfect science, of course. Two years ago, Kansas State lost three of its final five games, got smoked basically any time it faced a quality opponent and then made it to the Elite Eight as a No. 9 seed. Or who can forget Seton Hall going 12-2 down the stretch in 2015-16, winning the Big East tournament and then laying an egg in a 68-52 first-round loss as a No. 6 seed?

Making it a point to bone up on those teams should give you a competitive edge, though, since a lot of people just know the favorites and have a couple of sleepers and/or Cinderella candidates.

           

You Can't Go Home Again

Make note of road and neutral-site records/performances.

This is a critical data point for bracketologists and the selection committee, but it often gets lost in the shuffle when it comes to actually filling out a bracket.

All of the good teams protect home court for the most part, but the true title contenders are the ones who can consistently take that show on the road—considering it takes six consecutive neutral-site victories to win the whole shebang.

Virginia was 14-2 away from home before last year's tournament, and one of the two losses was a two-point game at Duke. The year before that, Villanova went 18-3 outside the Wells Fargo Center and was close in all three losses. Even before Connecticut's unexpected run to the 2014 title, it had a bunch of quality wins and close losses away from home.

But instead of focusing on who's best on the road, it's probably more effective to look at which teams are either bad or unproven in those environments.

For instance, 2018-19 Marquette only played one road/neutral game against a NET top-50 team between Thanksgiving and Selection Sunday. It lost that game and then it got obliterated by Murray State in the first round. Similar story for the aforementioned Louisville team that did have a few impressive road wins, but also a couple of embarrassing losses and an overall road/neutral record of 6-9. 

Teams to exercise caution with this year include Texas Tech (1-6 road/neutral vs. Quadrant 1), Oregon (losses at Oregon State and Washington State; close calls at California and Utah) and most of the Big Ten, especially Rutgers (16-1 at home; 1-9 away from the RAC).

There are others, too, and there will be both additions to and subtractions from that list in the next few weeks. For now, it's more of a reminder to not overlook those data points on the various team resumes and to maybe put some extra consideration into teams who look good away from home the rest of the way.

        

Defense Wins Championships

Last but certainly not least, try to figure out which defenses you trust the most.

Over the past 16 years, the average pre-tournament KenPom.com adjusted defensive efficiency (AdjDE) rank by the 64 Final Four teams was 19.5. And that number is skewing high because of 2011 VCU, which ranked 138th before introducing the world to "havoc." Remove that outlier—the only team during that stretch to rank lower than 72nd and one of just four that were worse than 50th—and the average drops to 17.7.

The last time a team played in the national championship after entering the tournament with an AdjDE rank worse than 37th was Michigan in 2013. Those Wolverines ranked 66th, but they had the No. 2 offense, the Wooden Award winner (Trey Burke) and a late-season bloomer (Mitch McGary). That team also trailed Kansas by 10 with 2:25 remaining in the Sweet 16 before a miraculous comeback in an overtime victory.

So, it can happen, but it takes some extraordinary circumstances to make a deep run without a great defense.

Defense isn't everything, though. The No. 1 defense only made it to the Final Four in three of those 16 years, and only 16 top-five defenses—aka an average of one per year—made the Final Four during that span. Most concerning of all, Virginia had the No. 1 defense when it lost to No. 16 seed UMBC in the first round in 2018.

Still, if you're thinking of putting teams like Dayton, Creighton, Villanova and Iowa into the 2020 Final Four, you might want to keep a close eye on how well (or poorly) they do on defense the rest of the way.

          

Kerry Miller covers men's college basketball and college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.

Bracketology is, hands down, the best -ology. And if you clicked on an article about NCAA tournament seeding in mid-February, there's a good chance you share that belief.

Whether it's the annual way-too-early projection right after the tournament ends, a doldrums-of-the-summer look ahead to March, the obligatory prognostication 12 hours before the first tipoff of the season or any number of in-season best guesses, inject those bad boys straight into our veins.

But when Selection Sunday arrives and it's time to stop trying to figure who belongs where and start forecasting who can make a deep run, how much does the seeding actually matter?

There have been 35 NCAA tournaments since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, and we've looked back through all of them in an attempt to determine the importance of seeding.

Here are some observations from that exercise.

     

It's Good to Be No. 1

This isn't exactly groundbreaking news here, but No. 1 seeds are the most successful in the NCAA tournament.

Teams on the top line are 139-1 in the first round, with UMBC giving us that one outlier two years ago against Virginia. That's a winning percentage of 99.3. No. 2 seeds are only at 94.3 percent, with an average of one 15-over-2 upset every 4.4 years. No. 3 seeds lose 15 percent of the time. And it only gets worse from there.

We aren't just talking about the first round, though. No. 1 seeds are far more likely to advance further into the tournament, too.

A whopping 85.7 percent of No. 1 seeds reach the Sweet 16, 69.3 percent reach the Elite Eight and 41.4 percent reach the Final Four. Using those figures, the expected win total for a No. 1 seed in the first four rounds is 2.96. That drops to 2.23 for No. 2 seeds, 1.76 for No. 3 seeds and so on and so forth.

No. 1 seeds have also won 23 of the last 35 national championships, including seven instances (1993, 1999, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2015 and 2017) of a No. 1 dueling a No. 1 in the title game.

That's a lot of numbers in quick succession, but the TL;DR version is that the four best regular-season teams are also expected to be the four best teams in the tournament.

Keep that in mind next time you hear someone say San Diego State would be better off as the No. 2 seed in the West Region than it would be as the No. 1 seed in the East Region.

The argument makes sense. Based on current projections and assuming the bracket plays to form, the Aztecs would likely face a Big East or Big Ten team in the Sweet 16 followed by Duke in the Elite Eight, and both of those opponents would have a major geographic advantage over the No. 1 seed in New York City.

But don't worry about who or where you might play in the Elite Eight. Just get there. And the likelihood of playing in a regional final as a No. 2 seed (45.0 percent) is considerably lower than it is for a team on the top line.

    

Cindere11a Story

Your eyes aren't deceiving you. Those are ones instead of L's, and it's because No. 11 seeds are most likely to make a deep run full of upsets.

As far as the first and second rounds are concerned, there's no real difference between Nos. 10, 11 and 12 seeds. All three win their first game between 35.7 and 39.3 percent of the time, and all three get to the Sweet 16 approximately 16 percent of the time.

But if you're hellbent on picking an unlikely Elite Eight or Final Four team, go with a No. 11 seed.

There has been only one instance of a team seeded lower than 11 reaching the Elite Eight. That was No. 12 seed Missouri in 2002. Four No. 9 seeds have done it. And there have been eight each from the No. 10 and No. 11 seed lines.

As far as the Final Four goes, there have been only six teams seeded lower than No. 8: one No. 9 (Wichita State in 2013), one No. 10 seed (Syracuse in 2016) and four No. 11 seeds (LSU in 1986, George Mason in 2006, VCU in 2011 and Loyola-Chicago in 2018).

That 11 line has been particularly hot as of late, too.

There has been at least one 11-over-6 upset in 15 consecutive years and 28 out of 60 (46.7 percent) total during that stretch. Twelve of those 28 proceeded to win at least one more game, and five of them went to the Elite Eight.

No. 11 seeds are often either the top mid-majors or bubble teams that perhaps rode a late wave into the tournament and were able to keep that hot streak going. Maybe there's something to that, or it might just be a product of teams building momentum with a win over a borderline Top 25 opponent and then catching the subsequent No. 3 seed by surprise.

Who knows? But what we do know is that submitting a bracket without at least one No. 11 seed in the second round is akin to just giving up before the tournament starts.

      

Sweet No. 16

No, we aren't talking about No. 16 seeds, but rather the No. 16 overall seed.

For those unfamiliar with the bracket-building process, here's a quick lesson. As the current No. 1 overall seed, Baylor gets top consideration in terms of both region and sub-region (pod) for the first two rounds. Any bracketologist worth his or her salt is projecting the Bears for the South Region with first- and second-round games in St. Louis. That continues down the line with Kansas then going to the Midwest Region with an opening weekend trip to Omaha, Nebraska.

But by the time you get down to the No. 16 overall seed, all that's left is the scraps, which often results in a geographic disadvantage. Last year, Virginia Tech was No. 16 overall, and it had to go all the way out to San Jose, California, for the first two rounds. It was even worse in 2015, when Georgetown got shipped out to Portland to face Eastern Washington and Utah.

One would think that the No. 16 overall seed would be a great spot for picking an early upset, but one would be wrong.

In the eight years since the NCAA began releasing its overall seed list to the public, the lowest-ranked No. 4 seed has gone to the Sweet 16 six times and reached the Final Four twice. The only one to lose in the first round was Arizona, which got walloped by a veteran, under-seeded Buffalo squad in 2018.

That bottom No. 4 seed has averaged 2.1 wins per year.

During the same eight-year span, the other three No. 4 seeds have averaged 1.6 wins and sent only one team (2013 Michigan) to the Final Four. They also suffered a combined total of five 13-over-4 upsets.

The takeaway here isn't that you absolutely have to pick the No. 16 overall seed to reach the Sweet 16, but rather that there's no good precedent for writing off that team just because its journey begins far from home. Syracuse's 2013 Final Four run began in San Jose. The year before that, No. 16 overall seed Louisville had to win two games in Portland and two more in Phoenix. That didn't matter one bit.

      

Big Difference Between No. 4 Seeds and No. 5 Seeds

Maybe you don't need to hear this last part because you immediately pencil in four 12-over-5 upsets every year, but it is surprisingly rare for a No. 5 seed to make a deep run in the NCAA tournament.

Over the past 35 years, there have been only nine No. 5 seeds in the Elite Eight. Auburn was one of those nine last March, but that was the first time since 2011.

Meanwhile, there have been 14 No. 6 seeds in the Elite Eight, 10 No. 7 seeds and eight each from the No. 8, No. 10 and No. 11 lines.

The size of the gap between the No. 4 and No. 5 seeds is surprising considering there's neither a significant difference in resume strength nor the paths they need to take.

No. 4 seeds reach the Sweet 16 a solid 47.1 percent of the time compared to 33.6 percent for No. 5 seeds. And of the ones who get to the Sweet 16, only 19.1 percent of No. 5 seeds also advance to the Elite Eight; that success rate is 31.8 percent for No. 4 seeds.

But if you have the guts to pick a No. 5 seed to the Elite Eight, go ahead and ride that team to the Final Four, too. Seven out of the nine (77.8 percent) won their Elite Eight games, which is the highest percentage by far. The next best is No. 8 seeds with five out of eight (62.5 percent).

With that said, if you're a fan of a team like Oregon or Kentucky that's hovering on the border between the No. 4 and No. 5 seed lines, you should be rooting for the former. It's rough out there for the No. 5 seeds.

                

Kerry Miller covers men's college basketball and college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.