NCAA Sweet Sixteen projections
Teams mostly are who we thought they were.
So far, the NCAA tournament has been rewarded with record ratings. At the risk of not #StickingToSports, I have a theory — actually, I’m stealing this theory from a friend who works in publishing — that people look for any form of entertainment other than politics in an election year. But it’s also been an incredibly fun tournament, with several overtime games and blue blood schools like Kentucky and Kansas going down.
And yet, the top-line probabilities don’t look very different from the Silver Bulletin projections at the start of the tournament. Part of that is because the projections have had a good year so far — I’m doing well in my tourney pool, and in the various game-by-game bets I made based on this model. (I recognize that I’m jinxing its performance from here onward in saying this out loud.) And partly it’s that the teams the model thought were the true contenders have survived; the Round of 32 was pretty chalky after various upsets in the Round of 64.
In fact, no team has seen its overall chance of winning the tournament fall or rise by more than about 3 percent. Here are the biggest gainers:
Connecticut: 22.5% → 25.6 (+3.1)
Houston: 9.8% → 12.5 (+2.7)
Purdue: 14.7% → 17.2 (+2.5)
Marquette: 2.3% → 3.9 (+1.6)
And the biggest decliners:
Auburn 2.7 → Eliminated (-2.7)
Kentucky 2.2 → Eliminated (-2.2)
Baylor 2.1 → Eliminated (-2.1)
What follows from here are projections for the remaining games; I’ll run the numbers from the East region for everyone, and the other regions for paying subscribers. To get in on the fun, plus unlock all other paid Silver Bulletin content, plus lock in current prices indefinitely, you can use the button below:
On Tuesday or Wednesday, I’ll plan to write another email that will go out to paid subscribers only, with Sweet Sixteen odds for the women’s tournament, plus any new injury news on the men’s side — the main thing we’re watching here at SBHQ is the status of Duke point guard Jeremy Roach, who was hurt in Sunday’s game and returned to action, though who is listed as day-to-day. Currently, I have Roach with a 70 percent chance of playing against Houston on Friday.
And yes, we’ve gotten a little sports-heavy this week, which means there’s a bottleneck of other topics in the queue. I may or may not weigh in on the DoorDash debate that’s raging on Twitter (if you don’t know about this, consider yourself lucky). But maybe it’s not the worst thing to take a little breather from politics, and regularly-scheduled programming will return before long. Speaking of which, there’s a fresh Silver Bulletin Subscriber Questions post coming this weekend — another benefit for paying subscribers — so don’t hesitate to submit your questions, particularly if you’re one of the many new people who has generously decided to subscribe.
All right, back to basketball. Here are the latest numbers from the East:
UConn was and remains the overall tournament favorite and the Huskies have looked good — but their gains are capped by the fact that many of the other top teams have also breezed through, both in the East region and elsewhere in the bracket. They are odds-on favorites to advance to the Final Four, in part because they’ll play their next two games with quasi-home court advantage in Boston, but tougher matchups loom later.
Next, the West: