Last year, I outlined a strategy to maximize your value in your NCAA men's basketball tournament pool. Since then, I've received a slew of e-mails asking for an updated version -- so here we go! Much of the explanation below comes from last year's version, but all of the numbers are updated.
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We've developed a different way of looking at the field of 64 teams, one that just might help you bring home the prize.
Here's the idea: Generally, most people's picks in tournament pools look pretty similar. After a while, you start to have consensus. For instance, the millions of users in ESPN's online pool almost all think that the top four seeds will win their first game (and they're almost certainly right, as a top seed has never lost to a 16 seed in the first round).
But you can look at each round, and each game, and see the percentage of players who've picked which winner. Call it the wisdom of the crowd, which is pretty darn good. Even with the unpredictability of the tournament, the crowd's consensus picks usually finish in the 80th percentile or so.
That's not good enough to win your pool, though. You need to be looking for teams that the crowd is undervaluing (or overvaluing). That's what we've done in the chart below:
Here's what those numbers mean. They're the difference between the crowd's pick at ESPN, and the statistical predictions of two top college basketball analysts: Ken Pomeroy and Jeff Sagarin. Both sets of ratings can be used to calculate a team's expected chance to reach a certain round of the tournament.
I've then taken the two ratings and averaged them together, and then compared them with the ESPN percentages. A positive number means that the stats say a team is more likely to win than the crowd thinks; negative means that the stats say they're more likely to lose than the crowd thinks.
Games that have more than a 10 percent difference are highlighted -- green showing teams that are good bets compared to the crowd and red showing bad bets.
You'll see that most of the top seeds are highly inflated, especially Kansas. None of the other top seeds are way off in the title game -- there are far too many people picking Kansas, if you believe the stats.
The Mountain West pair of San Diego State and Brigham Young are two of the best values out there. Both teams have a real shot at the Final Four (by the stats) but few people have picked them to get there.
The single biggest gap between the two sets of picks? Utah State vs. Kansas State in the first round. According to the numbers, Utah State has a 57 percent likelihood of knocking off the higher-seeded Wildcats, but 73 percent of ESPN users have picked Kansas State.
This is a high-risk, high-reward strategy. Stick with the crowd and you probably won't win, although you likely won't finish last. But since most pools only pay for the top few slots, you might as well go for it, right?
Check out the complete Google Docs spreadsheet if you want to see the math. Good luck!
Photo: AP/Michael Conroy
