2016 NCAA Tournament “Points From The Title” Ratings

2016 NCAA Tournament “Points From The Title” Ratings

April 4, 2016 – by David Hess

A lot of our work at TeamRankings focuses on combining accurate predictions with game theory concepts in order to produce logically-sound, data-driven strategies for office pool contests. That work depends on creating accurate predictive power ratings, which often means taking into account other predictive systems and betting market info.

But the 2016 NCAA tournament just ended. It’s time for play, not work.

In that light, here are our 2016 NCAA Tournament “Points From The Title” Ratings.

The idea behind these ratings is to show how much better a team’s performance would have had to been in order to win the title, if we make one very big assumption:

If the losing team in a game had actually won, they’d have performed exactly like the winning team in future rounds.

Obviously that’s not realistic, but it allows us to chain together results from multiple rounds in order to get a single number that represents for how far from the title each team in the tournament was.

Here’s an example to illustrate what we mean: (delete the ones related to the losing team)

Kansas lost to Villanova by 5. So they needed to score 6 more points (or allow 6 fewer points) in order to beat Villanova. That puts them 6 points from the title.Connecticut lost to Kansas by 12. So they needed to score 13 more points to beat Kansas. They also inherit Kansas’s previous 6 points from the title. Altogether, that puts them 19 points from the title.

As you might expect, Oklahoma — and the entire West region — doesn’t look very good by this metric. That’s what happens when a regional champ gets blown out in the Final Four.

2016 NCAA Tournament “Points From The Title” Ratings

Here’s the full list of all 68 2016 NCAA Tournament teams. Remember, as in golf, lower numbers are better.

Rank	Team	Points Away
1	Villanova	0
2	North Carolina	4
3	Kansas	6
4	Notre Dame	19
4	Connecticut	19
6	Indiana	20
6	Iowa	20
8	Stephen F. Austin	21
8	Florida Gulf Coast	21
8	Temple	21
11	Syracuse	22
12	Maryland	23
13	Providence	24
13	Miami-Florida	24
15	Wisconsin	25
16	Gonzaga	26
16	Southern California	26
18	Kentucky	27
18	Michigan	27
18	Colorado	27
21	Xavier	29
21	Virginia	29
21	South Dakota State	29
24	Pittsburgh	30
25	NC-Asheville	31
26	Buffalo	32
27	Tulsa	33
27	Wichita St.	33
27	Austin Peay	33
30	West Virginia	36
31	Hawaii	37
32	Butler	38
33	Dayton	42
34	Iowa St.	43
34	Seton Hall	43
36	Arizona	44
37	Oklahoma	45
38	Chattanooga	46
39	Weber St.	48
39	Middle Tennessee St.	48
41	Texas Tech	49
41	California	49
43	Utah	50
43	VCU	50
45	Fairleigh Dickinson	53
46	Vanderbilt	54
47	Stony Brook	56
48	Iona	57
49	Michigan St	58
49	Oregon	58
51	Oregon St.	59
52	Texas A&M	60
52	Cal. State – Bakersfield	60
54	Arkansas-Little Rock	61
54	Northern Iowa	61
56	Fresno St.	62
56	Purdue	62
58	St. Joseph’s	64
59	Texas	65
60	Hampton	66
61	Cincinnati	67
62	Duke	73
63	Yale	81
64	NC-Wilmington	82
65	Baylor	86
66	Green Bay	88
67	Holy Cross	98
68	Southern	103

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