Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

It has been almost two full months since the 2021-22 college basketball came to a close with the Kansas Jayhawks' come from behind victory over the North Carolina Tar Heels in the National Championship game. But data does not have an off-season. So far this spring, we have examined the NCAA Tournament resumes of the top college head coaches over the past 40 years. We have found that just based on the raw numbers, Michigan State University Head College Tom Izzo is among the best. When it comes to performance compared to expectation, Coach Izzo is the best of all time. We also explored and quantified the difficulty of both the draw and actual path of several notable teams over the past 20 tournaments. Interestingly, the data suggests that the 2022 Jayhawks had the easiest path to a Title of any team since 2002. Ironically, the 2021 Baylor Bears had the most difficult path in the same timeframe. Finally, it is time to wrap up this series with a deep-dive into the overall odds of the ...

Back in April, the Men's NCAA Tournament came to its conclusion with the No. 1 seed Kansas Jayhawks defeating the No. 8 seed North Carolina Tar Heels to claim the 2022 National Title. As does every NCAA Champion since the mid-1980s, the Jayhawks had to beat six other teams over three weekends to earn the right to cut down the nets. Clearly, not all paths in the NCAA Tournament are equally difficult. The entire structure of the tournament is based on the idea that the better teams (i.e. higher seeds) are given the easiest draw. If the tournament were to play out as planned with the higher seeds always winning, the higher seeds would wind up with the easiest path to the Final Four. But of course, this never actually happens. Sometimes the occasional No. 15 seed wins a game (or three), busts the bracket and clears the path for a No. 8 seed to survive to the Final weekend. That said, understanding the true difficulty or ease of a specific NCAA Tournament draw or path is more complex th...

As spring blooms in the state of Michigan, The Only Colors is taking a look back at the 2022 Men's basketball season and the NCAA Tournament. In the previous installment of this series, we counted up NCAA Tournament wins, tabulated win percentages, and analyzed some round-by-round data.  What we found is that Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo is solidly in the top 10 of coaches and in all categories in the modern era (since seeding began in 1979). Furthermore, when it comes to Sweet 16, Regional Final, and Final Four appearances, he personally has achieved more as a head coach than every school in the Big Ten over their history since 1979. However, not all games and paths in the NCAA Tournament are created equally. For example, the recently retired Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski won a total of 101 NCAA Tournament games in his career. Of those wins, 25 of them came versus No. 15 and No. 16 seeded opponents. There is only a total of 25 coaches since 1979 who have even won 25 games ...