Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

As the college basketball fans awaits best four days of the year, I am sure that there are some people out there that are struggling to finalize their office pool bracket. As they stress about which No. 12 seed team to select in an first round upset or which dark horse team to advance to the Final Four, it is natural to have one of two related thoughts: "What if this winds up being exactly how the tournament actually plays out?" or "What are the odds to correctly pick the results of the entire tournament?"   This is a question that a lot of people have tried to answer over the years, myself included. As we will see, this is actually a much more complex question than it might appear on the surface. It is also a question that a lot of smart people don't get right. But I think that I have found the answer. There is one extremely simple way to think about this problem.  If you assume a person is simply randomly guessing on the winner of each game, the odds are very...

In my opinion, the middle of March is the absolute best time of the year. Over the past two weeks we have witnessed the exciting conclusion of several regular season conference races, followed by 31 conference tournaments. This past weekend, the full 68-team NCAA Tournament bracket was released. Sports fanatics are on the brink of Madness. Who will play the role of Cinderella in the story of the 2026 tournament? Will any survive to reach the second weekend? Which four teams will advance to Indianapolis on that first weekend in April? Which lucky team will end up cutting down the nets?  Over the years I have developed a set of analytics and computational tools to gain a better understanding of the mathematical underpinning of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. My methodology has a solid track record of correctly identifying upsets and sometimes doing more than that. In 2023, I used data to correctly predict that No. 4 seed UConn would win the National Title. There is no foolproof way t...

I have a bit of a confession to make. Back in December when I was reviewing the overall Big Ten schedule for the Michigan State Spartans, I noticed the back-to-back games at Purdue and at Indiana at the tail end of the conference campaign.  The games were spaced just three days apart, and the Spartan have struggled noticeably in both buildings historically. Outside of possibly the west coast trip in January, this two-game stretch looked like the most subtly challenge portion of the entire schedule. I believed that just getting a split in two games would be a success But the Spartans surprised both me and the college basketball world be rising to the challenge and winning both games. Other Big Ten teams were not as fortunate this weekend as both Purdue and Illinois picked up an additional loss. Table 1 below shows the updated enhanced Big Ten standings following the weekend's action. Table 1 : Enhanced Big Ten standing as of March 2. Michigan's win over Illinois on Friday night ...