Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

The 2018 NCAA Men's basketball tournament had some pretty special moments. From the controversial quad system to a 16-seed beating a 1-seed to an 11-seed making the Final Four to crazy finishes, it was a pretty a fun 3 weeks (except for MSU fans. It honestly kind of sucked for us). But, was it really such a strange tournament? I mean, they call it "March Madness" for a reason, right? Well, as we will see, it was really not that strange at all, at the end of the day. As for the total number of upsets (by seed only) the 2018 Tournament produced a total of 20 upsets in 67 games. The average number of upsets per year back to the 64 team expansion in 1985 is 17.6 ± 3.  But, as you can see from the histogram below, there is a fair amount of scatter in the data with a minimum value of 12 and a maximum of 23.  While 20 is a bit high based on the average, it is actual the mode (most frequently appearing value) of the distribution. If we instead look at the upset distribution o...

It has been almost three weeks since Villanova cut down the nets in San Antonio, and with that, three weeks since the beginning of great annual 5 month gap between meaningful college sports. While we patiently pass the time this summer until the real fun begins again this fall, I thought that I would reflect back on the NCAA basketball tournament with a series of my math-infused musings.  Today's topic: why did it take 34 years and 136 attempts before a 1-seed finally lost to a 16-seed while a 2-seed has fallen on average about once every 4 years? The answer, as it turns out, is the same answer that I often find when I decide to dig deep into some of these topics: because, math. My journey to solve this mystery began a few years ago when I made the observation that the probability of an upset in the NCAA tournament occurring scales roughly linearly with the difference in value between the two seeds.  The correlation is quite strong for the most common seed pairs (i.e. those ...

With the Big Ten Tournament now in the rear view mirror, having ending with what is obviously the worst case scenario for MSU, the Big Ten, the state of Michigan, the USA, planet Earth, and likely the multiverse, it is time to sit and wait (un)patiently for Selection Sunday on March 11th when the official NCAA tournament bracket is announced.  In the mean time, how will this weekend's event impact MSU? Will they still be able to play their first round games in Detroit? Well, let's take a look at some hard numbers and see what we can learn. One of the best resources out there is the Bracket Matrix website which this morning was updated to reflect yesterday's action in the majority of the brackets that they track. MSU has slipped to the "best" 3-seed (#9 overall), while UofM is the weakest 3-seed (#12 overall). This seems in line with ESPN's bracket this morning. But I did some initial analysis on the data set. MSU is listed as a 2-seed in 37 of the brackets...

In one of my previous posts, I gave a lengthy explanation of the relationship between the Vegas spread in football and the probability that the favored team would ultimately win the game. Utilizing spread data that I collected over about an 8 year period, and assuming that the actual margin of victory would adopt a Normal / Gaussian distribution centered around the spread. I found that it was fairly simple to calculate the spread vs. victory curve once you know (based on a lot of data) that the standard deviation of the deviation of the actual result from the spread is around 14-15 points. I was also curious about whether a similar analysis could be made based on college basketball data, but this was something that I never looked into previously.  Fortunately, I realized a few days ago that my go-to web sight for spread data (a site called "Prediction Tracker") has an mostly complete archive of spread data for all sorts of sports, including college basketball.  I quickly do...

A few years back, I developed a sports-math fascination that quickly turned into a bit of an obsession. The topic? The relationship between the Vegas Spread and the probability that the favored team will be victorious. I am not sure exactly where this came from, but its origin is probably linked to EPSN’s FPI metric, which attempts to do some very similar things to what I try to do, but with seemingly much more dubious methodology (such as an undying reliance on the importance of recruiting rankings over on-field results). In any event, I became a bit obsessed with finding the answer to the question of how spreads correlate to the probability of victory. I have tried a few google searches to find out if someone else has written on the subject, and so far I not come up with much at all. But, I think I have found that answer, or at least I think I am very close. On first glance, you would think that this question should be quite simple to solve. After all, you just need to plot the...

As MSU's final game of the 2017 season approaches, I have found it to be a useful exercise to take a bit of a deep dive into the hard numbers that each team has generated over season. In particular, I like to analyze the rush and pass offense and defense numbers for each team on a per attempt basis. In addition, I like to take a closer look at the schedule of each team to gain a better understanding of the level of competition that each team has faced. Washington State is a unique team with some unique stats, but I think that we can learn a little bit about what to expect. I have never claimed to be a great x's and o's guy, and a wise man once said, "stats are for losers," but I think a statistical analysis is a part of the puzzle. That all said, in the analysis below, when I make comparisons between teams, it is always from the view point of statistical similarities , i.e. similar yards per play. OK? Let's dig in. MSU's Run Game (#93, 3.92 yd/att) vs. W...

Happy Holidays! The Thanksgiving turkey has long been digested; the calendar has flipped to December; there is snow on the ground in Michigan; Army beat Navy; Bama fans are happy; Buckeye fans are sad, and that can only mean one things: it’s Bowl Season! The happy news for Spartan fans is that MSU will actually be participating is the festivities this year and not just watching on TV.  On the 28 th , MSU will square off with The Pirate and his merry band of Cougars in San Diego.  I plan to discuss that particular match-up at a later date. For today, I thought that it would be fun to take a quick spin around the country to take a look at the Bowl match-ups in each conference and get an early feel for who might win the Bowl Cup Challenge. What’s that, you ask? Well, it’s completed contrived “competition” that ESPN came up with in 2002 to track which conference has the best winning percentage in Bowl Games. The Big Ten even won it once in the inaugural year.  Don’t you re...