Big 12 Tournament Pythagorean Predictions
Over on Ken Pomeroy’s site, a reader sent in Big East and ACC tournament predictions based on his Pythagorean Ratings. (Thanks to Jeremy for pointing this out.) They’re about what you’d expect: the only teams with a better than 10% chance of winning their tournaments are Duke and UNC in the ACC and UConn and Villanova in the Big East. I thought it’d be fun to do the same with the Big 12 tournament:
| Seed | Team | Quarters | Semis | Finals | Champions |
| 1 | Texas | 100.00% | 89.71% | 75.07% | 50.93% |
| 2 | Kansas | 100.00% | 82.20% | 65.43% | 32.91% |
| 3 | Oklahoma | 100.00% | 75.68% | 22.80% | 6.11% |
| 4 | Texas A&M | 100.00% | 61.19% | 13.90% | 4.81% |
| 5 | Colorado | 75.55% | 33.75% | 6.61% | 2.01% |
| 7 | Oklahoma State | 53.13% | 9.91% | 4.82% | 1.05% |
| 9 | Kansas State | 65.59% | 7.97% | 3.35% | 0.87% |
| 10 | Iowa State | 46.87% | 7.89% | 3.60% | 0.72% |
| 6 | Nebraska | 63.86% | 17.83% | 2.72% | 0.37% |
| 8 | Texas Tech | 34.41% | 2.33% | 0.65% | 0.11% |
| 12 | Baylor | 24.45% | 5.06% | 0.42% | 0.06% |
| 11 | Missouri | 36.14% | 6.50% | 0.62% | 0.05% |
At first I was surprised how unbalanced the Big 12 tournament is compared to the other two. The lowest chances of any team in the Big East or ACC tournaments is Georgia Tech, with a 0.42% chance. Meanwhile here in the Big 12, there are 4 teams with worse shots. Then I realized that the spread from best to worst in the Big 12 is a lot larger:
Big East: UConn - Seton Hall = .955 - .783 = .172
ACC: Duke - Georgia Tech = .954 - .731 = .223
Big 12: Texas - Missouri = .967 - .582 = .385
Nebraska, Texas Tech, and Baylor are all also worse than Georgia Tech (the worst team in either of the other two tournaments). No wonder people are dumping on the Big 12 so much this year. The bottom teams are really, really bad.
I was also a little surprised that Texas’s odds are so much better than Kansas’s, but take a look at their most likely opponents for each round.
Texas: KSU (.802), Tex A&M (.865), Kansas (.953)
Kansas: OSU (.823), OU (.864), Texas (.967)
Regardless of the stats, it’s clear that Texas are the two solid favorites to take home the trophy. Although if KU wins, the Big 12 may forget to give one to them.
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9 Responses to “Big 12 Tournament Pythagorean Predictions”
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March 8th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
Pythagorean Winning Pct (Big 12 games only)
Texas, .919
Kansas, .863
Oklahoma, .662
A&M, .551
Iowa St, .500
Colorado, .476
Kansas St, .450
Nebraska, .401
Oklahoma St, .401
Texas Tech, .310
Missouri, .188
Baylor, .159
Paths to the title…
Texas: KSU (.450), A&M (.551), KU (.863)
Kansas: ISU (.500), OU (.662), UT (.919)
March 8th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
Battlefield Earth couldn’t have been any worse than Anaconda.
J-Lo is poison for movies.
March 8th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Using those Big 12 numbers, the odds of winning the whole shebang:
Texas 61.27%
Kansas 29.83%
Oklahoma 4.97%
Texas A&M 1.97%
Colorado 0.71%
Iowa St 0.45%
Kansas St 0.35%
Nebraska 0.27%
OSU 0.12%
Texas Tech 0.05%
Missouri 0.01%
Baylor 0.00%
March 8th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
Battlefield Earth is one of the worst movies ever. I didn’t think Anaconda was that bad though…
March 8th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
Anaconda was miserable. When the giant snake swallowed the shady native trader and you could see his CG-face through the muscular body of the snake, I walked out.
On my way out, the snake coughed up said leatherneckian man for some other human.
March 8th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
Hey, if you can suspend belief that 20 foot snakes really exist, then you can suspend belief that it can eat a person whole, spit him back up, then go for someone else.
Anaconda 2 was even worse though. Neither were as bad as Battlefield Earth. The over-acting by Travolta was nauseating. I can’t believe my man Forest Whitaker was in that.
March 8th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
I’m all for Forest Whitaker and everything, but he did host the modern version of the Twilight Zone. Pretty comical if you haven’t seen it at 1:30 AM, Monday morning on the WB.
March 8th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Speaking of bad movies based on freakishly aggressive Amazonian beasts, both Piranha and Snake Island were miserable movies.
March 8th, 2006 at 9:49 pm
Mike Greenfield’s Team Rankings site has a similar analysis, but with his stats:
http://teamrankings.com/ncbt/conference_tournaments.php?conf=big12