This is my first post, so I’ll try not to embarass myself.

Last night David sent me a file that can be used to predict games using Ken Pomeroy’s ratings. Using this Excel spreadsheet, you can predict the winner of each game, the score, and % of the time that either team will win. There are various uses for this, obviously. What I have done is take Joe Lunardi’s current projected bracket (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/bracketology) and figure out what percentage of the time each team will advance to each round. As this is fairly time consuming, I have only done the West region (where Kansas currently resides). Here’s what I came up with:

Advances to 2nd Rd Sweet 16 Elite 8 Final Four

Wisconsin 98.7% 71.2% 51.6% 22.9%

Central Connecticut 1.2% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

Jackson St. 0.1% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

Kansas 98.9% 75.5% 52.0% 37.%

East Tennessee St. 1.1% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

Georgetown 94.1% 79.6% 34.4% 21.0%

Pennsylvania 5.9% 1.6% 0.1% 0.0%

Air Force 94.7% 56.3% 20.2% 5.3%

Vermont 5.3% 0.5% 0.2% 0.0%

Virginia Tech 75.8% 37.2% 12.3% 2.9%

Santa Clara 24.2% 6.0% 1.1% 0.0%

Virginia 62.8% 13.4% 2.0% 0.5%

Winthrop 37.2% 5.4% 0.5% 0.1%

Southern California 30.6% 4.7% 1.4% 0.5%

Michigan St. 69.4% 19.8% 9.5% 4.9%

Notre Dame 67.6% 22.3% 12.4% 3.5%

Tennessee 32.4% 6.3% 2.1% 0.3%

Obviously, a lot of this depends on the draw, but Kansas will be the favorite to advance in just about any draw they have, as they are #2 in Pomeroy’s ratings. What I found interesting was Wisconsin and Kansas reach the Elite 8 almost the exact same percentage of the time, although Kansas is clearly superior when they play head to head. This is a byproduct of Kansas having both Georgetown (Pomeroy #7) and Michigan St. (Pomeroy #11) in their half of the bracket. I would expect that in an average bracket, Kansas would have a greater chance of reaching the Elite 8, but if they were paired with a stronger #1 seed, their chances of winning their Regional Final game would decrease.

I’ll probably do another one of these with a future Lunardi bracket, and compare the two.

Recently I posted some game-by-game adjusted efficiency ratings for Kansas, derived from Ken Pomeroy’s Game Plan and season efficiency ratings. The Hawks’ numbers looked good, but Jeremy asked for some context on how the numbers were changing as the season progressed, and how this compared to other top teams. So I ran the game-by-game numbers for Pomeroy’s top 11 teams. (Why top 11? I’ll explain Michigan State’s case later on.) Just showing you a mess o’ single game numbers doesn’t do a whole lot of good - there’s a lot of game to game variation. To smooth that noise out and get a better idea of a team’s general trend, we can look at a moving 10-game snapshot.

Graphs after the jump… (more…)

Friend of Phog Blog Ken Pomeroy breaks down the Bracket today, using his efficiency numbers, and I think Jayhawks will be pleased:
(more…)

Once again, I repeat:

You could go on gut instinct, and lose, or spend hours and hours poring over endless statistics.

Or if you’re smart, you could spend a few bucks to have access to the same proprietary tools that Vegas uses to pick games. I know I’ll be using the BracketBrains tool this year, and I recommend you do the same. Click on the banner below to check it out, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be as impressed as I am, and if you end up signing up, a little bit of dough will go to keeping the Phog Blog’s server’s running.

Ken Pomeroy’s latest RPI projection has KU at 38th, which is important since we’ve now passed that mythical 40th parallel.

We’re up to 9th overall in his season-long ratings and nestled comfortably at 5th in his last 5 games rating (oddly enough, UNC is number 1 in that rating - good job Roy). By the way, KP’s now predicting 13-3 in conference, with a lone loss at UT.

Dunkel has us at 4th in the country in his latest index, behind Duke, UT and UConn (before last night’s game).

We’re up to 19th overall and 6th in the pure points rating over at Jeff Sagarin’s place (the pure points is more important to Vegas).

Dolphin hasn’t updated yet, but I’ll try to remember to update that later.

You might be interested to know that the composite of bracket projections has us at a #6 seed. Most of the latter day brackets have us as a #5, but some of the less frequently updated brackets have us as an #8 or #9, so we’re averaged up a little. I think if we win out while losing impressively at UT, we have a very good shot at a #4. If we beat UT, I think a #2 is still *possible, but very very unlikely. A 4-6 is most likely at this point. I would almost prefer a #6 at this point to avoid a possible run-in with UConn, Duke or Villanova.

Thoughts?

One game left. The game that most everyone has wanted to see since December. Will Roy emerge victorious for the first time with a team he took from his buddy Matt Dougherty or will Bruce Weber win with a team composed of 90% of Bill Self’s recruits?

It’s an interesting, if pretty disgusting storyline for Kansas fans: our former coach against our Coach’s former players.

Who who who who to root for? I honestly don’t know if I’ll watch.

But for those who are interested in such things, the tourney results are up. If you look close enough, you might find something…

Well, I thought we were in the clear from the evil HaX0rs got in again and this time we had to flash the whole server. Thus, I have lost all posts since last March 14th. Amateur Night, I know.

Things are a little tighter now, but I won’t be replacing all posts, unfortunately. I will be adding the video of Seniors again soon, just so that everybody still has access to it. I’ll also be looking into selling the Celebrating Mediocrity shirts within the next month.

There will probably be a lot of them, but I’m trying to keep track as best as I can. As always, if you find one that I’m not seeing, send me an email at phogblog @ gmail.com.

The latest entry into the Bracket Projections is the Atlanta Journal Constitutions Tony Barnhart, who weighs in with the following for his one seeds:

NO. 1 SEEDS

• Chicago Regional: Illinois (28-0, RPI No. 2). College basketball’s last unbeaten team likely won’t have to travel far if it keeps winning: Indianapolis for first two rounds, Chicago for regional, St. Louis for Final Four.

• Austin Regional: Kansas (22-4, RPI No. 1). Big win over Oklahoma State last Sunday solidified the Jayhawks as a No. 1 seed. Kansas finishes regular season Sunday at Missouri.

• Albuquerque Regional: Wake Forest (25-4, RPI No. 4). Deacons played their way back to a No. 1 seed with win over Georgia Tech on Wednesday night and some struggles by Boston College. Wake ends regular season Sunday at N.C. State.

• Syracuse Regional: North Carolina (24-3, RPI No. 7). Big showdown with Duke on Sunday in Chapel Hill might determine whether Tar Heels stay a No. 1 seed.

Not only does he have us as a one, he has us in Big 12 Country, and ships Wake Forest out to the desert. Check out the rest of his seeding, by which I mean the number two seeds, here.

This link, which heads over to ESPN’s Bracketology, will likely be updated later in the day, although I don’t think we’ll see any change in seeding since yesterday. Lunardi has KU as a 2, but we could very easily flip-flop with Kentucky and if the RPI has anything to say about it, we will.