Your 2008 Bracket and the 2007 NCAA Tournament, Part 1

Championship Week is exactly one week away and I haven't watched one regular season college basketball game in its entirety. I chalk it up to a massive NFL hangover and the fact that the Wahoos are setting themselves up nicely to participate in the play-in game in the ACC tournament. It is unfortunate that Sean Singletary, who plays with as much intensity, passion, and effort as anybody, has wasted a year watching his teammates fumble around and fuck things up by shooting, on average, 7-19 from three-point range and committing over 10 turnovers per game. The NBA beckons Sean, you'll be safe soon.

Anyway, as the magic of Selection Sunday and the pageantry of the NCAA Tournament approaches and the promise of sharpened pencils and blank brackets clipped from newspapers is nigh, I felt that this might be a good opportunity to make an effort look at our collective picks in a different way and to avoid several mistakes that we all make in picking each of the 64 games of the Tournament. My apologies in advance if any of the 5 of you reading this don't commit the following errors in making your bracket selections and for including you amongst the rest of us savages. Each year as we make our selections, we fail to look past the games of the season just past, relying on SOS, RPI, the talent of individual players, the location of the tournament sites, and the immutable law of the 12/5 upset.

Ultimately, in this first part, I am endeavoring to identify the characteristics of the types of teams that make it into the Elite Eight, and in the final part of this 2-part post (to be released once the brackets are out on March 16th), I will make my recommendations for the 2008 Elite Eight teams. Why the Elite Eight, you ask? Because a perfect 8 of 8 in your bracket at this stage in the tournament is an impressive accomplishment and does take skill that only comes with knowledge and the appropriate analysis (and sure, even a little bit of luck). Also, in typical pick 'em competition, entries are rewarded more points for having more teams picked correctly in the later rounds, so it pays more to be right later rather than earlier.

In our quixotic quest to pick each game correctly we tend to lose the forest for the trees. By working backwards and establishing the teams who have the best prospects to be in the Elite Eight even before the picks are made, we can take a lot of the guesswork out of picking the upsets (which will occur) and discourage the forlorn hope of trying to be the hero that picks UPenn over Texas A&M. Yes, by using only the 2007 season and Tournament I am attempting to prove my point with the smallest of sample sizes (and will thus be unable to predict once-in-a-fuck-lifetime occurrences like George Mason), but cut me some slack, you aren't paying me to write a book that delves into every single NCAA tournament since the 3-point line was adopted (though I reserve the right to sue anyone who steals this idea). In fact, you aren't even paying me at all.

As a refresher, the 2007 Elite Eight teams were Florida, UNC, Georgetown, Oregon, Ohio State, Memphis, Kansas, and UCLA. The team with the lowest RPI was Oregon (at 21), while each of the other 7 teams were in the top 11. This seems to be a better indicator of success in reaching this point in the NCAA Tournament than SOS as Florida, the eventual national champion had an SOS of 38, and Kansas, Memphis, and Oregon had relatively low SOSs of 58, 64, and 75 (it is also worth noting, however, that none of those teams reached the Final 4). None of the final eight teams lost to a team below an RPI of 100 during the regular season. This is helpful in weeding out pretenders from '07 like Southern Illinois, BYU, Creighton, Tennessee, Maryland, and Marquette (who were all in the Top 25 in RPI).

The question remains, how do we weed out the other teams in the RPI Top 25? Wisconsin, Pittsburgh, Kentucky, Arizona, Duke, Texas A&M, Villanova, Nevada, Michigan State, and Texas. Of those 10 teams, only Wisconsin and Duke finished above .500 against Top 50 RPI teams (it should be metioned that Memphis was 1-2 during the season against teams in this category). As we've seen in the last few years, a particularly informative statistic is a team's record in the 10 games prior to the Tournament. Of the Elite Eight teams in 2007, none finished below 7-3. Though I think these tools are useful initially in narrowing down teams that are viable candidates to reach the Elite Eight, further analysis is required to arrive at one's exact picks.

Thus far, I've only been identified factors that may, at the end of the day, can be drawn up to coincidence. I have not established in any detail, how the team has played during the season. For that, I have relied primarily on Ken Pomeroy's statistical analysis of offensive and defensive efficiency (the amount of points scored/allowed in 100 offensive/defensive possessions) for each team adjusted for other statistical measures (i.e. turnovers per offensive possession, offensive rebounds as a percentage of total rebounds, steals per defensive possession, etc.) These statistical measures not only tell us that these teams won, but how they won.

For adjusted offensive efficiency, no Elite Eight Team ranked below 25 and Oregon was the only team ranked below 20 (51) with respect to adjusted defensive efficiency. Each team finished at least in the top 15 in either adjusted offensive or defensive efficiency.

Although one must still consider other important factors like injuries, the sites at which the games will be played, and how teams will match-up against each other in the beginning and later rounds, I will primarily utilize the aforementioned considerations in culling the herd of 65 to select my horses.

Whatcha'll know about eight? Pay me.

To get the happy juices going just a little, enjoy some Luther.