NCAA Tournament Computer Simulation

[Montana Gym Rat]

ESPN posted a computer simulation that runs teams against each other to help determine point spreads and predict winners. StatShark.com is the website that runs the simulations.

From ESPN (its on Insider, so I don't think the link will work):

"StatShark.com has powered more than 3,000 simulations for every NCAA Tournament game, calculating how each team's performance changes in response to game conditions and opponent's abilities. Each game is simulated one play at a time and the game is replayed a minimum of 3,000 times to generate forecasted winning percentages and player statistics."

So what does the computer think? It doesn't pick many upsets because the favorite team usually wins the majority of simulations. Note that these scores are an average of all 3,000 of the simulations.

Here are some close games (within 10 points) in the upset games (12 thru 15):
(3) Iowa 67 - (14) Northwestern State 61
(4) LSU 78 - (13) Iona 72
(5) Syracuse 68 - (12) Texas A&M 63
(4) Illinois 66 - (13) Air Force 58
(5) Washington 74 - (12) Utah State 66
(3) Florida 72 - (14) Southern Alabama 63
(4) Boston College 75 - (13) Pacific 67


What was the closest upset game?

(5) Nevada 69 - (12) Montana 66 :thumb:

 

[Montana Gym Rat]

Here are some more details in the Nevada/Montana matchup simulation.

Average Forecasted Score:
Nevada - 69.3
Montana - 66.4

Winning Percentage:
Nevada - 58.2%
Montana - 41.8%

Big Win (10 or more)
Nevada - 29.8%
Montana - 16.1%

Close Win (4 or more)
Nevada - 13.6%
Montana - 13.2%


It's actually pretty cool. It even spits out a box score for each simulation and then averages those.

Leading scorers for Montana:
Criswell 13.3, Strait 12.7, Matthews 9.1, Hasquet 8.1

Leading scorers for Nevada:
Fazekas 21.2, Kemp, 14.7, Charlo 9.3, Shiloh 7.6

 

[Montana Gym Rat]

Something worth considering when filling out the brackets. Here are the top 10 upsets that are most likely according to this computer simulation (not counting 8-9 matchups):

1) (10) North Carolina State over (7) California
2) (10) Seton Hall over (7) Wichita State
3) (12) Montana over (5) Nevada
4) (11) UW-Milwaukee over (6) Oklahoma
5) (11) San Diego State over (6) Indiana
6) (12) Texas A&M over (5) Syracuse
7) (13) Iona over (4) LSU
8) (12) Utah State over (5) Washington
9) (14) Northwestern State over (3) Iowa
10) (11) George Mason over (6) Michigan State

 

[EverettGriz]

That's great stuff. Thanks, MGM.