2012 Horizon Tournament Projection: Should You Trust The Records Or The Ratings?

February 28, 2012 - by David Hess

Throughout the 2012 college basketball conference tournament season, we’ll be using the same projection engine that drives our college basketball season projections to predict the outcome of every conference tournament.

This post covers expected round-by-round advancement odds for the Horizon League Tournament Bracket 2012. For a similar breakdown of any other conference tournaments, please see our 2012 college basketball conference tournament projections overview blog post.

2012 Horizon League Tournament Round-By-Round Advancement Odds

Seed	Team	Quarter	Semi	Champ	Win
1	Valparaiso	100.0%	100.0%	66.6%	38.3%
2	Cleveland St	100.0%	100.0%	66.9%	38.0%
3	Detroit	90.5%	51.7%	19.0%	8.4%
4	WI-Milwkee	89.2%	48.5%	17.2%	6.0%
5	Butler	77.6%	40.9%	14.3%	4.9%
6	Youngs St	58.6%	26.1%	7.4%	2.1%
7	WI-Grn Bay	41.4%	20.0%	6.4%	2.0%
8	Wright State	22.4%	8.1%	1.7%	0.3%
9	IL-Chicago	10.8%	2.5%	0.2%	0.0%
10	Loyola-Chi	9.5%	2.2%	0.2%	0.0%

The Favorite: #1 Valparaiso, 38.3% chance to win

Valparaiso was not originally expected to win the conference but a huge road win at Cleveland State eventually propelled them to the league title. Will they confirm their superiority in the conference tournament? They rate only a fraction of a percent more likely to win than well-respected Cleveland State. Either the Crusaders or the Vikings would represent the league well in the NCAA tournament..

Underseeded: #2 Cleveland St, 38.0% chance to win

By many measures the best team in the Horizon, the Vikings’ three game losing streak relegated them to second place, but didn’t damage their Horizon League tournament chances by much. Cleveland State now has no shot at an at large bid, and must win their conference tournament.

Value Pick: NONE

The closest to having any value was Butler at +550 to win the conference tournament title. But even the Bulldogs appear to have an ROI of -20% or worse. That’s nowhere near helpful, for any type of bettor.

[Note: we are in the middle of some technical work on the site, and have been unable to update the projections pages with the correct seeding. The values in the table above will temporarily differ from those on the site. The values in this post are the correct ones, and are our official prediction for the Big South Tournament.]