Bracket Predictions Update: 8 Teams Vying For A One Seed

March 1, 2014 - by Jordan Sperber

As we come down the stretch of the college basketball regular season, eight teams remain in the running for 1-seeds:

Arizona, Florida, Wichita State, and Syracuse all appear in position to control their own destiny
Wisconsin, Villanova, Kansas, and Creighton could still move up to the top line

Wisconsin’s Bracket Seed Projection: A Wild Ride

Today’s algorithmic bracketology projections currently give all eight of the teams listed above at least a 1 in 4 chance of landing a 1-seed this year. Arizona tops the list at 86%, while Creighton sits at the bottom right at 25%. These teams have all taken different roads to move into their current positions.

Consider Wisconsin’s season to date. The Badgers entered January as a favorite for a 1-seed, only to lose five of six in mid-January. Not only has Wisconsin won six in a row since, but Bo Ryan’s club has Purdue, Penn State, and Nebraska to end the regular season. Take a look at how Wisconsin’s probability for a 1-seed has changed throughout the season:

Syracuse’s 1-Seed Odds Rise Despite Losses

Syracuse provides a great example of the power of predictive bracketology done by computers and not biased or short-sighted humans. Our algorithm simulates the entirety of the remaining NCAA basketball season every day to generate bracketology probabilities, including odds for all teams to get a top seed in the tournament that go up and down daily. That process leads to insights like this: Back on February 1st, Syracuse was perfect 20-0, and the hoops press was abuzz about the Orange’s chances of running the table. Yet we gave them just a 25% chance of landing a 1-seed at that point.

Why? In short, the algorithms were able to quantify the expected distribution of possible outcomes of future games, given Syracuse’s extremely difficult remaining schedule, and recognize that the Orange were far from a lock for a 1-seed at that point.

Despite two losses since then, though, Syracuse has actually increased their odds of a 1-seed by going a very respectable 6-2 during their recent tough stretch. The Orange now sit at just under a coin flip (42%) for a 1-seed, a number that will likely be greatly affected by the Virginia result today.

The Road To A One Seed In The 2014 NCAA Bracket

Finally, to get some historical perspective, here’s a month-by-month look at tournament 1-seed probabilities for the eight contenders remaining. (You can also check out more historical bracket projection trends for 2014.)

Probability of One Seed by Date
Team	Start	Dec 1	Jan 1	Feb 1	Mar 1
Arizona	12%	39%	48%	82%	86%
Wichita St.	5%	3%	5%	17%	59%
Florida	27%	11%	19%	26%	51%
Syracuse	9%	5%	11%	25%	42%
Wisconsin	15%	12%	24%	7%	38%
Villanova	5%	17%	21%	38%	37%
Kansas	25%	22%	24%	60%	36%
Creighton	8%	12%	5%	19%	25%

Note: On Feb 21 we made a change to our bracketology algorithms in order to better reflect Wichita State’s odds of receiving a 1 seed, should they go undefeated. (A quirk in our calculation logic was causing Wichita’s odds to be significantly lower than they should have been.) Therefore, values in this table from before that date are estimates of what the 1-seed odds would have been using the new formula, and will not match the values published at the time.