Wisconsin’s Road to the Final Four & Championship

March 19, 2015 - by Aaron Barzilai

Previously, we have looked at Kentucky, Villanova, and Duke’s path to the National Championship. Today, let’s look at the 1 seed in the West: the Wisconsin Badgers.

Wisconsin’s Odds by Round

We’ve released our round by round survival odds for each team that made the tournament. From those numbers, we can determine the chances Wisconsin wins in each round, if they make it there:

Some indications from the chart above:

• Wisconsin has the toughest path of the four 1 seeds, with their games getting progressively harder through the Final 4
• However, if Wisconsin can make the Championship Game, they can expect to be favored

Wisconsin’s Odds against the West

Using our matchup tool, we can examine the odds of a team to win against any other opponent in the West region:

Key points of note here:

• Our models view 2 seed Arizona as the strongest team in the West Region (and the strongest 2 seed in the field)
• If they both make it, our models give Wisconsin a 44% chance to beat Arizona in the Regional Final, so they’re not expected to win
• 4 seed North Carolina should present slightly more of a challenge to Wisconsin in their Sweet 16 game then 3 seed Baylor would in the Elite 8 (Ed. note: And now the path to the Elite 8 just got even easier, thanks to Georgia State’s upset of Baylor) 
• Wisconsin’s win odds against any other team in the region are 78% or better

Wisconsin’s Odds against the Top Seeds

We can also look at Wisconsin’s odds against the top seeds in the tournament:

The highlights:

• Kentucky and Arizona are the only teams that our models would favor against Wisconsin
• However, both of those teams are in Wisconsin’s half of the bracket
• If form holds, Wisconsin will also face the toughest 4 seed in the tournament (by a wide margin) in their Sweet 16 game when they face North Carolina

If you liked this post, please share it. Thank you! Twitter Facebook