2016 NCAA Tournament “Points From The Title” Ratings

A lot of our work at TeamRankings focuses on combining accurate predictions with game theory concepts in order to produce logically-sound, data-driven strategies for office pool contests. That work depends on creating accurate predictive power ratings, which often means taking into account other predictive systems and betting market info.

But the 2016 NCAA tournament just ended. It’s time for play, not work.

In that light, here are our 2016 NCAA Tournament “Points From The Title” Ratings.

The idea behind these ratings is to show how much better a team’s performance would have had to been in order to win the title, if we make one very big assumption:

  • If the losing team in a game had actually won, they’d have performed exactly like the winning team in future rounds.

Obviously that’s not realistic, but it allows us to chain together results from multiple rounds in order to get a single number that represents for how far from the title each team in the tournament was.

Here’s an example to illustrate what we mean: (delete the ones related to the losing team)

  • Kansas lost to Villanova by 5. So they needed to score 6 more points (or allow 6 fewer points) in order to beat Villanova. That puts them 6 points from the title.
  • Connecticut lost to Kansas by 12. So they needed to score 13 more points to beat Kansas. They also inherit Kansas’s previous 6 points from the title. Altogether, that puts them 19 points from the title.

As you might expect, Oklahoma — and the entire West region — doesn’t look very good by this metric. That’s what happens when a regional champ gets blown out in the Final Four.

2016 NCAA Tournament “Points From The Title” Ratings

Here’s the full list of all 68 2016 NCAA Tournament teams. Remember, as in golf, lower numbers are better.

RankTeamPoints Away
1Villanova0
2North Carolina4
3Kansas6
4Notre Dame19
4Connecticut19
6Indiana20
6Iowa20
8Stephen F. Austin21
8Florida Gulf Coast21
8Temple21
11Syracuse22
12Maryland23
13Providence24
13Miami-Florida24
15Wisconsin25
16Gonzaga26
16Southern California26
18Kentucky27
18Michigan27
18Colorado27
21Xavier29
21Virginia29
21South Dakota State29
24Pittsburgh30
25NC-Asheville31
26Buffalo32
27Tulsa33
27Wichita St.33
27Austin Peay33
30West Virginia36
31Hawaii37
32Butler38
33Dayton42
34Iowa St.43
34Seton Hall43
36Arizona44
37Oklahoma45
38Chattanooga46
39Weber St.48
39Middle Tennessee St.48
41Texas Tech49
41California49
43Utah50
43VCU50
45Fairleigh Dickinson53
46Vanderbilt54
47Stony Brook56
48Iona57
49Michigan St58
49Oregon58
51Oregon St.59
52Texas A&M60
52Cal. State - Bakersfield60
54Arkansas-Little Rock61
54Northern Iowa61
56Fresno St.62
56Purdue62
58St. Joseph's64
59Texas65
60Hampton66
61Cincinnati67
62Duke73
63Yale81
64NC-Wilmington82
65Baylor86
66Green Bay88
67Holy Cross98
68Southern103