The third round of March Madness is now over.
There were more upsets in the third round, but how upsetting has the tournament been so far?
There are two stats that I keep during the tournament each year.
UF (Upset Factor) is a number that is a sum off the seed differences when a lower seed knocks of a team with a higher seeding. For instance, when a 15 seed knocks off a 2 seed the UF is incremented by 13. If an 9 seed knocks off a 8 seed then the UF goes up by 1. If a 10 seed beats a 15 seed, there are no UF points since the higher seed was the winner.
BP (Bracket Points) is probably familiar to most sports fans. When scoring your bracket you get 1 point for a first round win, 2 points for the second round and then 4, 8, 16 and 32 for the following rounds. Basically, you fill out the bracket with the higher seeded team winning each game. You then add up the points based on the tourney results. For the Final Four, the points are given when a #1 seed wins.
Disclaimer: The First Four is ignored as all four games are against teams of equal seeding. There are no upsets in the First Four games. The traditional first round is now sometimes referred to as the second round. It is the first round to me.
There were significant upsets in the third round, but how were the UF and BP affected by them.
Here are the numbers through the third round. You can see that there were upsets in each region, however not very big ones. You can see that because of upsets I have already zeroed out the entries for BP in the rest of the tournament. There are no Bracket Points left.
How do these numbers stack up to the previous 37 tournaments?
The UF increased by 14 to 85 in the third round and is tied for 13th at this point in the tournament.
There is still a possibility of more upsets, but even if the higher seed wins in all the rest of the games it will not be enough for the UF to reach the top 5.
I also keep track of how many double digit seeds make it to each round.
This year five double digit seeds made it to the second round but only one survived to make it to the third round. That lone survivor did not make it to the 4th round.
This one is sorted by third round BP. You can see that it only went up by four as only one 1/2 seed won in the round. The 47 BP is tied for the lowest after the third round.
Here is a sort by total BP and since there are no 1 seeds left there will be no more Bracket Points. Therefore this year will be a record low for bracket points.
This year will not be the most upsetting, but will be the one that least followed the seeding.
Now to see how the rest of the tournament plays out. Will there be a few more upsets?
Who will win it all? Will it be the remaining 2 seed?
Steven
Braman's Wanderings 