Braman's Wanderings

The first weekend of March Madness is now over.

There were more upsets in the second 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.

The second round saw some more upsets, but about average for a tournament..

So how upsetting was the second round overall?

Here are the numbers for the second round. You can see that there were upsets in each region. You can see that because of upsets I have already added zeroed out the entry for BP in some of the regions for the third and fourth rounds.

How do these numbers stack up to the previous 37 tournaments?

The UF is now up to 71 which is just above average through the second round.

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. However, the one that survived is a 15 seed. This is only the 3rd time that a 15 seed has made it to the third round.

This one is sorted by second round BP and at 43 for this year you can see that it is also about average for a tournament.

Here is a sort by total BP and if the 1  and 2 seeds all lose their next game this will be the tournament with the lowest BP.  With the upsets of 1 and 2 seeds in the first two rounds, the max BP for the tournament would be 123 which would be about average.

Now to see how the rest of the tournament plays out. Will it continue to be in the middle of the rankings?

Who will win it all? Will it be a 1 seed?

Steven