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Kyle SoppeESPN
A little bit of an introduction. I’m a researcher in ESPN’s Fantasy department and I’ve developed a formula, abbreviated here as SOP, as a way to help make filling out the bracket a little less stressful. This formula is inherently simple: Measure and weigh appropriately the handful of stats over time that have proven predictive in March. What is spit out is both an outright winner and a projected point difference, with my custom spread for every game.
I’ve run this formula for a few years, back-tested it even further back and it has proven to be accurate. As accurate as you can hope to be for an event labeled as “madness.” The tournament last year, as a whole, was wildly encouraging despite my strongest teams coming up short.
If we exclude St. Peter’s three wins last year – understanding that no one in their right mind will adjust anything based on a historic outlier — the formula was “too heavy” on favorites by 0.615 points per game. By “too heavy,” we mean cumulative spreads versus actual results. That is, I made Kansas a 7.5-point favorite in the national championship. It won by 3 points, so I was too heavy by 4.5 points. In the other direction, in the Final Four, I made Duke a 6.4-point favorite over North Carolina and it lost by 4. So, in hindsight, I was too light by 10.4 points. Using just those two games, I was cumulatively too light by 5.9 points (too light by 10.4 points and too heavy by 4.5, thus the cumulative result is being too light by 5.9 points).
Again, without St. Peter’s wins, my custom formula was 0.615 points per game too heavy on the favorites. Vegas? Their opening lines were 0.635 too heavy. Very similar, but yes, in that sense, this formula was (slightly) better than the Wise Guys! I’ll take it.
So those are the words behind the numbers. And now the rankings for the 2023 men’s NCAA tournament by region. The “Final Four Odds” are calculated by pairing my projected spread for each specific matchup with the historic win rates for a team with that spread in the NCAA Tournament.
Breakdown: My top three teams in this region are separated by a total of four spots in my overall rankings, making this a tough call. That said, I’m a percentages guy and in a spot like this, I always target the path of least resistance. With three teams graded as elite, my pick to represent this region will be the one that doesn’t (in theory) have to see one of those other strong teams until the Elite Eight. So yes, Gonzaga is my highest ranked in this portion of the bracket, but that’s not why I picked it: I picked it because it will avoid UConn and Kansas until the last possible moment.
Breakdown: The other three regions have three (if not four or five) teams ranked in my top-14 overall when it comes to March Madness profiles, but not this one. I have very little separating Purdue and Marquette, but I do have them as their own mini-tier and that is why I landed on chalk in the Elite Eight. Based on my power ranks, you can see that “chalk” will certainly not define the early rounds, but when the chips are in the middle of the table, I’m advancing my top two. The potential of a Marquette/Purdue matchup would be intriguing and I think there’s a pretty good chance that after chaos early, that’s the game we end up getting.
It’s never easy to predict the champions 🏆 pic.twitter.com/0xdZINftQj
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 13, 2023
Breakdown: Do I really think Creighton is the best team in college basketball? No, but its profile is impressive and its numbers have passed the smell test all season. Of course, life as a 6-seed is tough and being paired in a region with my second best team is, well, not ideal. Creighton doesn’t boast much depth and that can be an issue, but for this team, it means they have five good free throw shooters on the court almost all game and that’s comforting in these close games. I like the winner of Arizona/Creighton to represent this region in the Final Four, the region that grades out as the strongest in terms of average SOP ranking per team.
Breakdown: I like Houston. It was my preseason pick and much of the numbers factored in here include a healthy Marcus Sasser (far from a given at the moment) and yet I have it seventh. In this region! Penn State’s ceiling is terrifying — and so is its floor. Indiana might have the best duo going. Texas is trending to the moon. We are splitting hairs for the most part, but offensive production has a way of winning this time of year and Xavier offers that consistently. Getting three Big-10 teams to advance to the second weekend in this region alone is possible if Sasser isn’t right and if that’s how this shakes out, I think the Musketeers score with too much ease to be slowed.
Breakdown: Could things get really funky? I think it’s possible. We’ve seen it all year and I expect this tournament to be more of the same: The difference between the elite and the next tier is little. Heck, it might not exist. When factoring in path and profile, you can see that I have eight teams pegged as the best bets to make it to the Final Four … and only two one-seeds are in that mix. Buckle up!
Interpret the data — use it, or not. This is how I used my data to put together my bracket. And yes, I’m a one bracket kind of guy, so all-in here.