The USA Today always does a good job with their March Madness coverage and this year is no different with their team by team capsules for the East Region , Southwest , SouthEast , West .
The scoresreport site picks Ohio State to win it all, and makes use of statistical analysis for picking the winners with :
- Sagarin Ratings for regular season rankings
- Basketball Prospectus / Ken Pomeroy for Pythagorean calculation
For example, take this match up where he selects George Mason overVillanova based on Sagarin predictor (Pomeroy calculation) numbers:
George Mason 26-6, 17-3. Bid: Colonial at-large 84.60 (.5102) / Villanova 21-11, 9-9. Bid: Big East at-large 85.72 (.4873)
Nate Silver of the New York Times picks Ohio State in his bracket, and tells us his prediction methodology:
Sagarin’s ratings for USA Today. We use the “predictor” version of Sagarin’s ratings that accounts for margin of victory in past games. Although Sagarin has never fully disclosed his methodology — it is most likely based on an iterative process — these are among the oldest power ratings and have a long track record of success.
– Ken Pomeroy’s ratings. Unlike Sagarin’s ratings, Pomeroy’s account separately for offense and defense. They probably have the soundesttheoretical basis of any of the systems, and have performed well.
– Third are the LRMC ratings — LRMC is an acronym for “logistic regression, Markov Chain” — designed by Joel Sokol of Georgia Tech. LRMC is a relatively new approach, but it has performed well in recent years. (Sokol also provided me with retroactive versions of his ratings going back to 2003). It is probably the most emperically-driven of the four systems, using the results of home-and-home series during the regular season.
– And finally, the Sonny Moore power ratings, which have been published since 1974. Although Moore’s ratings are superficially similar to Sagarin’s, they have some novel features, such as more heavily weighting the results of recent games.
The games tip off today and here is the schedule:
Other sites:
http://bracketology101.blogspot.com/
http://www.thehoopsreport.com/
Hoops updates from twitter
