Fade the #1 conference in all the analytics. Likewise, if a power conference is “down” then favor them a little extra.
I’d argue that the advantage is all reflective of November and December play and there will naturally be regression to the mean that is not captured because the conferences generally don’t play each other in the last few months before the tournament.
So this year I’d give the ACC teams a boost and bet against the SEC teams.
We’ve seen this in prior years when the Big Ten or Big 12 looked like the #1 conference then underachieved. Meanwhile the PAC-12 was thought to be terrible and their teams made deep runs.
Or remember in 2005 how the Big Ten was down and we saw two teams in the Final Four.
I haven’t seen this discussed in any articles I’ve read (maybe it’s out there somewhere…the internet is a big place) but I think the statistical reasoning is sound. It won’t be a huge factor but it’s probably better than me giving you a bunch of cute historical comps on metrics just to tell you that the four 1 seeds are all really good this year.
I’d argue that the advantage is all reflective of November and December play and there will naturally be regression to the mean that is not captured because the conferences generally don’t play each other in the last few months before the tournament.
So this year I’d give the ACC teams a boost and bet against the SEC teams.
We’ve seen this in prior years when the Big Ten or Big 12 looked like the #1 conference then underachieved. Meanwhile the PAC-12 was thought to be terrible and their teams made deep runs.
Or remember in 2005 how the Big Ten was down and we saw two teams in the Final Four.
I haven’t seen this discussed in any articles I’ve read (maybe it’s out there somewhere…the internet is a big place) but I think the statistical reasoning is sound. It won’t be a huge factor but it’s probably better than me giving you a bunch of cute historical comps on metrics just to tell you that the four 1 seeds are all really good this year.
