THE MARCH MADNESS MODEL UPDATE

For the Sweet Sixteen and beyond...

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images, via USA Today

I’ll be honest, I was a little worried when my model predicted a lot of favorites to roll through the tournament, but that’s what the first weekend gave us. The first weekend of the tournament was incredibly chalky. If all favorites win this weekend, it will be the chalkiest Elite Eight, by the sum of the seeds (13), since 2007.¹ This has been a point of conversation across the game, with some arguing that NIL & the transfer portal have killed tourney upsets and “Cinderella’s”. Personally, I think it is way too small of a sample size to draw any conclusions from one tournament. Also, did we all just forget about N.C. State’s magical run last year? It is good to see the best teams playing high-quality basketball. The Cinderella will return, and we will appreciate them even more after this brief drought.

After updating the stats to account for second-round games, and updating to include matchups that we did not predict, here is our updated tourney forecast. To check back on our initial projections, or review the methodology, you can refer to my pre-tourney article here:

THE MARCH MADNESS MODEL!

Sweet Sixteen

Elite Eight

Final Four

If you like these predictions, I encourage you to also check out the forecasts by

Neil Paine

at Neil’s Substack and

Nate Silver

at Silver Bulletin

Bring on the madness!

1. Calculated by adding up seed numbers of teams in Elite Eight