2021 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Projections
Bursting Bracketology’s Bubble with an Objective Formula
The 2021 NCAA Men’s Basketball season has been one unlike any other in the sport’s history. Schedules have been impacted by COVID stoppages and starts, a deluge of cancelled games, and a massive disparity in tournament resumes. Selecting the field will prove more difficult than ever for a body of individuals who are criticized as being ruled more by ego than by logic. To cloud matters, the words of some major bracketologists often play into conference bias, blue blood preferences, one ‘quality win’, or other subjective lunacies. If the field is to be selected based on a team’s overall body of work as the committee claims, individual games or wins shouldn’t matter.
It is much harder for fans to be mad at numbers than an incompetent ruling body.
With more in-depth stats on the rise—like ESPN’s BPI and KenPom’s Adjusted Efficiency (AdjEM) ratings—objectively selecting the field should feel more accessible than ever. Some difficult questions still plague the landscape:
- Is a Quadrant 1 win really that valuable if it’s a very close game over a team with the 87th-ranked adjusted defensive efficiency (AdjD)?
- How do you handle the evaluation of a team like Loyola-Chicago, who have the #1 ranked AdjD but the 128th Strength of Schedule (SOS)?
- What separates a team that’s played 18 games and one that’s played 25?
Creating a formula for tournament selection could solve all of these issues. In last year’s tournament that never was, we tested an aggregate point system where ESPN & CBS projections were tracked alongside KenPom rankings. That system, while fair, was flawed in giving credit to subjective opinions. This year, we’ll be updating that point system with BPI, AdjEM and Rank of Strength of Record (SOR) being the three factors.
Teams are assigned points for their rank by seed. The four top-ranked teams in each category earn additional points to aid in ranking the 1-seeds. Projected conference winners are still in, so expect a lot bubble-bursting boys to make an appearance. With 31 of the 32 conferences active (The Ivy is not participating), nearly half of the field will be comprised of conference champions. For an in-depth look at the selection. it’s available here.
Without further delay, here’s the field as of Feb. 28, 4pm EST:
Not only is the field completely chosen by objective stat rankings, but it’s quite an entertaining one. As expected, some major names have fallen out of the tournament with historic mainstays like Michigan State, Kentucky, Syracuse and Cincinnati out of the field. North Carolina and Duke are still here, but at 9 and 10-seeds they’re not going to be very used to. Speaking of Duke, an opening-round battle with UConn is just one of many highlights produced by this formula.
Loyalties and rooting interests aside; putting egos and biases aside in favor of a system like this has one clear advantage. It is much harder for fans to be mad at numbers than an incompetent ruling body.
What do you think of the field? Do these metrics hold up under scrutiny? Are there different rankings or formulas you’d love to see used? Your suggestions may be used in next week’s update.
