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The 2024 March Madness Bracket Breakdown
An Objective Evaluation and Analysis of the NCAA Men’s Tournament
For those questioning, yes I’m a day late on this — my own March outside of basketball has been a little mad. Have no fear, the simulations are here! I’ve finished running 1,000 simulations of the NCAA Men’s Tournament and the results aren’t shocking, but the odds might not be quite as solid as the confidence of many media pundits.
I’m already feeling a bit of vindication for attacking Virginia’s inclusion after their putrid performance last night. Scoring a mere 14 points in a half of a tournament game that’s supposed to showcase the nation’s best, well, the NCAA got exactly what they deserved there. We’ve also had the first odds-upset of the tournament, as Wagner was 45.8% likely to beat Howard. Not a big upset, but indicative of how hard it can be to nail games within range of a coin flip.
The teams leading the way in simulator performance aren’t particularly surprising; there are still a few outliers to pay attention to. Some of these outliers may appear familiar from Monday’s column where the under-seeded and over-seeded teams were revealed in the objectively-created bracket:
