NCAA Basketball Tournament Help

After years of futility in NCAA basketball tournament pools (before last year, the only time I was competitive was in 1990), I decided to let the numbers do the deciding for me.

So, I calculated something called Adjusted Scoring Margin (ASM) for each NCAA tournament team. What is ASM? Well that donkey bracketologist at ESPN developed the idea. According to that article, it has been very predictive of Final Four teams over the past five years.

Here were my top 2004 ASM calculations by region (with actual Final Four team in parentheses):

Atlanta – Duke, 19.0 (Duke)
East Rutherford – Oklahoma State, 17.7 (Oklahoma State)
Phoenix – Connecticut, 18.3 (Connecticut)
St. Louis – Gonzaga, 17.3 (Georgia Tech)

So, the only one that was off was Gonzaga, but, interestingly, the second highest ASM in the St. Louis bracket was 14.4 by…Georgia Tech.

Basically what I did last year was pick every game in the bracket by which team had the higher ASM. While this did not mean I got 100% of the games right, it did keep my Final Four teams alive. (I also deviated from it once I got to the Final Four because I thought UConn was simply better than Duke.) As result, I won two pools, finished second in another and sixth in another (would have won them all if Georgia Tech hadn't kept winning).

I know what you’re saying. Any monkey could have made those Final Four choices. Well not this guy. For one, it made me pick against Illinois. For another, I didn’t get trapped by Kentucky or Stanford. So I now have faith in the almighty ASM.

I’ve just started putting together some ASM calculations for this year. I will post the numbers once the conference tourneys wrap up (I’m all for openness, especially since I don’t compete in pools against you). However, based on early numbers, UNC, Louisville, Oklahoma State, and Illinois are looking pretty solid.