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March Madness: Waxing Poetic About Seeds And Rankings

Bookmark and Share by Tim Furious

Success Of Top-Ranked Team Nationally

Only nine teams have entered March Madness as the top-ranked team in the country, and then gone on to win the whole thing. Those teams include the 1982 and 2009 UNC Tar Heels, the 1992 and 2001 Duke Blue Devils, 1995 UCLA Bruins, 2000 Michigan State Spartans, the 2002 Maryland Terrapins and the 2007 Florida Gators.

The Kansas Jayhawks are the top-ranked team in the country and are now slated with a 30% chance of winning the tournament if you consider the success of past number-one teams in March Madness betting. At +175, they also have the steepest odds to win the title with Kentucky trailing behind at +350.

What To Learn From 2009

In last year’s March Madness tournament, won by the UNC Tar Heels, the pollsters finally got everything right. Last year marked the first time that all 12 of the first, second and third seeded teams advanced to the Sweet 16. That means if you advance all the top-3 teams in each region, you have a 3% chance of being right based on the history of March Madness bracket betting.

The one team that I’ve pin pointed as the team to screw up the chance of the top-3 seeds advancing is the #3 New Mexico Lobos in the East Region. Their seed is more of a reflection of how bad the Mountain West Conference is. Beware of banking on top-seeds just because of the pollsters rankings. They have only got it right once in the past 30 years of The Madness.

First Round Probabilities

In what makes for easy percentages, the 64-team tournament has existed since 1985 and the first round matchups have battled it out 100 times. Here’s the breakdown:

  • #8 Seed over #9 Seed (46% chance of victory)
  • #7 Seed over #10 Seed (61% chance of victory)
  • #6 Seed over #11 Seed (69% chance of victory)
  • #5 Seed over #12 Seed (66% chance of victory)
  • #4 Seed over #13 Seed (79% chance of victory)
  • #3 Seed over #14 Seed (85% chance of victory)
  • #2 Seed over #15 Seed (96% chance of victory)
  • #1 Seed over #16 Seed (100% chance of victory)

Best Low Seed With Historical Edge

This one’s easy. The #11 seed has advanced to the vaunted Final Four twice in the past 24 years giving them the highest percentage of success to get to the championship game as a low seed. In the past, Villanova in 1985 has been the only one of the lower seeded teams has advanced to, and won, the championship title.

The #11 seeds for 2010 March Madness are Minnesota, San Diego State, Washington and Old Dominion. The best team in that cluster of hapless teams is actually the Minnesota Golden Gophers, who advanced all the way to the Big Ten Championship game as the sixth seed in the conference.

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