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Projecting the NCAA Tournament by the numbers

#1 Kentucky vs. #16 Manhattan/Hampton Dave says: Kentucky Noah says: Kentucky Dave Preston: What will the over/under be for Ashley Judd shots? Dick Vitale references? (Getty Images/Andy Lyons)
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WASHINGTON — This time of year, everybody’s a college basketball expert.

But as any NCAA Tournament bracket veteran will tell you, no matter how many games you’ve watched or numbers you’ve crunched, you’re just as likely as anyone to get beaten in your pool by the intern who doesn’t watch sports and picked their winners based on the ferocity of each school’s mascots (Go Wildcats!).

Nevertheless, numbers can tell stories that our eyes don’t see. A team may have looked great in its conference tournament, but history tells us that there’s little to no correlation between that performance and NCAA Tournament success. Here are a few metrics worth looking at more closely, courtesy of the number crunchers at KenPom.com.

Efficiency

Teams are rated on their offensive and defensive efficiency, which measure how many points they score/allow per 100 possessions. Simply put, only teams with high marks in each make Final Four runs.

Specifically, 23 of the 52 Final Four team (44 percent) ranked in the top 10 in the country in defensive efficiency, with 47 (90 percent) in the top 50. Of the last 13 national champions, only one (UConn last year) ranked outside the top 18 entering the tournament.

In fact, when it comes to picking a national champion, every champ in the past 13 years has entered the tournament no worse than 18th in at least one of the two ranks. Nine of them have been in the top 20 in both categories, with four scoring in the top 10 in each.

There are 21 teams in this year’s field rank in the top 50 in each category, but only seven in the top 20 in both: Kentucky, Arizona, Villanova, Gonzaga, Utah, Northern Iowa and Wichita State.

Balance

When television commentators like Dick Vitale say that a team has great balance — like he did about Notre Dame while picking the Irish to make a deep run on ESPN Sunday night — he means offensive balance. While that’s great for a team’s ability to score (Notre Dame ranks second in the nation in offensive efficiency), it ignores defense. As it turns out, the Irish aren’t balanced at all on the other end of the floor, ranking 112th defensively. No other team seeded seventh or higher is worse than 82 (Iowa State) in defensive efficiency.

This makes Notre Dame something of a red herring. Only five teams with a defensive efficiency outside the top 50 have made the Final Four in the past 13 years, and only two outside the top 100. So if you’re looking for a sleeper to make a deep run, Notre Dame, Iowa State, Duke (57), Xavier (55), Arkansas (81), BYU (139), Davidson (180) and Stephen F. Austin (104) might not be the best selections.

Luck

KenPom’s Luck Rating is similar to a Pythagorean record in baseball, in that it attempts to remove some of the fortune involved in winning or losing close games and looks at the overall efficiencies of the teams involved. Sure, a team may win a lot of close games because it has great playmakers who can score a needed bucket, or good free throw shooters to seal a late lead. But there’s something to the luck offset when it comes to predicting the tournament.

Teams with high luck ratings have not generally fared well in the early rounds the past few years. Those ranking in the top 30 in luck since 2010 have combined for a 15-28 tournament record. That’s bad news for a crop of this year’s clubs, nine of which rank in the top 25, including Kansas (24) and especially Maryland (2).

A high luck rating is not necessarily a death knell, but could spell trouble. The truth is, it’s rare for a team in the top 30 in luck to be in position to be seeded so high. In 2013, New Mexico entered the tournament as a 3 seed with the 27th-highest luck rating. They were dispatched in the first round by 14-seed Harvard. In the same tournament, though, 3 seed Marquette (10th in luck rating) stormed all the way to the Elite Eight. But for every 2012 Norfolk State (number one in luck), a 15-seed that upset 2-seed Mizzou, there is a 2011 Notre Dame (23rd in luck), a team ousted in the second round by 10-seed Florida State.

UConn’s stunning 2013 run will give Terps fans hope. With a luck rating of 22, they managed to shock the world and win the national title as a 7 seed. But they are the only team with a luck rating in the top 50 to make a Final Four in the past five years, and only the third in the past 10 seasons.

This year’s luck club: Wofford (1), Maryland (2), Texas Southern (3), Oregon (4), North Dakota State (7), Harvard (9), Wyoming (21), Kansas (24), Lafayette (25).

Conference RPI

For all the posturing this time of year around which conference is best, there is relatively little correlation between conference RPI and tournament success. The only thing we can even remotely draw is that the very top conference in RPI during the regular season has performed consistently well in the tournament the past five years, going a combined 57-36 (.613) over that stretch. They have also placed a team in the Final Four in each of the past four years. The second-best conference has had a winning record in three of the last five years.

For what it’s worth, this year’s top conference was the Big XII.

Tempo

Tempo is a tricky metric. College basketball has, by and large, been getting slower the past few years. The average tempo rating of Final Four teams in the 13 years KenPom.com has been calculating it is 112, but in the past five years it has jumped to 188. Of the past 20 Final Four teams, 17 have rated 100th or slower, with nine of those at 200 or slower. But how slow is too slow?

Only three teams rated in the 300s (among the 52 slowest teams in the country) have ever made the Final Four, with last year’s Florida club (316) being the slowest. There are 11 teams in this year’s field rated 316 or slower, with major names like Wisconsin (347), Northern Iowa (348) and Virginia (349) among the very slowest.

Last year, Virginia (345) and Michigan (327) both made Elite Eight runs, each coming within a basket of the Final Four, while Syracuse (347) was upset by Dayton in the second round. So, is it safe to take a slow team to make a deep run? The trends are angling that way, but it would be unprecedented.

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