The Seed Report
The Seed Report is a multi-year project that involves several different people uniting for one purpose – the search for the perfect bracket. As of yet, no one has done it. Yet in a number of years, the principal architect of this report has maintained a success rate above 90%, He has also finished second in one national contest. In fact, he would have won that year if he had not gone against his data as he chose his favorite beloved team despite what the data showed. Alas, we all do it.
In a nutshell, the predicting of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is hard, damn hard. It seems like winning the lottery might be harder, but don’t tell anyone who attempts this each year. But we here at The Seed Report, like so many others, don’t know when to quit.
At first, this project took the very simplistic approach of identifying how seeds fared in the tournament. However, over time the team has expanded its search for better predictive data. As such, we now have assembled a better understanding of how to develop these predictive models. It is our goal to publish our results and a better tool and book for the 2021-2022 tournament.
But since this is The Seed Report, lets talk about the seeds.
Like all tournaments seeding matters. The higher your seed the easier it should be to defeat your “much less talented” opponent. Of course, as you know, you only have to ask the 2018 Virginia about their “much less talented” opponent. To the Cavaliers chagrin, a 20.5 underdog University of Maryland Baltimore County trounced them 74-54. Ouch!
Yet number 1 seeds rule the tournaments. In the modern era, there have been 140 matchups of the 1 seed going up against the lowly 16 seed. Out of those games, the 1 seed has won 139 games for a .993 winning percent. So even though no longer perfect, being a 1 Seed is the surest way out of the first round.
Conversely, the 8 and 9 seeds are continually mired in the muck. After duking it out with a fairly even opponent, they are rewarded with a matchup with the 1 seed. Of course, at that point, the 1 Seed swats off most pesky 8s and 9s at an 86.3% rate.
A breakdown of the seed data will be available on this site in various forms. For a more complete and easier read (we think), you can get a copy of our last ebook “The Seed Report” on Amazon. We priced it at 99 cents. We will be providing an update to this book along with other tools in February 2022.
Additionally, the Seed Report will also seek to try to develop a repository for links to data, contests, and other tournament information in one easy place. This may take some time, so please bear with us.
Our Data Scientist
Rusty Haner is a data scientist by training having completed his grad work at the University of Memphis. He is also a designer, an animator, and a programmer. He completed his undergrad work at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Animation.
He has been programming since he was eight years old having taught himself various languages.
Rusty has volunteered his various talents in the further development of the Seed Report, an underdeveloped project prior to his arrival.
With his assistance, a book entitled “The Seed Report with Data Analysis Explained” in hopes of getting more information to various stakeholders, educating others as to how a data scientist might think through a particular problem (NCAA seed analysis).
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