Nate Silver new odds on the Final 4

[kcshocker11]

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1587987-final-four-2013-opening-odds-for-each-team-to-win-ncaa-championship


Prove him wrong Shockers:pirate:

[1979Shocker]

From the link.

If the Shockers win the tournament, they would probably qualify as the least-likely champions in history — displacing the 1985 Villanova Wildcats, who won as a No. 8 seed and faced a somewhat more favorable draw.

[jocoshock]

12-1. Not bad. We have come a long way in a short time...

[SubGod22]

Why does anybody read anything that is from that site?

[jrschh]

To quote Jim Carey off of Dumb and Dumber, "So you're saying there's a chance!!!!"

[CBB_Fan]

I'll take 12/1 odds, considering that Ken Pomeroy gave us a 1 in 1712 chance to win it all. In order to advance this far, we've had to personally beat the teams that he gave the 4th, 5th, and 8th best odds to win it all.

[moshock]

Why does anybody read anything that is from that site?

I'm having a hard time watching or reading anything this week. According to the CBS announcers - we might as well stay home.

#playangry #cheerangy

[Shockeriffic]

Bleacher Report just copied Nate Silver's blog and put it up on their website. How do they get away with that?

Here's the link for the original article.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/louisville-favored-in-final-four-but-wichita-state-could-become-unlikeliest-champion/

[60Shock]

They don't know crap.

[HockeyShock]

That's right. Keep ignoring Wichita State. Keep looking past them. That's worked wonderfully so far.

I'm serious. The more they think they have it in the bag, the better for us.

[HarpBros]

Nate silver's April 1st numbers

WICHITA STATE SHOCKERS

Probability of reaching Final Four before tournament began: 1.3 percent

Chance of winning tournament before tournament began: 0.08 percent

Chance of winning tournament before Round of 16: 1.2 percent

Chance of winning tournament now: 4.7 percent

The FiveThirtyEight model gave Wichita State only a 1.3 percent chance of reaching the Final Four before the tournament began, or about 75-to-1 odds against. Does that imply that the Shockers’ having reached the Final Four represents a once-every-75-year event – about as rare as Halley’s comet?

Actually, the math is a little bit more complicated than that. There are four regions, and in each one, there are a number of long-shot teams, so there are a lot of opportunities every year for someone to defy the odds. Instead, our pretournament model suggested that there was about a 16 percent chance (roughly 1-in-6) that Wichita State or any of the other 37 teams with under a 2 percent chance of reaching the Final Four would do so.

Some of the historical cases of teams that defied even longer odds are well-known. Pennsylvania, in 1979, overcame what we estimate were 500-to-1 odds against reaching the Final Four — while Virginia Commonwealth in 2011 was about an 800-to-1 underdog.

However, Wichita State’s accomplishment holds up well against some other Cinderella teams, including Louisiana State in 1986 and George Mason in 2006, both of which made the Final Four as No. 11 seeds. Wichita State was a No. 9 seed, and a reasonably good one. The problem is that being a No. 9 seed is probably more difficult than being a No. 11. A No. 9 seed will almost certainly have to defeat a No. 1 seed in its second game (as Wichita State did against Gonzaga) – eliminating the chance of getting lucky because the favorite gets knocked out early. In addition, Wichita State beat a very tough No. 8 seed, Pittsburgh, and a very tough No. 2, Ohio State — and the Shockers have made some of these wins look easy.

The issue, as is the case for Syracuse, is that the accomplishments for the other three Final Four teams have been just as impressive — and they began with considerably better regular-season résumés than Wichita State. So the FiveThirtyEight model gives Wichita State only about a 5 percent chance of winning out.

But what if they do it? The initial model gave Wichita State only about a 0.08 percent chance of winning the tournament, or about 1,200-to-1 odds against. If the Shockers win the tournament, they would probably qualify as the least-likely champions in history — displacing the 1985 Villanova Wildcats, who won as a No. 8 seed and faced a somewhat more favorable draw.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/louisville-favored-in-final-four-but-wichita-state-could-become-unlikeliest-champion/

[Kung Wu]

The issue, as is the case for Syracuse, is that the accomplishments for the other three Final Four teams have been just as impressive — and they began with considerably better regular-season résumés than Wichita State.

And therein lies the flaw. The "considerably better regular-season résumés" don't take into account three starters sitting on the bench _all at the same time_ (and 4 starters in at least one game, when EO was out).

Edit: After more thought -- even if we went perfect in the Valley and swept Creighton, our résumé would never stack up with a BCS team's. So nevermind.

[Shockeriffic]

And therein lies the flaw. The "considerably better regular-season résumés" don't take into account three starters sitting on the bench _all at the same time_ (and 4 starters in at least one game, when EO was out).

Edit: After more thought -- even if we went perfect in the Valley and swept Creighton, our résumé would never stack up with a BCS team's. So nevermind.

He does take injuries into account. From last years predictions, "Second, the system considers the effect of injuries and suspensions. This is done based on current injury reports, with the value of each player extrapolated out by using the win shares statistic at sports-reference.com." The win shares stats that he's using for Wichita State are below.

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/wichita-state/2013.html

[Kung Wu]

He does take injuries into account. From last years predictions, "Second, the system considers the effect of injuries and suspensions. This is done based on current injury reports, with the value of each player extrapolated out by using the win shares statistic at sports-reference.com." The win shares stats that he's using for Wichita State are below.

http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/...tate/2013.html

I'm too tired to read it, but how could he possibly have reliable data on Baker and Wessel? That's 40% of our starting squad with very little information with prior performance. It would be very difficult to model that.