Had some discussion with some friends in the analytics community about combined offensive and defensive efficiency ranking and how likely teams are to advance based on the combined ranking. As I enjoy doing, I wanted to look it up.
I went back 12 years using the end-of-regular-season data from Bart Torvik's site and assigned each team into a group based on the combined ranking. I did 10 groups in intervals of 20.
Here are the winning percentages by round of each group/bucket:
Group 1 teams have not lost in the first round and are 28-4 in the second. Almost two thirds of Group 1 teams get into the Elite 8, at least.
Group 2 teams, as you can see, are 76-9 in the first round and about two thirds of Group 2 teams get into the Sweet 16, at least.
Meanwhile, Group 3 teams win 82 percent of their first ground games but it really trails off after that. Only about a third advance to the second weekend.
Only about half of Group 4 teams advance to the second round with less than a third getting to the Sweet 16.
If you take the current rankings, here are the groups (Ohio State has been teetering back and forth between Group 2/3. They're technically in 3 right now in Torvik and Group 2 if you use Pomeroy).
Group 1: Duke & Kansas
Group 2: Arizona, Baylor, Michigan, Michigan St., Ohio St. and San Diego St.
Group 3: Dayton, Florida St., Gonzaga, Houston, Louisville, Maryland, Penn St. and Texas Tech
Group 4: Butler, Colorado, Creighton, Illinois, Marquette, Minnesota, Purdue, Seton Hall, Villanova, West Virginia, Wisconsin
Group 5: BYU, Florida, Kentucky, Rutgers & Utah St.
In either event, this precedent suggests an 80-90% chance of Ohio State winning its first game and between 50-70% of getting to at least the Sweet 16.
I went back 12 years using the end-of-regular-season data from Bart Torvik's site and assigned each team into a group based on the combined ranking. I did 10 groups in intervals of 20.
Here are the winning percentages by round of each group/bucket:
Group 1 teams have not lost in the first round and are 28-4 in the second. Almost two thirds of Group 1 teams get into the Elite 8, at least.
Group 2 teams, as you can see, are 76-9 in the first round and about two thirds of Group 2 teams get into the Sweet 16, at least.
Meanwhile, Group 3 teams win 82 percent of their first ground games but it really trails off after that. Only about a third advance to the second weekend.
Only about half of Group 4 teams advance to the second round with less than a third getting to the Sweet 16.
If you take the current rankings, here are the groups (Ohio State has been teetering back and forth between Group 2/3. They're technically in 3 right now in Torvik and Group 2 if you use Pomeroy).
Group 1: Duke & Kansas
Group 2: Arizona, Baylor, Michigan, Michigan St., Ohio St. and San Diego St.
Group 3: Dayton, Florida St., Gonzaga, Houston, Louisville, Maryland, Penn St. and Texas Tech
Group 4: Butler, Colorado, Creighton, Illinois, Marquette, Minnesota, Purdue, Seton Hall, Villanova, West Virginia, Wisconsin
Group 5: BYU, Florida, Kentucky, Rutgers & Utah St.
In either event, this precedent suggests an 80-90% chance of Ohio State winning its first game and between 50-70% of getting to at least the Sweet 16.
