Marquette’s Odds for Making the Final 4 (and the other 15 teams’ odds too)

Today is the first day of the Sweet 16 round. So far the tourney has been full of upsets and surprises. However PredictionMachine.com claims they have mathematically broken down the odds of major sporting events and translated those odds to a simple percentage probability. PredictionMachine.com leverages advanced forecasting software that takes into account a number of statistics including (but not limited to) strength of schedule, review of the players expected to play-including injuries, coaching style etc. Additionally the software then replays 50,000 different scenarios of a game (did a team run or pass the ball) to determine the probability each team may win. From there it crunches all of this information together with team/player statistics to produce the odds of success.

The principle of leveraging math to determine odds makes logical sense; after all, past performance tends to be a reasonably consistent predictor of future success. Naysayers may call into question the whole human element of a clutch performer or the David over Goliath teams. In response, the site claims that even in “upsets” there are hard reasons a team wins and those reasons reside in the numbers based on past performance. Obviously this is not foolproof, but the list of accurate predictions is rather impressive. The creator of this software, statistician and sports journalist Paul Bessire, claims to have accurately picked “six of the last eight Super Bowls (eight of eight against-the-spread); five of the last seven World Series, including the Yankees' 2009 win in six and the 2006 Cardinals win in five (both to the game); and five of the last seven NCAA Tournament champions (as of Selection Sunday).”

I have taken my position on human verses computer selection for post-season games, however this software intrigues me. While I believe that no software can truly quantify the complexities of physical performance under pressure, I will concede that proper interpretation of past performance will more times than not correctly project the winner.

So what are the odds of your favorite team making the Elite 8 or Final Four? Check out the below table and tune into the games tonight through Sunday to check its accuracy. Ref. predictionmachine.com