(03-16-2011 08:04 AM)KnightLight Wrote: (03-16-2011 12:19 AM)quo vadis Wrote: Since the tournament expanded to 64 in 1985, here are the number of times various lower seeds have won their initial 4-team mini-tournament and reached the Sweet 16:
#8 seed: 9 times
#9 seed: 4 times
#10 seed: 19 times
#11 seed: 11 times
#12 seed: 18 times
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com...ckward/?hp
Interesting stats.
They are, and it shows how big an advantage the 1s have. Not only do they tend to be clearly-better than other teams, but the current "pod" system exacerbates that advantage because these seeds almost always play very close to home in the first two rounds. So there's usually no dodging them for those 8 and 9 seeds.
25 years ago, when one of my powerful Georgetown teams would be named the #1 seed in the West, they really were sent "out west". They'd play their first and second round games in LA or San Francisco.
Now, Charlotte arena counts as being "sent west" for Duke ...
Essentially, being a 1 seed means you have a bye in round 1 (no 1 seed has ever lost to a 16 in the past 25 years), and an extremely good chance to win in round 2 as well. For a 1 seed, the tourney really doesn't start UNTIL the Sweet 16 (by start i mean having to face a team with a good chance to beat you), whereas for everyone else, it starts immediately.
Coach K once said he views the tournament not as a single tournament, but as three four-team mini-tournaments: You win one 4-team tourney to advance from 64 to sweet 16, another to advance from the S16 to the Final 4, and then the third to win the national title. That's a good way to look at it, and what these stats show is that the #1 seeds practically get a "bye" out of their first mini-tourney. They only have to really struggle to win 2 of them, not 3 like other teams.