How The Heck Did We Get This Final Four?

[DGUtley]

How The Heck Did We Get This Final Four?

We can’t say we saw UConn, Miami, Florida Atlantic and San Diego State coming on the men’s side (nobody did). But there is some method to the madness this March.


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We’re not exactly strangers to low-probability events here at FiveThirtyEight. But even for a month defined by uncertainty on the hardwood, this March dealt us an extra helping of disruptions to your scheduled programming. The first matchup of the men’s Final Four next Saturday will be between two first-time attendees, No. 5 seed San Diego State and No. 9 Florida Atlantic, in a game that our model gave a 0.05 percent chance (!) of happening before the tournament. Meanwhile, the nightcap between No. 5 Miami (also a Final Four newbie) and No. 4 UConn had an astronomically higher chance of happening — all the way up at 0.3 percent.1


How do we make sense of this seemingly senseless madness? Well, it helps to put things in a historical context. Since 2002, when Ken Pomeroy started tracking efficiency numbers in college basketball, only the 2011 tournament saw a less-heralded quartet make it to the final weekend of the tournament — both in terms of predictive metrics and where the teams were seeded:


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All of that leaves us with a slightly complicated view of the Final Four field. We’d be lying if we said we saw these matchups coming (our model implied a 1-in-412,740 chance of this particular quartet playing in Houston), but it is fascinating that arguably the most unexpected entrant isn’t the No. 9 seed that most of us hadn’t heard of before two weeks ago, but rather the experienced, guard-heavy team that returned most of its contributors from last year’s Elite Eight run. Perhaps the Hurricanes are just a metrics-defying team — after all, they were ranked No. 62 headed into last year’s event, too. But it’s more likely that this is just an artifact of March’s sheer unpredictability. (You would have made a killing if you had bet on a Miami Final Four run when the Canes were down by 8 points to No. 12 seed Drake with five minutes left in the round of 64.)



https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...=pocket-newtab

[Tahuyaman]

How The Heck Did We Get This Final Four?

I have a theory. The traditional basketball powers are progressively going after the “one and done” player. Meaning these guys play one year in college then go on to the NBA. Some go two years.

These new lesser powers coming up are putting guys on the court who have played three and four years together. They play better as a team and they are more developed as players both physically and mentally.

[carolina73]

FAU didn't play anyone this year to deserve to get to the tournament.

But they are proving that they can rebound and keep up the pace.

[Tahuyaman]

FAU didn't play anyone this year to deserve to get to the tournament.

But they are proving that they can rebound and keep up the pace.

They earned their shot.

[ripmeister]

Transfer portal.

[carolina73]

Had I not run across this post I would have forgotten the game was even on.