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NCAA Tournament Handicapping

The college basketball postseason is a completely different animal than the regular season.  During the conference season, when analyzing a matchup you can compare a lot of games in which the two schools played common opponents.  Towards the end of the season, each team starts to develop a similar strength of schedule rating as their opponent, especially if you are looking at recent performances that only include these conference games so it’s easy to compare a team with their foe.

Once March Madness hits that all changes.  You have teams with great records from small conferences taking on the big boys and even the BCS schools facing different conferences.  It can be tough to judge just how good these mid-major teams are when there isn’t any common ground to evaluate and you don’t really know how conference compare with one another until they start interacting.  That is why you need to change your focus when handicapping NCAA tournament games.  Let’s take a look at what factors we feel are most important.

1.  Margin of Victory – This is the best indicator of how a team performed on the year.  You simply average out the points a team has won or lost by.  The bigger the number the better because then you know a school didn’t string together a bunch of close, lucky wins that inflated their record to better than it “should” have been.  When you consistently win by double digits, not many people can call you lucky.

2.  Coaching Experience – Has the man calling the shots on the sidelines been to the Big Dance before?  If not, then you have to slightly downgrade his chances.  Preparing your team for the tournament format is different from the regular season.  The guys who have done it before have learned from previous appearances and tend to do better than rookies who are winging it as they go.

3.  Top Players – Tournament teams can be a little more top-heavy and not have to rely on depth.  These players know that a loss means there is no tomorrow so you won’t see any of them calling for rest to come out of the game.  Starters will see more minutes so the quality of the bench is not as big of an issue.  As such, individual players can take over games.  We’ve seen it before and you’ll most likely see it again this year, dominant players can carry a team on their backs and advance in the tournament.

4.  Bigs – Everyone talks about the guard play in the tournament like that is what makes or breaks teams, but for me it’s the opposite.  Shooting is more difficult in the tournament.  There are the nerves when playing in front of a huge crowd and a national audience, the difficult shooting background due to the large arenas, and the more open floors.  Hitting 18 foot jump shots won’t be as easy as it was in the home gym, but dunks and two-footers are high percentage shots everywhere.

Not only that, but bigs can get rebounds.  Defensive rebounds stop possessions and offensive rebounds keep them alive.  Sure, guard play is important to keep turnovers to a minimum and if a team gets hot from behind the 3-point line they can outscore a superior opponent, but I’ll take my chances with the more consistent performers down low.