Nate Silver: Parity in N.C.A.A. Means No Commanding Favorite [View all]

[joeybee12]

Even before the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament bracket was announced on Sunday, there was plenty of discussion about how much parity there was in this year’s field. The chatter only increased after Louisville, the No. 1 overall seed, was placed in a brutally tough Midwest region that also includes Duke and Michigan State.

This condition is nothing new, however. Parity has been the rule for some time in the N.C.A.A. tournament.

Louisville is in fact the nominal favorite to win the tournament despite its tough draw, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast. Still, Louisville has only a 23 percent chance of doing so, just ahead of Indiana at 20 percent.

In 2012, the FiveThirtyEight formula listed Kentucky as the tournament favorite. That call looks prescient since the Wildcats went on to win. Still, the result involved as much luck as skill, since the forecast gave Kentucky just a 27 percent chance of winning, only modestly better than Louisville and Indiana this year.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/parity-in-n-c-a-a-means-no-commanding-favorite/