Prediction Machine Says Kentucky Will Win It All
By Bryan Altman--
(CBS Local) What do you, everyone in your office and a powerful piece of prediction software known only as the Predictalator have in common? Well, probably not much other than the fact that you all decided not to throw caution to the wind and chose Kentucky to win the NCAA Tournament this year. That's right, if you were looking for one more reason to jump on the Kentucky bandwagon before it leaves the station for Indianapolis here it is.
For the majority of the world that chose Kentucky the logic probably runs the gamut between "I watched all of their games and they're the best team" to "because Gary Parrish told me to." The Predictalator, run by PredictionMachine.com, has no time for human rationale and cuts straight to mind-boggling statistical analytics to get to the answer.
The website PredictionMachine.com, which created the Predictalator, doesn't make much of a mystery of how it works and provides a clear breakdown of how they reached their not-so-unique conclusion.
"The Predictalator uses current rosters and strength-of-schedule and pace-adjusted team and player stats (weighted slightly more toward recent games), to play, one possession at a time, every game 50,000 times before it's actually played. For this analysis, we are tracking how likely a team is to make it to any level of the NCAA tournament. Each tournament is played individually, with the team that wins the game in that instance advancing."
So, what does it all mean?
Basically it means what we knew already. It means that if in some strange sort of hell we had to watch the NCAA Tournament be played 50,000 times over, Kentucky would win it approximately 44.3 percent of the time. That's the amazing part. Kentucky is one of 68 teams - 68 possible winners and a near-infinite amount of other possibilities yet Kentucky would win nearly half the time. They're deemed that good not just by the eye test but statistically as well. Even more amazingly, the Predictalator's previous record for the team that was most likely to win was Kentucky in 2012, who were deemed likely to win based on the simulations 21.4 percent of the time. So Kentucky's team is considered doubly likely to win than any other team since the Predictalator began predicting the NCAA Tournament six years ago.
The Predictalator also calculated the most likely teams to make the Final Four, which, predictably, ended up being the four No. 1 seeds in this year's tournament - Duke, Villanova, Wisconsin and Kentucky. The odds are interesting however, Wisconsin and Duke made it to the Final Four nearly 48 percent of the time each, while Villanova had slightly better odds at 54 percent based on their "weaker" region. Kentucky made the Final Four an astonishing 83.7 percent of the time.
However, PredictionMachine.com added that the Final Four prediction has only happens 10.3 percent of the time.
So if you're holding out hope for the underdogs don't think that the Predictalator has completely written them off. The machine also broke down the most likely "Cinderella" teams that made a deep run in their simulations.
Surprisingly, the biggest Final Four sleepers from any of the four conferences (No. 5 seed or higher) were Utah, who made the Final Four 6.9 percent of the time, while Northern Iowa came in second at 5.3 percent of the time.
In addition to those two underdog stories, Texas was the highest seed with the best chance percentage-wise of making the Sweet 16 as an 11 seed with a 21.7 percent chance of making it that far.
The most important part of filling out any bracket is securing bragging rights among friends and colleagues, so the Predictalator even doled out the most likely first-round upsets.
From the South region the most likely first-round upset is No. 10 Davidson taking down No. 7 Iowa, which happened in the simulations 53.5 percent of the time. In the East you might be best served sticking with the favorites according to the machine as there were no predicted first-round upsets in that region.
In the West, the No. 10 Ohio State Buckeyes knocked off the No. 7 VCU Rams 67.6 percent of the time while in the Midwest the machine has No.6 Butler succumbing to the No. 11-ranked Texas Longhorns 61 percent of the time.
So whether you're firing darts at a bunch of pieces of paper with school names scrawled on them, letting zoo animals make your selections, or listening to your local experts, don't forget - take Kentucky. In an imperfect system of selecting teams and trying to figure out who might just beat who, the Predictalator could be your key to a perfect bracket. Or, it could be giving you just another piece of paper to toss in the paper shredder. After all, March wouldn't be driving anyone mad if we knew all of the answers anyway.
