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Sports by the Numbers

Technical Appendix: The Model for Seedings with Champions Included

Posted on March 10, 2017March 10, 2017 by Peter Lemieux

This table presents the results of three “Tobit” estimations of the effects of RPI and conference membership on seedings in the NCAA Tournament.

The first column reports the results for a model that includes each teams RPI, its conference membership, and “interaction” terms for each combination of RPI and conference so that the slopes can differ across conferences.  RPI has a strong negative relationship with seeding, and that relationship is steeper for mid-major teams, and steeper still for majors.

The second column tests the hypothesis that the slope for majors and mid-majors are the same.  Here I include a variable that measures RPI for all major and mid-major teams together, then include a separate measure for the major conference teams.  If the majors and mid-majors followed the same path, the term for majors only in model (2) should be zero.  Since it is not, I maintain the distinction between majors and mid-majors in model (3).

This is the model where I add in whether a team won a conference championship. Champions from single-bid conferences actually have lower seeds because they are included in the Tournament automatically.  Since many of these are among the weaker teams, a tournament winner from a conference like the Colonial or Ivy receives a worse seeding than an average at-large team at the same RPI.

When we turn our attention to the mid-majors and majors, though, conference champions receive a substantial seeding bonus.  Mid-major champions have better (lower) seedings by a factor of 1.4.  For major champions the effect is a whopping 2.6 ranks.  Given the usual denigration of the conference championships by basketball pundits, these are surprisingly large effects indeed.

 

Posted in NCAA Men's Basketball, Technical Notes

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