2010 NCAAT Fan Anxiety Matrix

Simulating the NCAA tournament has been pretty popular this year, although I imagine that many of the Duke haters out there are not very satisfied with the results. The results, as expected, agree with the discrete log5 projections published by Basketball Prospectus (Click the links for South, East, West, and Midwest region log5 predictions). The difference between those predictions and my simulations, is the type of data that can be pulled out of the simulations.

For instance, below is a list of the five teams that all 64 teams in the field are most likely to end their seasons against. For example, while Duke was found to win the whole tournament in 24% of simulations, who did they lose to in the other 76% of the one million simulations?




As you can see, California is the team most likely to send Duke home with a disappointing season (and give plenty of bloggers and media mouthpieces lots to puff their chests about). It's not surprising to see that Kansas is one of the top five teams to knock off Duke, since Duke averaged 3.5 wins per simulation, and got to the final game very often, as did Kansas.

We're calling this presentation the Fan Anxiety Matrix. Which team is the most likely to knock out your favorite team? The second tab of the spreadsheet above shows every team's chances of being knocked out by every other team. Click here to see the full spreadsheet.

With a focus on the ACC teams, here's some pie charts to gaze at. Maryland fans will be pleased to see that Duke has only a 2% chance of ending their season. Unfortunately, there is only a 2% chance of winning the national championship as well. The other four ACC teams have an uphill battle to make it until the second weekend (click a Fan Anxiety Index to enlarge):