Thanks to Michigan, the Big Ten only kind of really sucks at March Madness

Hello, it's me again. Yes, I know I'm responsible for the uplifting post "The Big Ten Sucks at Winning Championships" https://www.mgoblog.com/mgoboard/big-ten-sucks-winning-championships

I'm back for more. Like a dog with a good bone, that one awesome ex, a favorite pair of jeans, I just can't let this one go. It's been gnawing at me. For years it has bothered me that my perception of the Big Ten in the basketball tournament is "welp, this sucks...again". But I didn't want a simple hot take. No, I'm too data driven and OCD for that. 

I present to you....a completely arbitrary yet data driven analysis to understand just how bad the Big Ten is when it comes to March Madness. And why we can all, as Michigan fans, point at the rest of the Big Ten and say, "You really suck!!!" Enjoy. 

The background (how I do the data stuff)

The first challenge was creating an arbitrary, yet fair, way of measuring tournament success (or lack there of) value. I actually trend towards being an optimist, so I like to reward success more than punish failure.

For each regional bracket, I listed the conference the team was from. For seeds 1 - 16 I created a summary value. Seeds 1 - 4 were rated 1's, 5 - 8, 2's. 9 - 12, 3's, and 12 - 16 4's. This creates a more balanced, yet weighted scale to measure the impact of seeding. 

I then rated each round of the tournament on a simple scale. Round of 64 (I'm old school, I don't count the play in crap). wins are worth 1, Round of 32 are worth 2, Sweet 16 are worth 3, and so forth until a team wins the Championship game which has a value of 6. 

Losses are worth -1. It doesn't matter when it happens or to whom. A loss is a loss, and a high seed losing early (cough, MSU vs. Middle Tennessee St.) really does hurt the conference by missing out on the expected positive points. No need to be more punitive. 

Now it's simple, for every win, Take the teams seeding value (1,2,3,4) times the round value (1,2,3,4,5,6), count each loss as a -1 and it all looks like this:

2022 Midwest Region (i.e. Kansas winning the Championship this year)

You can see, a 1 seed winning it all equates to 21 total points. They did what a 1 seed is supposed to do. No extra bonus points needed. You can see in this example how painful it is for a high seed (in this case Auburn as the 2 seed) to lose early. They simply don't earn the points a 2 seed should. You can also see the value a lower seed has in going further than expected. In this case, the 10 seed was Miami who made it to the Elite 8. 

What does it look like when a true Cinderella makes a run? Here's the Loyola of Chicago run, until they met a certain team from Ann Arbor, MI:

That's a lot of points. More than Kansas accounted for winning the whole thing this year. I think that is accurate. Fans of the sport still remember Sister Jean because what Loyola did was so amazing. I'm guessing 5 years from now, more people will still remember Loyola and have trouble remembering Kansas won the championship this year (unless you are a Kansas fan, which, yuck). 

How do I translate this to a conference value? 

Take the total score a conference earns, and divide by the total number of teams that conference has in the tourney and you have a conference value. It looks like this: 

Now you know the how. Let's do some analysis. 

To understand how good or bad a conference is, you have to start with the number of schools it has in the tourney. Here's all of the conferences for the past 5 years. I've highlighted in green which conference won the National Title. Remember, I don't count play in games so Rutgers being the "9th Big Ten" team this year doesn't register for me. There are 64 teams that start playing on Thursday and that is what matters.

The Big Ten is getting it's fair share of chances. They are only slightly behind the ACC in total teams making the tourney every year. I've been in and around basketball a long time, I'm still amazed at how poorly the Pac 12 has been for a while now. They are getting the same number of bids as mid-majors at this point. 

Here's the complete ranking of conference values: 

Here you can see the longevity impact Loyola of Chicago's run had. I touched on this earlier, but I think this formula captures the value of a run like this. Assuming the Missouri Valley Conference doesn't have any more Cinderella's over the next 5 years, their rating will eventually fade back with the rest of the smaller conferences. Same will be true for the Peacocks of the Metro Atlantic Athletic. You can also see the relative consistency of the ACC, the enigmatic nature of the Pac 12, and oh yes, where is the Big Ten? They rank 9th. Or, put another way, only about 5 - 6 spots ahead of the one team and done conferences. 

To summarize this a little better: Here's the value rating for all of the conferences who average at least 2 teams/year in the tournament. 

I've highlighted the.....uhhhh....lowlights in a maize type color and the best performances in a not Michigan blue color. Yes, let's all point and laugh at the ACC for their pitiful showing in 2021. They couldn't muster even 1 point per team out of 7 teams!!! That's a very impressively poor number. Of course, UNC, Duke & Miami made up for it this past year posting the second best conference value over the past 5 years....sigh. You can see Gonzaga's two national championship runs, and then what happens when Gonzaga get's beat early. Houston has really carried the American Athletic conference the past few years. I may have to give Kelvin Sampson some credit. And where is the Big Ten? For the love of.... SERIOUSLY??? Behind the SEC? The SEC which has had 3 of the more embarrassing performances in the past 5 years? Thank goodness for the Big East at least. 

At least there was 2018 for the Big Ten, or should I say, for Michigan. Speaking of which, let's take a look at how Michigan performs vs. the rest of the Big Ten. This is raw points, not the value rating: 

Other than 2019, Michigan has been carrying all of the water for the Big Ten. In fact, without Michigan, the Big Ten's collective value rating over these 5 years is: 1.2!!!

THAT WOULD RANK THE BIG TEN ON PAR WITH CONFERENCE USA AND BEHIND THE SUMMIT LEAGUE!!!!

Michigan's individual value rating over this same period is 6.8!!!

The Big Ten really does suck at this basketball tourney thing. I have no idea how they have won as many ACC/Big Ten challenges as they have. I have no idea why they keep getting invited back to the tourney. At this point, I'm guessing all the other conferences like having the Big Ten come over to play because they know they can beat them up. 

Anyway, what my eyes & tourney brackets have been telling me for a while now is true.

Michigan is awesome.  The Big Ten sucks at March Madness. And I have the data to prove it.