Suppose that, lucky you, you’re the coach of a team given a No. 8 seed in the N.C.A.A. tournament bracket. This is a less-than-ideal position: provided that you win your first-round game, you’re due to face the No. 1 seed in the second round. But a friend of yours — another coach who owes you a favor — calls you with a “Let’s Make a Deal” proposition. His team is seeded No. 10 in another regional. He offers to swap with you: you get his No. 10 seed and he gets your No. 8. The teams in each region are otherwise about as strong as one another. Are you better off switching? The answer is almost certainly yes: the No....
I participated in my first N.C.A.A. tournament pool in 1992 when, as a 14-year-old, I correctly predicted sixth-seeded Michigan to reach the Final Four. I don’t particularly remember what went into the prediction, other than that the pool offered some ridiculous bonus for picking lower seeds — and also, since I grew up in East Lansing, Mich., I could be pretty sure that nobody else would be willing to go all-in on the team from Ann Arbor. I’ve never been asked to return the 75 “units” I took in for finishing first, despite the fact that Michigan’s Fab Five had to forfeit its wins for recruiting violations. This year, we’ve decided to do something a bit more scientific, analyzing the...
Most of the focus when the N.C.A.A. tournament bracket is revealed on Sunday will be on how teams are seeded and what sort of opponents they’re due to face — and which teams make the field of 68 at all. But there is another factor that can make just as much difference: where the games are played. Since 2003, for instance, teams playing an N.C.A.A. tournament game within 50 miles of their campus are a remarkable 24-2. One of the two losses came in last year’s championship game, when Butler — playing just miles from its campus in Indianapolis — came within 2 points of defeating a heavily favored Duke team. By contrast, teams travelling at least 1,000 miles to...
