Predict March Madness 2012 with Success

As the NCAA tournament approaches, bettors have been pouring over past data and statistics of the NCAA teams and its players. In an effort to strike it rich, it seems nothing will be left to chance. But one question that comes to mind is just how relevant is past data and statistical figure? And how big a role will it (or should it) play while putting down a wager during March Madness 2012.

We put together two teams – ‘A’ team from amongst the basketball experts in our staff, and ‘B’ team from amongst the leading bettors during March Madness. To these two teams we put this question about the relevance of past data and statistics to predict the success this March Madness and boy, we are glad we did for their answer came as a big surprise to us. Read on.

Experience counts

The bettors of course swore that experience was vital because players who have “been there and done that” will play better the next time round. Also, historical data in addition to other data enabled the bettors to better judge a player or the team. Besides, players and teams with a history to back them up can only get better with experience and that too is something that will have to be factored in when placing a bet this March Madness.

Teams with less returning minutes had a wider range of outcomes

The ‘B’ team which comprised of experts from amongst our staff immediately set upon to test the above hypothesis. They looked into the role played by returning minutes in ensuring wins. The norm is that the team with more returning minutes will play better this March Madness. However, our team found out that historically, teams with less returning minutes had a wider range of outcomes. This was probably because teams with less than top scores, have a lot of space to improve their game.

This meant that top performing teams have less scope for surprising us this March Madness. So perhaps, a closer look at the underdogs during this season’s NCAA tournament may yield substantial gains?

To test our hypothesis, we took the historical data and attempted to predict the offensive efficiency of NCAA tournament for the 2011 and surprised ourselves by being fairly spot-on.

Returning minutes are therefore vital in predicting future performance which means, experience definitely counts. The ‘B’ team has it.

What about experience in March itself?

To answer this question, the ‘A’ team took years worth of data from the past NCAA tournaments and then broke down the tournament into segments or rounds. Doing this allowed us to see what factors influenced a team’s advancement from game to game.

What they did was to take the number of games played in previous year’s NCAA tournaments and multiplied it by the percent of returned minutes. By doing so, we were specifically factoring in the NCAA tournament experience.

What our team found was that, teams who had previous NCAA tournament experience played significantly better than teams that did not. So not only was experience important, experience at previous NCAA tournaments was extremely valuable.

So yes, past data can help predict this March Madness NCAA tournament. However, do not neglect talent. We only need to look at Jeremy Lin’s performance this month to realize that teams who might have very little previous NCAA experience might still out-perform the favorites due to the presence of very talented individual players.

So when you place your online basketball bets this March Madness, be sure to carefully study the past data and statistics but while doing so, do not ignore the talent amongst the underdogs. Factor in everything and analyze carefully before you place your bet. We certainly hope you will come out far richer after this March Madness. Have fun.