It’s the ACC’s Tournament

 By Dylan McDonough

It’s the ACC’s tournament, we’re all just living in it. Through the first two rounds, one of the biggest stories of the 2016 NCAA Basketball Tournament – besides record-setting upsets, unprecedented comebacks, and drama galore – has to be the dominance of the Atlantic Coast Conference. A record six teams from the conference advanced to the Sweet Sixteen, with the lone loss so far coming in Pittsburgh’s loss to last year’s runner-up Wisconsin.

Is this the result of tournament dominance or simply an easy schedule due to high seeding? After all, heading into March Madness, the ACC boasted seven different tourney teams, tied with the Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-12 for the most. Among those seven were two one-seeds, a three-seed, a four-seed, and a six seed, so you could say the ACC was already poised for success. But those other three conferences don’t have six teams still dancing.

To see how much of the ACC’s run is due to pure tournament success, I decided to look at how much its teams have outperformed expectations to this point. I used FiveThirtyEight’s pregame predictions to establish expectations for each team. These predictions are themselves based on FiveThirtyEight’s innovative Elo ratings, which use game scores, game locations, and conference toughness among other statistics to rate teams. It should be noted that I looked at each team’s win probability for the Round of 64, then each team’s Round of 32 win probability given the first round went the way it did. (I also did not factor in the First Four.)

To calculate the expected number of wins for each conference, I aggregated these win probabilities by conference, only considering the conferences that had multiple teams in the tournament. I then arrived at the table below:

Expected Wins by Conference

Conference

Teams

Expected Wins Round 1

Expected Wins Round 2

Total Expected Wins

ACC

7

5.18

4.12

9.3

Big Ten

7

5.15

1.78

6.93

Big 12

7

5.28

2.47

7.75

Pac-12

7

4.19

1.32

5.51

Big East

5

3.59

1.68

5.27

American

3

1.53

0.14

1.67

A10

3

1.64

0.36

2

MVC

2

0.8

0.83

1.63

SEC

2

1.81

1.38

3.19

As you can see, the ACC was expected to have won the most games at this point. So how did each of these conferences fair relative to their expectations?

 As you can see, the ACC far outperformed each other conference in terms of raw outperformance. While the Big 12 and Pac-12 disappointed with each dropping around two more games than expected, the ACC went in the opposite direction, winning almost three more games than predicted.

Expected Wins vs. Actual Teams by Conference

Conference

Total Expected Wins

Actual Wins

Wins Above Expectation

Ave Wins Above Expectation

ACC

9.3

12

2.7

0.39

Big Ten

6.93

7

0.07

0.01

Big 12

7.75

6

-1.75

-0.25

Pac-12

5.51

3

-2.51

-0.36

Big East

5.27

5

-0.27

-0.05

American

1.67

1

-0.67

-0.22

A10

2

2

0

0.00

MVC

1.63

2

0.37

0.19

SEC

3.19

3

-0.19

-0.10

But the ACC also had more teams than conferences like the American, the A10, the MVC, and the SEC. To account for this discrepancy, I divided the total wins above expectation by the number of teams each conference had in the tournament. Even with this average, the ACC still reigns. Indeed, through the first two rounds, the average ACC team has won 0.39 more games than we would have expected. This is more than twice as many wins per team as the second ranked Missouri Valley Conference. This difference is almost entirely due to the success of three-seed Miami, six-seed Notre Dame, and ten-seed Syracuse, each of which added more than 0.70 wins above expectation for the ACC.

From the predictable success of UNC to the exciting run – thanks in part to Middle Tennessee – of Syracuse, the ACC has ruled this tournament. But the early triumphs of this dominant conference are not simply the continuance of a strong regular season. Instead, the ACC has exceeded its already lofty expectations. Now let’s see how long this run can last.

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