Over the course of the previous 15 days, there have been some serious upsets within the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball landscape. On January 12th, #11 West Virginia ran #1 Kansas out of the arena with a 74-63 win. On the same day, #3 Maryland dropped a close 70-67 game to Michigan. One day later, #9 Duke found themselves on the losing end of a hotly contested 68-63 game against Clemson. On the 14th, another Top 10 team, #4 Michigan State suffered a defeat to the climbing #16 Iowa Hawkeyes by a demoralizing score of 76-59. How demoralizing? Michigan State followed the loss up with a pair of one point losses to unranked Wisconsin and unranked Nebraska, securing a three game losing streak.

Not to be outdone by the upsets, #1 Oklahoma lost 82-77 to #19 Iowa State on January 18th and #13 Virginia dropped a 69-62 game to unranked Florida State. Continuing on the trend of high profile teams dropping questionable games, #3 Kansas was rocked by Oklahoma State 86-67, while #20 Duke fell short in another close game; this time 64-62 to unranked Syracuse. #5 Xavier also followed suit on the 18th with a nine point 81-72 loss to Georgetown. Similarly, West Virginia’s move into the #6 position did not last long after an unexpected 56-49 loss to unranked Texas.

In total, between January 9th and the 23rd, the Top 10 ranked teams ranked by the Associated Press and Coaches’ Polls maintained a 13-10 record; going 1-4 against ranked opponents between ranks #11 through #25. No Top 10 teams faced each other during this time.

Needless to say, the last couple weeks have caused a menace to rankings systems. In our models, we found that the r-squared (strength of relationship between indicators and resulting score; 1 = perfect “fit”, 0 = absolutely no “fit”) took a 6 point hit from 0.66 down to 0.60. However, remember that rankings systems are built to reflect the past; not anticipate the future.

March Madness Current Entrants:

Using the current games played, the locations of the games, and the disparity of scores, we are able to build out a current state of the 2016 March Madness Tournament.

Rules: In order to make the tournament, a team must win their conference tournament, win the Ivy League regular season, or become an “at-large” bid that is selected based on merit by an NCAA committee.

In this post, we give an updated rankings for all 351 NCAA Division I teams. But first, we identify the current teams on pace (projected by our models) for becoming conference champions and “at-large” bids.

It should be noted that our rankings will include the suspended Southern Methodist University, whereas the AP Top 25 Coaches’ Poll does not include the Mustangs.

Fitting our models, we find that there is a 0.6072 r-squared, indicating a slightly good fit, but starting to waver on relatively questionable (think can determine winners with high probability but not able to determine spreads), to the games played.

1. America East: Stony Brook (15-4, 6-0)
2. American: Connecticut (14-5, 4-2)
3. Atlantic 10: Dayton (15-3, 5-1)
4. Atlantic Coast: Louisville (16-3, 5-1)
5. Atlantic Sun: North Florida (16-6, 5-0)
6. Big 12: Oklahoma (16-2, 5-2)
7. Big East: Villanova (17-3, 7-1)
8. Big Sky: Weber State (13-6, 5-1)
9. Big South: UNC Asheville (14-7, 7-2)
10. Big Ten: Purdue (17-4, 5-3)
11. Big West: Hawaii (16-2, 5-0)
12. Colonial Athletic: James Madison (16-5, 6-2)
13. Conference USA: UAB (17-3, 7-0)
14. Horizon League: Valparaiso (17-4, 7-1)
15. Ivy League: Yale (11-5, 2-0)
16. Metro Atlantic: Monmouth (14-5, 6-2)
17. Mid-American: Akron (15-4, 4-2)
18. Mid-Eastern: Norfolk State (9-12, 5-1)
19. Missouri Valley: Wichita State (14-5, 8-0)
20. Mountain West: San Diego State (14-6, 7-0)
21. Northeast: Wagner (12-6, 5-2)
22. Ohio Valley: Belmont (14-6, 6-0)
23. Pac-12: Arizona (16-4, 4-3)
24. Patriot League: Navy (15-5, 6-1)
25. Southeastern: Texas A&M (17-2, 7-0)
26. Southern: Chattanooga (17-3, 6-1)
27. Southland: Stephen F. Austin (13-5, 6-0)
28. Southwestern Athletic: Texas Southern (7-11, 6-0)
29. Summit League: South Dakota State (16-5, 5-2)
30. Sun Belt: Arkansas Little Rock (17-2, 7-1)
31. West Coast: St. Mary’s (17-2, 8-1)
32. Western Athletic: Grand Canyon (18-2, 5-0)

The remaining 36 “at-large” teams are then the top 36 teams in our rankings. These 36 teams are given as:

1. West Virginia (16-3, 5-2)
2. Kansas (16-3, 5-2)
3. Xavier (17-2, 5-2)
4. Michigan State (17-4, 4-4)
5. Iowa (16-3, 7-0)
6. North Carolina (17-2, 7-0)
7. Virginia (14-4, 3-3)
8. Miami (FL) (15-3, 4-2)
9. Duke (15-5, 4-3)
10. Michigan (15-5, 5-2)
11. Indiana (17-3, 7-0)
12. Maryland (17-3, 6-2)
13. Iowa State (15-4, 4-3)
14. Baylor (15-4, 4-3)
15. Pittsburgh (16-3, 5-2)
16. Florida (13-6, 5-2)
17. USC (15-4, 4-2)
18. Oregon (16-4, 5-2)
19. Kentucky (15-4, 5-2)
20. Vanderbilt (11-8, 3-4)
21. Texas (12-7, 4-3)
22. Butler (13-6, 2-5)
23. Cincinnati (15-6, 5-3)
24. Notre Dame (14-5, 5-2)
25. Kansas State (12-7, 2-5)
26. California (14-6, 4-3)
27. Texas Tech (12-6, 2-5)
28. Gonzaga (15-5, 7-2)
29. VCU (14-5, 6-0)
30. South Carolina (17-2, 4-2)
31. Colorado (15-5, 4-3)
32. Providence (17-3, 5-2)
33. Seton Hall (13-6, 3-4)
34. Utah (14-5, 3-3)
35. Syracuse (13-7, 3-4)
36. Creighton (14-6, 5-2)

The next set of teams are our current bubble teams. These are teams that are close to making the NCAA Tournament but are on the outside looking in.

1. St. Joseph’s (15-3, 4-1)
2. Clemson (12-7, 5-2)
3. Florida State (12-7, 2-5)
4. Stanford (11-7, 5-3)
5. Washington (13-5, 5-1)
6. George Washington (15-4, 4-2)
7. UCLA (12-8, 3-4)
8. Georgia Tech (11-8, 1-5)
9. Evansville (17-3, 6-1)
10. Georgetown (12-8, 5-2)

The current state of the NCAA Tournament is given as follows:

NCAA March Madness seedings based on our rankings as of January 24th, 2016.

We note that we are not predicting the field of 68, but rather giving seedings based on play up to today. Our goal is to populate the March Madness tournament with current seedings; to give indication of where teams are sitting as of today. As the conference games continue to play out, the field of 68 will become much clearer.

NCAA Rankings on January 24th, 2016:

We now present our top-to-bottom rankings based on wins, game locations, and disparity of points.