As February marches on, we take a look (at an increasing rate) at the current state of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball tournament based on our rankings model. Our rankings model takes into account: wins, win disparity, location of game, length of rest between games, distance traveled, and a couple other factors. The ranking is then placed into a percentage of points scored by each opponent; along with a probability of winning. Each coefficient respective of these two categories are then weighted together to form a single normalized score.

As we have seen over the course of the season, our rankings model is fairly on par with the rankings systems used by ESPN, the Associated Press, and the Coaches’ Poll. We also tend to magnify teams that are “over-rated” and tend to identify teams that are roughly “under-rated.”

In this edition (and others afterwards until the NCAA tournament) we will focus on who is in, who is out, and who is on the “Bubble”.

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. Also, in recent light of team discipline, Louisville has also been disqualified from the post-season.

Fitting our models, we find that there is a 0.5703 r-squared, indicating an “O.K. but no-where predictive” fit to the games played. Using the rankings as determination for conference winners, we have the following teams with automatic bids:

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

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

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

DROPPED OUT: Washington (15-9, 7-5)

SNEAKED IN: Vanderbilt (14-10, 6-5)

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. Washington (15-9, 7-5)
2. Creighton (16-9, 7-5)
3. Wisconsin (15-9, 7-4)
4. VCU (17-7, 9-2)
5. Gonzaga (19-5, 11-2)
6. Alabama (14-9, 5-6)
7. Marquette (16-9, 5-7)
8. Tulsa (16-8, 8-4)
9. Clemson (14-10, 7-5)
10. Stanford (11-10, 4-6)

FLOATED OUT OF BUBBLE: UCLA (13-10, 4-6), Georgia (13-9, 6-5), LSU (15-9, 8-3)

CLIMBED INTO BUBBLE: Alabama (14-9, 5-6), Marquette (16-9, 7-5), Tulsa (16-8, 8-4)

On the Bubble List, you see that there are changes to 30% of the teams. This is due to the closeness of the slightly-above average stronger conference teams. The term stronger conference is used here to reflect the dominance of the power conference and high mid-major conferences over the mid-major conferences. To give insight, the resulting ranking score between Vanderbilt (IN) and Washington (OUT) is 0.72367 to 0.72355. A whopping 0.00012 points; with a variance of approximately 0.00001 each.

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

NCAA March Madness seedings based on our rankings as of February 11th, 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.