For the 2016-2017 we have witnessed some major upsets, as well as some roller coaster seasons, for multiple teams. This year, I attempted to wait before posting my March Madness rankings as I needed this season to flesh out. You’ll see (and most likely argue) that the current rankings are so tight that a three seed may end up as a nine seed; and vice-versa.

For example, take yesterday’s scores: Florida State 72, Syracuse 82; North Carolina 62, Miami FL 77; Oregon 65, Colorado 74; Georgetown 85, Butler 81; Notre Dame 60, Georgia Tech 62. That’s 9 of the top 14 teams who played. Of those 9 teams, five lost to unranked teams yesterday. Those five are mentioned above. A sixth team lost (Kentucky) but that was in a decidedly close game with Kansas; another top 4 team.

Yesterday is the microcosm of almost every team in the NCAA this season, making for a crazy finish and a potentially horrendous Selection Sunday later this year. Duke and Louisville have been the darlings of this year. That is, they have either been ridiculously good or uncharacteristically bad in must-win (to get into the top 10) games.

ACC is a Mess… Thanks Florida State

Louisville has 4 losses to their name: Baylor, Virginia, Notre Dame, Florida State. However, they have defeated Duke and Kentucky. Going to Duke’s end, they have only five losses: Kansas, Florida State, Louisville, NC State, and Virginia Tech. Those last two are head scratchers. I bring these two teams up because Florida State is ahead of both in the standings column but not in my rankings. Why?

It’s because of their losses: North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Syracuse, and Temple. That’s three losses to unranked teams with a couple by double digits.

West Virginia Muddles the Big-12

In the Big-12, we see a similar story. Baylor leads the conference with Kansas and holds a slightly better record overall. While this will change on February 1st, Baylor is slightly ahead in our rankings due to their only loss being to West Virginia. For Kansas, their losses are to Indiana and that same pesky West Virginia Team. This makes it look like West Virginia is the best team in the Big-12. Except for the fact that West Virginia has lost to Temple, Texas Tech, Kansas State, and Oklahoma.

The only reason West Virginia gets weight is because they have wins over #1 Baylor, #2 Kansas, and #6 Virginia. That’s an impressive resume despite the 4 unranked losses. Everyone else has been a win for the Mountaineers. This makes a “on-paper” #18 but a mathematically close top-10 team.

Big Ten Looks Miserably Great

Maryland leads the Big Ten, is 19-2, and is somehow our #33 team. This means our rankings are terrible! Not quite actually. Let’s look at Maryland’s resume… Their losses are to Pittsburgh and Nebraska, both at home. Both losses are to unranked teams with losing records in conference; one with a losing record despite a standard non-conference schedule. Losing to Gardner-Webb does that to you.

What this means is that Maryland lost at home to a team who couldn’t even beat a 12-11 Big South team at home. That’s detrimental when this season is tight for all teams across the board.

Compare this is Wisconsin, and we see all three of Wisconsin’s losses are against ranked opponents with two on the road; the lone home loss to a top-4 ranked opponent (North Carolina). Combine that with wins over a couple ranked opponents and a win over Marquette, who just ousted #1 Villanova at home, and Wisconsin has a much better case made that Maryland for being in the Top 10; let alone Top 25.

The Season Ain’t Over Yet…

That said, there is still a lot of basketball left to be played. Almost every team has ten games remaining on their regular season schedule. Combined with the conference tournaments, we should start seeing the power conference non-conference wins from the first half of the season start to lessen their impact on the overall rankings. We should also see teams on the border either rise up or fade away. Most importantly, we should be able to see the glut of teams at the top of the standings in each conference smooth out. For instance, Kansas gets Baylor at least two more times this season. Wisconsin and Maryland have yet to play (in Madison).

There’s a lot to still be done.

So with these things in mind, note that the current rankings are reflective of the chaotic first two-thirds of the season and things will drastically change over the next month. But for the time being, here are your current March Madness seedings:

Current seedings for the March Madness Tournament. 32 Conference Champions and 36 At-Large Bids.

The overall rankings from our model are listed here in spreadsheet format. It should be noted that, compared to the AP and Coaches Polls, 24 teams of our Top 25 are in the Top 25 for the respective polls. Maryland (#22 and #23, respectively) is #33 in our rankings; and we have unranked Wichita State sitting at #24. As a heads up… our model has a fairly decent fit of 0.5777.

Comparison of actual scores in games (blue) to the predicted scores based on our model (red). How good if the fit? 0.5777 (Really good for variance-inflated Poisson regression against 3000 of a possible 61000 interactions!)