The Holy Land of Hoops

We need a mathematician or an actuary that frequents this board to make the following determination

Take the top 10 basketball conferences and the schools that comprise these conferences and determine the optimum number of members in a imaginary conference with the goal to maximize the number of NCAA Tornament bids for this imaginary conference. Consider the low number of teams in the conference to be 10 and the max to be 18. Consider that the average W/L of the members in this imaginary conference to hbe the same as the avergage recorde of these 10 conferences.

This is the only way to find out if 10 members is better or worse than a higher number. Please lets not hear about the "fun" of having a "round robin", keep this argument out of the findings.

Any math majors here?

francis wrote:We need a mathematician or an actuary that frequents this board to make the following determination

Take the top 10 basketball conferences and the schools that comprise these conferences and determine the optimum number of members in a imaginary conference with the goal to maximize the number of NCAA Tornament bids for this imaginary conference. Consider the low number of teams in the conference to be 10 and the max to be 18. Consider that the average W/L of the members in this imaginary conference to hbe the same as the avergage recorde of these 10 conferences.

This is the only way to find out if 10 members is better or worse than a higher number. Please lets not hear about the "fun" of having a "round robin", keep this argument out of the findings.

Any math majors here?

Long thread short: The number and analysis you are looking for doesn't exist. Asking what number is optimal for securing NCAA Tournament berths is like debating which of the Seven Dwarfs would be the best unicorn trainer. It might be entertaining and we can spill a lot of pixels but it's ultimately not the point because there is no right answer.

Any analysis necessarily involves not only the number of teams, but WHO the teams are. For example:

The 2013 Big East had 15 teams. It got 8 into the tournament.
The 2014 ACC had 15 members. It got 6 into the tournament.

The 2014 Big East had 10 teams. It got 4 into the tournament.
The 2014 Big XII had 10 teams. It got 7 into the tournament.

In the latter example, the Big 12's 7th team in was Oklahoma State, who finished with a record of 21-13 and actually had a losing record in conference, but they dominated their nonconference slate. The Big East's 7th-place team was Georgetown, who also finished with a sub-.500 conference record, but went 17-13 overall, and in their non-conference, lost to Northeastern. In conference, they lost to Seton Hall twice....and lost to DePaul in the Big East Tournament.

In short, despite having similar conference records in a league with an identical scheduling format and number of teams, the "7th" team in the Big 12 was a tournament team and the "7th" team in the Big East wasn't. The difference? One cleaned up in nonconference, and only lost one game in league play to a team who didn't go to the tournament. The other lost to freaking Northeastern, and followed it up after New Year's by losing three combined games to Seton Hall and DePaul (Not to mention also losing to St. John's, and Marquette (twice); neither of whom made the tournament). The 2014 Atlantic Sun had 10 teams. It got 1 into the tournament. It had nothing to do with the fact that the A-Sun had 10 teams or 12 or 8 or 14 or 9-and-a-half. It was because the A-Sun has 10 crap teams, and the NCAA was obligated to take one of them.

Conferences don't qualify for the tournament. Teams do.

Not looking for the resulting number of teams in the imaginary conference to *always* in every case produce the most number of teams in the tournament. Just looking statistically for the best number based upon "averages" I know there are many other one time/unusual variables that no one can factor in.

If you take the average number of wins by the teams in the top 10 conferences and use this info only.

Were is Nate Silver when you need him?

notkirkcameron wrote:

francis wrote:We need a mathematician or an actuary that frequents this board to make the following determination

Take the top 10 basketball conferences and the schools that comprise these conferences and determine the optimum number of members in a imaginary conference with the goal to maximize the number of NCAA Tornament bids for this imaginary conference. Consider the low number of teams in the conference to be 10 and the max to be 18. Consider that the average W/L of the members in this imaginary conference to hbe the same as the avergage recorde of these 10 conferences.

This is the only way to find out if 10 members is better or worse than a higher number. Please lets not hear about the "fun" of having a "round robin", keep this argument out of the findings.

Any math majors here?

Long thread short: The number and analysis you are looking for doesn't exist. Asking what number is optimal for securing NCAA Tournament berths is like debating which of the Seven Dwarfs would be the best unicorn trainer. It might be entertaining and we can spill a lot of pixels but it's ultimately not the point because there is no right answer.

Any analysis necessarily involves not only the number of teams, but WHO the teams are. For example:

The 2013 Big East had 15 teams. It got 8 into the tournament.
The 2014 ACC had 15 members. It got 6 into the tournament.

The 2014 Big East had 10 teams. It got 4 into the tournament.
The 2014 Big XII had 10 teams. It got 7 into the tournament.

In the latter example, the Big 12's 7th team in was Oklahoma State, who finished with a record of 21-13 and actually had a losing record in conference, but they dominated their nonconference slate. The Big East's 7th-place team was Georgetown, who also finished with a sub-.500 conference record, but went 17-13 overall, and in their non-conference, lost to Northeastern. In conference, they lost to Seton Hall twice....and lost to DePaul in the Big East Tournament.

In short, despite having similar conference records in a league with an identical scheduling format and number of teams, the "7th" team in the Big 12 was a tournament team and the "7th" team in the Big East wasn't. The difference? One cleaned up in nonconference, and only lost one game in league play to a team who didn't go to the tournament. The other lost to freaking Northeastern, and followed it up after New Year's by losing three combined games to Seton Hall and DePaul (Not to mention also losing to St. John's, and Marquette (twice); neither of whom made the tournament. The 2014 Atlantic Sun had 10 teams. It got 1 into the tournament. It had nothing to do with the fact that the A-Sun had 10 teams or 12 or 8 or 14 or 9-and-a-half. It was because the A-Sun has 10 crap teams, and the NCAA was obligated to take one of them.

Conferences don't qualify for the tournament. Teams do.

+1. Well done.

Beyond that, as far as the Big East is concerned, if what is understood about our television deal is fact - that Fox will bump the contract to accommodate two more teams, ensuring that existing payouts are maintained for the original 10 - then any such analysis would only be undertaken knowing that, in the Big East's case, any expansion would be capped at 2 additions; 12 teams total. There is no compelling reason for the 10 members to take dilution on the existing Fox deal.

There is way too much focus on the absolute numbers of teams that make the Tournament. The Big East is fine so long as it gets at least 4 teams in every year AND the Big East advances to at least the next weekend, while otherwise getting to the E8 and beyond on some reasonably frequent basis.

Bottom line: expansion in and of itself does not guaranty more bids.

More to the point: absent movement on the football realignment side, there are no compelling additions available right now, except for perhaps VCU. If it is true that the C7 firmly want an addition from the East, assuming additions are made at all, then there definitely are no impactful candidates available for the 12th slot in the West.

xuxash... come on now..

Thanks for the commentary on Fox1 et al, however my question is separate from all the politics of the tv contract, east vs west etc etc.

just a clinical look at this from an AVERAGE and statistical point of view. There has to be a break even / max-min number of teams if you work with the database of wins/losses and what the average committee is looking for in terms of wins/losses to place teams in the tournament

If you were a betting man, wouldnt you want the statistical answer and add all the political crap on top of it to come up with a valid answer?

IMHO, we're not even having this conversation about expansion if GTown could have just won the games it should have last year, and if Seton Hall and DePaul weren't annual dumpster fires. No one can be that consistently bad for so long.

Seton Hall at least has a decent recruiting class coming in. DePaul is the Butters Stotch of this league. We keep them around to fill out the gang, but they're just so far behind it makes the rest of us lamer just for associating with them.

I can give you some form of what you're looking for, but it'll take a while to gather the data I need and I'm pretty certain that any correlation between a team making the NCAA Tournament and the number of teams in its conference will come out as not statistically significant. Who knows though, I could be wrong.

If you care to help, I would need a list (preferably an excel type spreadsheet) of every D1 team in the country, it's conference, the number of teams in its conference, and whether or not each team made the NCAA Tournament for the year in question. Feel free to go back as many year as you wish and to include any other info/statistics that you'd be interested in learning its significance towards a possible NCAA bid. I could run it once with everyone and once excluding 1-bid leagues because they will sway the results.

I will say this again. The Big East members should hope that St. Johns and DePaul pick up their programs big-time for this league to see its highest "value".

I ran these computations last night and the best number came out to a 10 team conference.

Your welcome!

FriarJ wrote:I ran these computations last night and the best number came out to a 10 team conference.

Your welcome!

I got a 349 team conference- it guarantees us 68 NCAA Tournament bids a year!