Success via Spreadsheets
by Andy Behrens

If you're determined to try to pick the tournament's winners, you'll need multi-variable statistical analysis. Serious-looking spreadsheets — not hunches — win the office pool.

Several details need to be properly valued, then massaged. It's a bit like admitting undergrads to Michigan, imperfect but undeniably logical. It takes some work, but it's possible to create a scale that assigns values to the essential factors. It allows a bit of personal discretion but doesn't let you get silly.

Here are the criteria:

RPI: Cold, numerical, undecorated truth, the rating percentage index doesn't hope or dream. RPI is Spock, flatly expressing statistical likelihood. It didn't care about Bobbi Olsen's death or Bo Kimble's lefty free throws. It certainly doesn't care if you're wearing the lucky Vermont sweatshirt. RPI asks three questions: "How much did you win?" "Who did you play?" and "Who did your opponents play?" From those details, it teases out probability. We assign a maximum 50 points for RPI (the nation's number one team, Kentucky, receives 50, number two receives 49, etc.) RPI works, but it's not perfect; they don't play the games on a hard drive, they play them at neutral (or tenuously neutral) sites. Eerie and under-calculated forces come into play. Most notably …

Mojo: Thought to originate from the Fula term moco'o, meaning "medicine man." Whatever. This shit is spooky, and you don't want to meet Mojo in the first round. Rearrange the letters of Valpo and you get Mojo … or at least you get Poval and Lopva. Whatever. Mojo is spooky. When Hollis Price banked in that 25-footer during Oklahoma's 49-47 weekend win, that was some freaky karmic Mojo. A shot like that resonates. You're not just playing the Sooners, you're playing the Sooners and the echo of that ridiculous shot (plus a little leftover Mookie Blaylock-Stacey King Mojo.) On the 20th anniversary of their come-from-nowhere national championship, NC State players can practically smear their faces with Mojo like warpaint. Small schools that win their conference tournaments unleash considerable Mojo in the early rounds of the NCAAs. Thus, Mojo is weighted heavier in rounds one and two (a maximum of 40 points, versus 20 in the later rounds.) When the third and fourth round games arrive, these metrics emphasize …

TV: Looking good on TV can be the thin line between W and L. Aesthetics carried the Fab Five past disciplined opponents in '92 and '93. Quin Snyder's hair, all by itself, gives his Missouri Tigers the maximum 20 TV points. Don't underestimate coach hair as a decisive factor: Occasionally, Rick Pitino just shuts up and lets the hair diagram a play. Less important than TV appeal, but still a factor, is …

God: If your school has a simple Jesuit mission, it earns five points. If it's hardcore and won't play on Sunday 'cause it's cherry-pickin' for the Lord, they earn 10 points. Simple enough. We'd be fools to think God doesn't have a hand in the tournament, but we'd also be fools to think He's obsessed. It's not like Notre Dame ever wins this thing, a fact that disappoints no one more than …

Dickie V.: General Relativity explains that a super-massive gravitational field will alter space-time, curving it, redirecting light. Distant objects appear closer. Super-massive personalities can affect college athletics in a similar way. Thus, the Dickie V factor. His explosive bluster actually warps the normal course of intercollegiate events, bending them slightly. In this analysis, we value Vitale's and God's preferences equally, allowing a maximum 10 points. To gauge V's connection to a team, we searched ESPN.com for each school in the field of 65 alongside the words "Vitale" and "scintillating" (as in the standard Vitalian rave, "Coach K and the Dookies are sup-ah, scintillating, sensational Baby!") Only Indiana, Arizona, Illinois, Duke, Kansas, Maryland and Florida achieved perfect 10s.

Throw RPI, Mojo, TV, God and Dick Vitale into the Bat-Computer, properly valued, and the tournament unfolds this way:

FIRST ROUND

Midwest winners: Kentucky, Utah, Weber State, Dayton, Missouri, Marquette, Alabama, and Pittsburgh. The beginning of a very bad run for the Big Ten, with Indiana and Wisconsin whacked early. Weber State is riding serious Mojo after securing a 12 seed (11s and 13s don't get Mojo, but 12s do. History says so.)

West winners: Arizona, Gonzaga, Notre Dame, Illinois, Creighton, Duke, Memphis and Kansas. God cleans up in this region, leading His Zags, Blue Jays and Irish into round two. Memphis taps a bit of residual Keith Lee Mojo to edge Arizona State.

South winners: Texas, Purdue, BYU, Stanford, Maryland, Xavier, Michigan State and Florida. BYU needs all 10 God points and some 12-seed Mojo to upset Connecticut.

East winners: Oklahoma, NC State, Butler, Louisville, Oklahoma State, Syracuse, St. Joseph's, and Wake Forest. Butler, another 12, beats the 5. South Carolina gives Oklahoma a run, using the frightening Mojo of Moses Malone Jr. (in his case, it's Mo-Mo-Mojo.)

SECOND ROUND

Midwest winners: Kentucky, Dayton, Missouri, and Pittsburgh. Kentucky gets points from everyone but God, it seems. TV loves them: they make shots, play defense, and — finally — no more Saul Smith. Plus, the didactic Billy Packer is forced to say "Tubby" repeatedly.

West winners: Arizona, Illinois, Duke and Kansas. No surprises here. The decidedly pagan Dick Vitale pushes these teams past several schools favored by the Almighty.

South winners: Texas, BYU, Xavier and Florida. Without Texas' TJ Ford and Xavier's David West, there'd be no reason to televise this region. BYU's victory means the Cougars leap into the Midwest Region, trading places with Dayton (a Catholic university) to avoid playing on Sunday. The secular NCAA rewards the faith of the BYU's players by arranging a match-up with Kentucky, bringing a brutal end to the no-ball-on-the-Sabbath nonsense.

East winners: Oklahoma, Louisville, Syracuse, and Wake Forest. The NCAA tournament uses 12-seeds like Butler to teach us two things: 1) the underdog can occasionally shock the world, and 2) eventually the underdog gets pasted by a much bigger dog. In Butler's case, Louisville ends their foolish dream.

SWEET 16

Midwest winners: Kentucky and Missouri. "Are you there, God? It's me, Coach Cleveland." No, He's not going to knock off Kentucky for you, Steve. Meanwhile, Quin's telegenic hair lifts Mizzou past Pittsburgh.

West winners: Arizona and Duke. The complete unattractiveness of the Illini and the Jayhawks undermine them in winnable games. TV frowns on them, and the 'Cats and Devils squeak by.

South winners: Texas and Florida. Because someone has to win, not because they belong.

East winners: Oklahoma and Syracuse. The Orangemen have found some long-forgotten Dwayne Washington Mojo. Look out.

ELITE EIGHT, FINAL FOUR AND CHAMPIONSHIP

Kentucky rolls over Missouri and the luxurious tresses of Quin Snyder, while Duke coach Mike Kryzyzewski's stiff head of Playmobil hair stuns Arizona. Texas slouches into the Final Four to face Oklahoma. Hollis Price is still feeling it, the trick shots are flowing like it's Nerf Hoop in the bedroom. He carries the Sooners into the final game against Kentucky, but the Wildcats just have too much everything. They max-out on RPI, they've got obvious Mojo (even though Adolph Rupp refused to recruit Mojo, thinking it didn't mix with respectable folk), they're a perfect TV family, and Vitale gave them a respectable 9 scintillatings. Bogans and Estill run away from Oklahoma in the end, securing yet another title for Kentucky and, more importantly, another victory for statistical models.

E-mail Andy Behrens at abehrens53 at hotmail dot com.

— graphic by D.P. Barsam (barsam@hotpop.com)