Don’t get us wrong.
Traditional bracket contests like the ones that are ubiquitous throughout American office life are fine. But derivative tournament contests can be really clever in their designs and leave a lot more to the imagination – and require a lot more strategy.
Our favorite such contest is a salary cap pool that we’ve been participating in for several years. It works like this: Each entrant gets a $100 salary cap and can choose as many teams as they can for that amount.
A 1-seed costs $25, a 2-seed costs $19, and so on and so forth, all the way down to a 16-seed, which costs $1. The goal is to rack up as many wins as possible.
Over the years, we’ve developed a system to evaluate teams for this format:
- Assign a rating to each team
- Forecast the tournament using Log5
- Estimate each team’s cumulative expected wins
- Calculate each team’s value as measured by cost per win
- Select your lineup of teams by optimizing for total wins
Assign a rating to each team. This year we used Bart Torvik’s T-Rank. The rating tells us the likelihood that a given team would beat an average NCAA Division I team on a neutral court. Houston is Torvik’s No. 1-rated team with a rating of .9587, meaning the Cougars would be expected to beat an average NCAA Division I team 95.9% of the time on a neutral court.
Forecast the tournament using Log5. The Log5 method estimates the probability that team A will win a game against team B, based on the odds ratio between the estimated winning probability of Team A and Team B against a larger set of teams.
You can read more about it on Wikipedia. We got the idea from Kenpom, which posts one every year.
Applying the Log5 formula to a specific matchup is straightforward, but forecasting an entire tournament is a lot more daunting. Despite our best digging, we could not find a site anywhere on the internet that explained how to do this, so we built our own model in Excel.
Estimate each team’s cumulative expected wins. After you have a win probability for each team in each row, just add up the probabilities. A team that had a 50% chance to win in all six rounds would have 3.0 expected wins (an unlikely scenario but one that allows for easy math).
Calculate each team’s value as measured by cost per win. Take the cost and divide by cumulative expected wins and voilà. The thinking is that you want to pay as little for a win as possible, thus maximizing the number of wins you can stack up for $100.
Pick your teams by optimizing for total wins. How you go about selecting your lineup is up to you. You don’t need to rigidly go one by one through the pecking order of cheapest cost per win – it should be fun after all! But as a rule of thumb, you want to load up on teams projected to produce cheap wins and avoid teams for which you’ll pay a premium for wins. (More on these teams below.)
Good values
Utah State Aggies (10-seed, South)
- Record: 26-8
- T-Rank: No. 25
- Cost: $4
- Estimated Wins: 1.10
- Cost Per Win: $3.65
The Aggies are underseeded because they went 2-5 in Quadrant 1 games, including 0-3 vs. Mountain West rival San Diego State.
But here’s the thing: the NCAA’s quadrant system is BS, an example of arbitrary endpoints if ever there was one. Utah State went 9-1 in Quadrant 2 if that makes y’all feel any better.
The bottom line is that Utah State has the statistical profile of a top-25-ish team, and we’re getting the Aggies priced as if they’re a fringe top-40 team. Based on the Log5 forecast, USU has a better than one-in-four chance to make the Sweet 16, even with 2-seed Arizona likely looming in the second round.
We estimate the Aggies will win 1.10 games in the tournament. At a $4 cost, that yields a cost per win of $3.65, which makes Utah State the official Moneyball selection of this contest.
Tennessee Volunteers (4-seed, East)
- Record: 23-10
- T-Rank: No. 4
- Cost: $12
- Estimated Wins: 2.25
- Cost Per Win: $5.33
The double-digit losses – not to mention the 5-7 mark down the stretch – were always going to disqualify the Volunteers from being a 1- or 2-seed. But Tennessee has the statistical profile of just that.
In fact, Bart Torvik’s ratings put the Vols at No. 4 in the country, even ahead of Purdue, the 1-seed in the East. We estimate that Tennessee has a 24% chance of making the Final Four, which is a shade below the Boilermakers but at less than half the price.
Despite the uneven performance down the stretch, Tennessee owns two of the more impressive wins in college hoops this season: a 14-point win over Kansas in November and a nine-point triumph over Alabama in February.
We’ll roll with Rick Barnes’ Jekyll and Hyde Volunteers and hope they can tap into that sky-high upside and finally have the type of postseason run that has eluded them the past few seasons.
Kent State Golden Flashes (13-seed, Midwest)
- Record: 28-6
- T-Rank: No. 79
- Cost: $2
- Estimated Wins: 0.53
- Cost Per Win: $3.75
If you asked ChatGPT to create an entire roster of fake basketball names, there is no way the emerging AI could do better than this: VonCameron Davis, Sincere Carry, Malique Jacobs, Miryne Thomas, Giovanni Santiago, Cli’Ron Hornbeak, Delrecco Gillespie and Akeem Oduspie.
(OK, we went ahead and asked anyway. Some of the fake names produced by ChatGPT include Blaze Maverick, Jaxon Steele, Zander Phoenix, Memphis Reigns and Trey Jetson. Not a bad effort.)
But the former group of names is Kent State’s actual basketball roster.
No, Antonio Gates is not walking through that door for the Golden Flashes, and Kent State will have its hands full trying to match the Gates-led 2002 Golden Flashes’ surprising dash to the Elite Eight.
However, this edition of Kent State hoops can ball in its own right. Kent State won 22 of its last 25 games and waltzed through the MAC tournament. The Flashes’ only three non-conference losses were to NCAA tournament teams: Charleston, Houston and Gonzaga. And Kent State held it close in all three contests.
If you like two-plus-decade-old revenge angles, the team that knocked the Golden Flashes out in the regional final in 2002 was none other than Kent State’s opening round opponent this year: the Indiana Hoosiers.
Vermont Catamounts (15-seed, East)
- Record: 23-10
- T-Rank: No. 99
- Cost: $1
- Estimated Wins: 0.25
- Cost Per Win: $4.01
Marquette cannot be thrilled to have earned a 2-seed only to see the absolutely sizzling Catamounts in the first round.
Vermont is on a 15-game winning streak, and if you consider only games from mid-January until now, the Catamounts have a better statistical profile than numerous teams seeded above them.
What makes Vermont dangerous is its shooting. The Catamounts are 21st in the country in effective field-goal percentage and can score at multiple levels – from beyond the arc, just inside the arc and near the basket.
We project them for a quarter-win, allowing us to pay an ultra-cheap $4.01 per win. If the contest organizers threw in a complimentary tub of Ben & Jerry’s, this might be the best value anywhere in America, sports or otherwise.
Memphis Tigers (8-seed, East)
- Record: 26-8
- T-Rank: No. 16
- Cost: $5
- Estimated Wins: 1.01
- Cost Per Win: $4.93
If you could score points for once playing in an arena that was inspired by one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World but was later turned into the world’s largest Bass Pro Shops, Memphis would be a contest winner lying in wait.
Unfortunately, you cannot score points for that distinction, but it doesn’t matter because the Tigers are still a good value anyway. Memphis is rated high enough to have warranted consideration for a 4-seed but nonetheless dropped down to the 8-line.
Poor Values
Kansas Jayhawks (1-seed, West)
- Record: 27-7
- T-Rank: No. 12
- Cost: $25
- Estimated Wins: 1.99
- Cost Per Win: $12.59
The defending national champion Jayhawks are saddled with three major disadvantages.
The first is a product of the salary cap contest format. That is, No. 1 seeds are 32% more expensive than No. 2 seeds but are not 32% more likely to win, thus rendering 1s a poor value – at least this season.
Second, Kansas got placed in the West, which is the undisputed Region of Death. The West’s 2-seed UCLA, 3-seed Gonzaga, 4-seed Connecticut and 5-seed St. Mary’s are all rated as being slightly better than Kansas by Torvik’s numbers. While those ratings aren’t evidence that those teams are better than Kansas, it is at least fair to say there is very little separating them.
Third, Kansas is a public darling. Early data from ESPN showed that the Jayhawks were being picked to win the national title by 12% of entrants, while our Log5 forecast gives them only a 2.5% chance. From a game theory perspective, this makes Kansas arguably the worst team to pick in the entire tournament as Rock Chalk is being backed at a rate that far exceeds its actual odds.
Virginia Cavaliers (4-seed, South)
- Record: 25-7
- T-Rank: No. 32
- Cost: $12
- Estimated Wins: 1.09
- Cost Per Win: $10.98
The Cavaliers are getting rewarded for making it to the final of the ACC tournament and for having won a recent national championship. And while those things are nice, this is neither a good ball club nor one that is playing well right now.
The five teams power-rated immediately ahead of Virginia include Florida Atlantic, Boise State, Michigan State, Maryland and Kentucky, who earned 9-, 10-, 7-, 8- and 6-seeds respectively. So that gives you a sense for just how inflated UVA’s seed is here.
If that’s not enough and we focus on the last two months of action, the Cavaliers’ stock plummets even further. Virginia was power-rated as high as No. 13 in the nation on Jan. 21 and has done nothing but sink like a rock since then, even while winning games.
So the record is shiny and the reputation is sterling, but peel the onion back a bit, and there’s not a ton to like here, especially at this price.
Grand Canyon Antelopes (14-seed, West)
- Record: 24-11
- T-Rank: No. 118
- Cost: $2
- Estimated Wins: 0.14
- Cost Per Win: $14.27
Ah, our favorite named-after-a-geographical-feature-but-nowhere-near-said-geographical-feature, for-profit college!
Jokes aside, the Antelopes have become a respectable basketball program since moving up from the D2 ranks to join the WAC in 2013. And coach Bryce Drew knows a thing or two about what it takes to be a Cinderella.
The problem is that the ‘Lopes are rated worse than three 15-seeds: No. 99 Vermont, No. 109 Colgate and No. 110 Princeton. It’s always fun to see if the glass slipper fits but not when you have to pay a premium to do so.
Northwestern Wildcats (7-seed, West)
- Record: 21-11
- T-Rank: No. 35
- Cost: $8
- Estimated Wins: 0.68
- Cost Per Win: $11.74
Kudos to the Wildcats for making their second-ever trip to the NCAA tournament after finally breaking through with a long-elusive bid in 2017.
But this isn’t a great draw for the Purple Haze. First, Northwestern landed in the Region of Death. Second, Northwestern’s $8 cost makes it more expensive than a laundry list of teams that are rated above the Wildcats: West Virginia, Auburn, Utah State, Boise State and Florida Atlantic.
Northwestern strung together five straight wins in February to lock up a bid but hasn’t played well since, dropping four of its final five games including an OT loss to Penn State in the Wildcats’ Big Ten tournament opener.
Purdue Boilermakers (1-seed, East)
- Record: 29-5
- T-Rank: No. 34
- Cost: $25
- Estimated Wins: 2.46
- Cost Per Win: $10.15
Matt Painter has built the Boilermakers into one of the most reliable programs in the country, resembling in many ways the teams that his mentor Gene Keady guided to six Big Ten titles in the 1980s and ‘90s.
The problem is that Keady never made it to the Final Four, and now Painter is struggling to get over the hump too. The Boilers lost an OT thriller to Virginia in the 2019 South Region final, got upset in the first round by 13-seed North Texas in 2021, then stumbled in a Sweet 16 loss to St. Peter’s last season.
Can Painter and the Boilermakers finally break through?
The good news is that Purdue has 7-foot-4 tour-de-force Zach Edey patrolling the paint and possesses the best odds of emerging from the East at just over 25%.
The bad news is that $25 is too much of a premium to pay for a team that doesn’t do quite enough to distinguish itself from the cheaper alternatives in the region.
Full list of picks with $100 budget: Gonzaga ($13), Tennessee ($12), Connecticut ($12), San Diego State ($11), Texas A&M ($8), Arkansas ($5), Memphis ($5), Auburn ($5), West Virginia ($5), Utah State ($4), Boise State ($4), USC ($4), Drake ($3), Kent State ($2), Furman ($2), Montana State ($2), Vermont ($1), Princeton ($1) and Colgate ($1).
