Legal Commentary

NCAA 2008 Basketball Semifinal Championship Game Predictions

By Andis Kaulins

Sagarin's ratings have North Carolina 1st, Kansas 2nd, Memphis 3rd and UCLA 4th.
Sagarin's predictor (pure points) would have Kansas 1st, North Carolina 2nd, UCLA 3rd and Memphis 4th.
Massey Ratings have Memphis 1st, North Carolina 2nd, UCLA 3rd and Kansas 4th.
The AP poll has North Carolina 1st, Memphis 2nd, UCLA 3rd and Kansas 4th.
The USA Today/ESPN poll has North Carolina 1st, UCLA 2nd, Memphis 3rd and Kansas 4th.
The RPI rankings had Tennessee 1st, North Carolina 2nd, Memphis 3rd, UCLA 4th and Kansas 5th.
Yahoo! User Rankings have Kansas 1st, North Carolina 2nd, UCLA 3rd and Memphis 4th.

Based on the statistics at Rivals.com via Yahoo Sports, our predictions for the semifinal NCAA basketball championship games are based on the following calculations using our AK Basketball Prediction System AKBPSYS (beta)

This season's average points-for to points-against for each team:

Kansas - scored 80.6 points per game and allowed 61.2 points per game = +19.5 ppg advantage (ppga)
Memphis - scored 80.3 points per game and allowed 61.6 points per game = +18.7 ppg adv.
North Carolina - scored 89.2 points per game and allowed 72.2 points per game = +17.0 ppg adv.
UCLA - scored 73.8 points per game and allowed 58.5 points per game = + 15.3 ppg adv.

Won-Loss adjustment:

Deduct 1 point per loss from the points-per-game advantage component (ppga):

Memphis 37-1 deduct 1 point from 18.7 = 17.7
North Carolina 36-2 deduct 2 points from 17.0 = 15.0
Kansas 35-3 deduct 3 points from 19.5 = 16.5
UCLA 35-3 deduct 3 points from 15.3 = 12.3

Defensive points per game allowed adjustment:

above 60 points per game allowed deduct 1 point
above 65 points per game allowed deduct 2 points
above 70 points per game allowed deduct 3 points
above 75 points per game allowed deduct 4 points
above 80 points per game allowed deduct 5 points

UCLA allowed 58.5 ppg - deduct 0 points from 12.3 = 12.3
Kansas allowed 61.2 ppg - deduct 1 point from 16.5 = 15.5
Memphis allowed 61.6 ppg - deduct 1 point from 17.7 = 16.7
North Carolina allowed 72.2 - ppg deduct 3 points from 15.0 = 12.0

Schedule difficulty adjustment
Schedule difficulty according to Massey Ratings:

Deduct .1 point (one-tenth of a point) for each place below 1st
UCLA 6th - deduct .6 from 12.3 = 11.7
North Carolina 8th - deduct .8 from 12.0 = 11.2
Kansas 18th - deduct 1.8 from 15.5 = 13.7
Memphis 35th - deduct 3.5 from 16.7 = 13.2

Our final ranking going into the semifinals:

1. Kansas 13.7
2. Memphis 13.2
3. UCLA 11.7
4. North Carolina 11.2

We thus make

Memphis 1.5 point favorites over UCLA
and
Kansas 2.5 point favorites over North Carolina.

How useful is that for ONE game? Not very useful. It is less than one possession since a 2 or a 3-point basket can overturn the outcome of the game.

The odds at Yahoo sports currently show that:

Memphis is favored by 2 over UCLA
and
North Carolina is favored by 3 over Kansas.

The average number of points in a game played by Memphis was 141.9
The average number of points in a game played by UCLA was 132.3
The average number of points in a game played by North Carolina was 161.4
The average number of points in a game played by Kansas was 141.8

We use the average of both competing teams together to obtain the number of points that we think will be scored in a game and then predict our score:
for Memphis and UCLA 141.9 plus 132.3 = 274.2 divided by 2 = 137.1
for North Carolina and Kansas 161.4 plus 141.8 = 303.2 divided by 2 = 151.6

We thus call the semifinal games:

Memphis 69 UCLA 68 i.e. 137 total points
Kansas 77 North Carolina 75 i.e. 152 total points

Full post as published by LawPundit on April 04, 2008 (boomark / email).