Nothing But Numbers

Data includes all division 1 games through Friday, 3/17/23.

My model estimates team strength by using Pythagorean expectation, adjusting for strength of schedule using the log5 method. The score, location, opponent, and date of the games are all incorporated into the model. It was the only model out of 57 publicly available models to correctly predict 8th seeded Loyola-Chicago’s upset of 1st seeded Illinois and 14th seeded Abilene Christian’s upset of 3rd seeded Texas in the 2021 NCAA Tournament.

_{Notes: Starting the week of January 1st, a change to the model was implemented that fixed an error in the way that home court advantage was calculated. Starting the week of January 23rd, a change to the model was implemented that improved the way that strength of schedule was calculated. Starting the week of February 13th, a change was implemented that improved the way that blowout wins were incorporated into the model. Starting the week of February 27th, a change was implemented that weighted recent games more heavily.}