THE ANATOMY OF AN UPSET | Understanding the Basics
If you’ve read the December 18 blog post,
“Will the tourney keep getting crazier?”, you know that the 2010, 2011 and 2012 dances have marked the maddest three-year stretch of the 28-year, 64-team tourney era. And they came hard on the heels of the sanest three-year period of March Madness.
We know this because we devised a gauge called the Madometer that measures each tourney’s deviation from perfect high-seed success. If the higher seed advanced in all 63 games of the tourney (perfect sanity), the cumulative seed value of the winners would be 203. If the lower seed always advanced (sheer madness), their cumulative seed value would be 868. The difference between the two—665—is the predictability range.
