Powersliding in right under the deadline, 2011 results incoming

Picture this: it's 3 months ago & I'm sitting in my living room, in t-shirt & boxers, lazily dozing off in front of mid-season NCAA basketball. Go ahead, marinate on that image. Do it. DO IT. Between one of my 10-minute catnaps, I realize I should update the rankings to reflect the 2011 tournament results. About 4 catnaps later, I start digging around and come to the realization that the spreadsheet I used to tally all the info is nowhere to be found. Laptop? Nope. Other laptop? Nope. Work laptop? Nope. Also, I have too many laptops. It's ridiculous that a technology invented to be portable never leaves the same wall outlet because I'm apparently able to invent even more ways to be lazy. They could invent a pair of sunglasses that I could control with my mind & I'd buy one pair for the living room & another pair for the office. ANYWHO. No spreadsheet = no rankings because that thing took more work than is reasonably defensible for a blog nobody reads. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Fast forward to yesterday: HEY LOOK, I OWN FLASH DRIVES. AND THOSE FLASH DRIVES CONTAIN FILES. ONE OF THOSE FILES - alright, that's far too much caps lock - one of those files was the mythical spreadsheet. Score! I guess what I'm saying is: I've got the 2011 results tabulated & will be posting them in condensed form before the 2012 Final Four starts on Saturday. Well, if I don't take a nap or twelve beforehand.

One note about the scoring: I've incremented all point values by one. Why? So I could give those who make the play-in games a point for getting into the field of 68 because they apparently decided to start making some noise in the tournament(thanks a lot, Shaka). It's an imperfect answer, but it's also an easy one and I think we've established where I come down on the 'easy v. thorough' debate. If you notice a different score from teams that didn't make the tourney this year, this is why. Or maybe I'm bad at math. It could be either.

Updated scoring:
65-68 = 1
Round of 64 = 2
Round of 32 = 3
Sweet 16 = 4
Elite 8 = 5
Final 4 = 7
Championship Game = 8
NCAA Title = 10

Why in the hell am I doing this?

Great question; I don't know. What started as me trying to get a reasonably objective handle on how competent the coach is at the school I follow turned into a multi-colored spreadsheet with Excel functions & database arrays(neither of which I knew how to do 3 days ago) that I'm pretty sure didn't actually help me validate what I already knew beforehand. But hey, I ended up with a rankings system that seems reasonably accurate for someone that has no background in statistics. Oh, and I got to charge a client 8 hours worth of my time in the process, so there's that.

Let me repeat an earlier point: I'm not a statistician. I never took a statistics course in college - I was an economics major for awhile, but that was over a decade ago so let's not pretend I remember a damn thing - and I don't claim this is any sort of innovation in qualitative(or is it quantitative? It's probably neither, come to think of it) analysis. If you have a better method, bully for you. The method for calculating the ranks was inspired in part by a local radio show host who does an annual NFL franchise ranking (which is worth a read when you have some time) & adapted to better suit the NCAA Tournament.


Here's the general premise:

1) The NIT is great for bad programs that are looking for signs of progress or good programs that need a consolation prize for a disappointing season, but let's be honest: nobody at a school the level of the top 25 in this list cares about anything other than NCAA appearances. So I didn't give points for NIT/CBI/etc. appearances.

2) NCAA coaches & programs at the upper tiers are generally judged(fairly or not) on how many Final Fours & National Championships they achieve. Hell, even in 'Survivor' they make a big deal about making it to the Final Four(It's probably cross-promotion, now that I think about it. I bet Jeff Probst gets another million every time Russell screams 'FINAL FOUR, BAYBEE').  Reaching either/both of those markers got a bonus.

C) The data goes from 1985 - 2010, the time in which the tournament has been a 64-team bracket(seriously, I'm not giving halfsies for winning a play-in game to get throttled by a #1 seed. Sorry, but if you're in that game, you're not making this list anyway.)

C) 2011 isn't counted because the tournament isn't over yet.

4) I only looked at programs that made it to at least one Final Four in that time-frame. I could have delved deeper, but when you see the list you'll notice that there's pretty much no way a team could crack the top 25 without making a run to the final weekend at least once(#25 on the list made it twice). If you can come up with a team I missed, by all means post it in the comments & I'll amend the list.

6) The point system goes like this:
1 point for making the NCAAs
2 points for winning the 1st round
3 points for winning the 2nd round
4 points for winning the 3rd round
6 points for making the Final Four
7 points for making the NC
9 points for winning the NC

F) If you're thinking to yourself "how is he going to account for the 68 team bracket in 2011", good question. I have no idea. I've got a few weeks to sort that out....which I probably won't. If you have suggestions, feel free to post it in the comments. Use small words, I'm not as smart as I'd like to think I am.

Enjoy the list for what it's worth, a non-scientific, vaguely statistical, possibly pagan, & probably wrong look at what programs have been successful in the post-season. The first part of the list will be up tomorrow.

Follow me on Twitter