[Locke]

Some of the stats are kind of self-explanatory.

For example, "#8 seeds often upset higher ranked teams. In the four match-ups against #2 teams, #8 teams won twice. They have also beaten #4 and #5 seeds more often than they lost to them."

For an 8 to play a 2 (or 4, or 5) they'd have to have already beaten a 1. That's a pretty good 8. The typical 8 will have already lost to a 9 or 1.

Personally, I love Ken Pomeroy's rankings / predictive model (kenpom.com). It breaks games down into possessions and then builds a statistical model of each team from that. The predictions seem pretty accurate by the time February rolls around.

Of course, the biggest caveat of this kind of model is that it doesn't take into account extraordinary events. For example, a player gets injured or comes back from a suspension.

[zackattack]

Does Pomeroy's beat Vegas odds? Has any model beaten vegas odds?