March Madness: a Statistical Analysis of Various Aspects of the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament

Abstract

This project examines various aspects of the NCAA March Madness men’s basketball tournament. Each year 64 of the best division I men’s basketball teams are selected to play in the tournament. The teams are divided into four regions and seeded from 1 to 16 with the 1 seed considered the best team in the region. The 16 teams in each region play a single elimination tournament resulting in the final four teams, who then play a single elimination tournament resulting in the national champion. Data were collected from Sport Reference (https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/postseason/index.html). Variables include year, round, region, team names, scores, and seeds for each game in each tournament from 1985 to 2018. Aspects of the tournament that were analyzed include team dominance, wins vs. seeds, and upsets.