March Madness -- Day 1

I have become addicted to Ken Pomeroy's Ratings (http://kenpom.com/rate.php).

Using his percentages for likelihood of winning, we can compute just how likely (or unlikely) today's string of great games was. Of the 65536 possible combinations from today's 16 games, the outcomes we ended up with were the 690th most probable (0.014%). The most probable was 0.329%. The two biggest upsets based on his ratings were Ohio over Georgetown (naturally) and Wake Forest over Texas (really!).

If we look at Friday's games, if we end up again with the 690th most probable scenario, we would get:

- Pittsburgh over Oakland (yay!)

- Oklahoma St. over Georgia Tech

- Michigan St. over New Mexico St.

- Xavier over Minnesota

- Cornell over Temple (whoa!)

- Florida St. over Gonzaga

- Utah St. over Texas A&M

- Cal over Louisville

- Missouri over Clemson

- Purdue over Siena

- West Virgina over Morgan St.

- Maryland over Houston

- Syracuse over Vermont

- Ohio St. over UCSB

- Wofford over Wisconsin (whoa! whoa!)

- Duke over APB

And the probabilities for Saturday:

- Kansas over Northern Iowa (84%)

- Kentucky over Wake Forest (78%)

- Tennessee over Ohio (75%)

- Butler over Murray St. (68%)

- Baylor over Old Dominion (66%)

- Villanova over St. Mary's (60%)

- Washington over New Mexico (59%)

- Kansas St. over BYU (50%)