Arizona Basketball: Wildcats Bracketology and Odds

TeamRankings.com analyzed Arizona Basketball and reported tournament winning odds and projected seeds for the team.

A lot of experts are predicting where the Arizona Wildcats will land as a seed in the Pac-12 tournament, whether they will win the Pac-12 tournament, what seed they will fall in the NCAA tournament and if they will win the NCAA Championship. Rarely can you find a site that updates all probabilities regularly like TeamRankings.com. Sports Analytics at its finest.

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Last week wasn’t a great week for the Wildcats losing by three to Colorado and then by six to Utah. The Cats also dropped to No. 18 in the AP Top 25 poll, no surprise. Some fans don’t pay much attention to the AP rankings, especially this season when it seems any team can win at any time, both in the Pac-12 and in the Nation.

Arizona’s record stands at 22-7 (12-6 Pac-12), No. 17 Duke’s is 21-8, No. 13 Utah’s is 23-7, No. 6 Oklahoma’s is 22-6 and the No. 1 team, Kansas, sits at 26-4. Four wins separate the No. 18 and the No.1 and No. 6 teams. Of course strength of schedule is also taken into consideration for the AP Top 25 rankings.

It has been plain crazy with numerous upsets every week.

Texas upset Oklahoma
Seaton hall upset Xavier
Pitt upset Duke
Purdue upset Maryland
Vanderbilt upset Kentucky
At least Utah was ranked!
— ZonaZealotsFS (@ZonaZealots) February 28, 2016

The Championship trophy could end up going to any school when you analyze each school based purely on their record alone. You may as well spin a roulette wheel.

Let’s consider the TeamRankings.com’s analytical bracketology submission for the Arizona Wildcats recalculated after their loss to Utah:

The odds that the Wildcats make the NCAA tournament are now down to 97%, a decrease of 1% since Saturday.
They currently rank Arizona as the No. 14 team in the country, and the No. 1 team in the Pac-12.
Next game: Thu, Mar 3 vs. #33 California. Their power ratings give the Wildcats a 77% chance to win.
The odds for Arizona to earn the No. 1 seed in the Pac-12 tournament are down 13% since Saturday, projected to get the No. 3 seed.
The chance of Arizona winning the Pac-12 tournament has decreased by 1% since yesterday, odds are 34 percent.
Projected Seed NCAA Tournament (if Selected) – probably No. 5
Projection for Remaining Pac-12 regular season games: 2 wins against Cal and Stanford
Projected final regular season record 24-7
At-Large NCAA Tournament bid: 66.7 percent
Automatic NCAA Tournament bid: 33 percent
Arizona makes it to 32: 71.1 percent
Arizona makes it to the Sweet 16: 40.2 percent
Arizona makes it to the Elite Eight: 20.7 percent
Arizona makes it to the final four: 10.4 percent
Arizona makes it to the Finals: 5 Percent
Arizona wins the Championship: 2.3 percent

TeamRankings has Arizona as the No. 1 team in the Pac-12, even though they are now in fourth place. They also rank Arizona as the No. 14 team in the nation; four slots higher than the Associated Press ranks the Wildcats.

Feb 27, 2016; Salt Lake City, UT, USA; Utah Utes forward Jakob Poeltl (42) defends against Arizona Wildcats center Chance Comanche (21) during the second half at Jon M. Huntsman Center. Utah won 70-64. Mandatory Credit: Russ Isabella-USA TODAY Sports /

Observe Arizona’s seed probability to be a five seed according to TeamRankings. It’s a superstition in the NCAA tournament that twelve seeds are the most likely to upset the five seeds. The Wildcats season has not been the most predictable so far, so we would rather see Arizona as a six or a four seed; why suffer more with the five-seed stigma?

Note that in 2015, all the five seeds were NOT upset by 12 seeds; all four teams won including Utah.

The University of Illinois projects the Wildcats to land a six seed along with Cal. They are also predicting Utah will earn a two seed, and Oregon will land the coveted one seed.

Arizona’s odds of winning based on the seed are not too much different between a three and six seed; it’s only a one percent difference. It seems that would dictate that Arizona basically has the same chance of winning the NCAA Championship no matter what the seed.

NCAA Tournament Win Odds By Seed

Seed	Probability	Win Odds
1	0.2%	–
2	1.7%	3.4%
3	6.3%	3.2%
4	14.7%	2.8%
5	21.1%	2.5%
6	19.7%	2.2%
7	14.3%	2.0%
8	8.9%	1.9%
9	5.1%	1.5%
10	2.8%	1.7%
11	1.5%	1.7%
12	0.7%	1.0%

OVERALL		2.3%

TeamRankings gives Arizona a little over a one in five chance to make it to the Elite Eight, not bad considering the current downward spiral. We wouldn’t have said that a week ago; most fans confidence in the team was trending up before their trip to the Mountains.