The contenders

These stats are through games of Saturday, 2/20/2010

Here’s the criteria to reach the final four:

1. Defensive efficiency ranking of 25 or better

2. Offensive efficiency ranking of 50 or better

3. RPI ranking of 27 or better

Team	O Efficiency	D Efficiency	RPI	% Final Four	% Champ
Kansas	2	3	1	100.0	83.3
Duke	1	13	3	33.3	16.7
Syracuse	14	9	2	12.5	0.0
Purdue	27	4	8	8.3	0.0
Wisconsin	15	16	20	4.2	0.0
BYU	8	19	18	0.0	0.0
Kentucky	12	20	4	0.0	0.0
Kansas State	17	24	6	0.0	0.0

The basic concept here is that though a team like Wisconsin has both the offensive and defensive efficiencies to make it to the final four, when you combine the two the chances are much less. In other words, one of the last 24 teams have had an offensive efficiency of 15 or worse and a defensive efficiency of 16 or worse.

This refining also removes 3 teams from our final four contenders – Brigham Young, Kentucky and Kansas State, that our previous formula would have included.

At this point the Final Four consists of Kansas, Duke, Syracuse and Purdue. Later this week, we’ll use Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology to put teams into regions and see if that has any effect on which teams make it to the Final Four (i.e. if Kansas and Syracuse end up in the same region only one team can advance).

The percentages don’t always add up to 100% because in this formula one team’s chances are independent of another teams chances.