March Madness in a day!
I was catching up with an ex-colleague who brought up that they were using Hyperspeed to research for their March Madness bracket. I immediately thought to myself, “Wow. I forgot about March Madness!” and “How far can I get in a day of research?”. Let’s give it a try! I will focus on trying to understand two key pieces for the event; (1) can I identify the expected upsets and (2) can I gain some confidence on picking a winner?
Install Hyperspeed here www.hyperspeed.app
First Round Potential Upsets
We started our journey researching several articles and documents that could help with thinking about the potential first round upsets since this sets the stage for your bracket. Take a look at a brief snippet from the experience below.
Using one of my favorite Chrome browser features, Tab Grouping, I created two groups; Men’s NCAA and Women’s NCAA. I then nested articles and documents within those two groups.
What were the outcomes?
For the Men’s NCAA tournament, I reached a few interesting findings:
- The West, due to the strength of the top contenders does not offer many upset opportunities.
- The Midwest, has a high likelihood for upsets from №10 Rutgers
- The South, has a high likelihood for upset from poorly seeded №10 Wisconsin
- №9 Missouri and №10 VCU both have the chance of pulling off an upset in their respective matches.
- The №12 seed upset is the most likely upset in the opening round over the last 50 years (at 36% chance)
For the Women’s NCAA tournament, I reached the following conclusions:
- №12 seed Stephen F. Austin has a good chance of a first round upset
- №11 Florida Gulf Coast has a good chance of an upset in the first round, especially since they make the most 3-pointers out of any team in the tournament
- №14 Middle Tennessee is riding momentum from a conference tournament victory and has a good chance of pulling off an upset against №3 Tennessee
- Keep and eye on №11 and №12 seeds for highest likelihood of upsets
Who’s winning the big dance?
Our rapid research led us to the following conclusions:
Men’s NCAA Winner: Gonzaga
Women’s NCAA Winner: UConn
Conclusions
This was a rapid research study to see if we could quickly gain some intuition around this years NCAA tournaments. Overall, within 30 minutes I felt like I could start to put together an informed bracket.
