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View Full Version : Nate Silver on Virginia Commonwealth



throatybeard
03-30-2011, 01:48 PM
Nate has analyzed VCU as being the biggest underdog, statistically, ever to reach the Final Four. LSU 1986 and Mason 2006 aren't close; only Penn 1979 is.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/in-tournament-of-upsets-v-c-u-has-overcome-longest-odds/

uh_no
03-30-2011, 01:57 PM
Nate has analyzed VCU as being the biggest underdog, statistically, ever to reach the Final Four. LSU 1986 and Mason 2006 aren't close; only Penn 1979 is.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/in-tournament-of-upsets-v-c-u-has-overcome-longest-odds/

most of that is due to their having to play the extra game. My guess is once they had won their opening round game, the odds of them reaching the FF was similar to that of GM and LSU

Wander
03-30-2011, 01:58 PM
Nice link, and what makes it even more impressive is their margin of victory - FSU being the only game they didn't win by double digits.

throatybeard
03-30-2011, 03:13 PM
most of that is due to their having to play the extra game. My guess is once they had won their opening round game, the odds of them reaching the FF was similar to that of GM and LSU

He mentioned the extra game, and said what their odds were from the Round of 64 on excluding the extra game, and it was still way longer than Mason and LSU.

uh_no
03-30-2011, 03:56 PM
He mentioned the extra game, and said what their odds were from the Round of 64 on excluding the extra game, and it was still way longer than Mason and LSU.

I stand corrected :)

calltheobvious
03-30-2011, 04:25 PM
most of that is due to their having to play the extra game. My guess is once they had won their opening round game, the odds of them reaching the FF was similar to that of GM and LSU

That's obviously a chunk of it, but even after discounting for the extra game, VCU's odds were still 5+ times longer than LSU's or GMU's. After VCU beat USC in its first game, Silver's model still had the Rams at 335:1 to reach the Final Four. His bean counting put LSU's FF odds in 1986 at 69:1, and 2006 GMU's FF odds at 70:1.