NCAA tournament preview

In anticipation of the brackets being released this Sunday I thought I would grace my blog readers with a little bit of analysis on what teams have the best chance of making it to Detroit. My analysis is based on the assumption that only teams with Nba level talent can make it to the Final Four. This assumption isn’t always true (ex. George Mason in 2006), but for the most part I would rather have my money on the more talented team. In order to do my analysis I pulled the 2009 and 2010 Mock Drafts off Nbadraft.net.

I used their mock drafts to create a point system to help determine what teams had the most Nba talent (quantity) as well as the most talented players (quality). The first assumption I make is that there is more value to a team if their player is projected to be drafted earlier. For example James Harden (projected pick 4th) is more valuable to Arizona St. than Jeff Pendergraph (projected pick 29th) and therefore should be “worth” more than players in Pendergraph’s range. The second assumption I make is that it is better to have a player rated highly in the 2009 Mock Draft as opposed to the 2010 Mock Draft. The reason being is that the 2010 Mock Draft has a lot of players that are raw talents that still haven’t reached their potential. I thought it would be more valuable for a team to have a more proven player compared to a raw talent. A perfect example is that Jeff Teague is projected to be the 6th pick in the 2009 Mock Draft while Ed Davis is projected to be the 8th pick in the 2010 Mock Draft. Now Ed Davis is an incredible talent and might be a better pro than Jeff Teague, but I think any reasonable basketball fan would agree that Jeff Teague is more valuable to Wake Forest this year than Ed Davis is to UNC. Anyway below is how I assigned the points:

2009 Draft:
1-10 picks– 10 points each
11-20 picks – 7 points each
21-30 picks – 5 points each
31-45 picks – 3 points each
46-60 picks – 1 point each

2010 Draft
1-10 picks – 5 points each
11-20 picks – 3.5 points each
21-30 picks – 2.5 points each
31-45 picks – 1.5 points each
46-60 picks – .5 points each

Before I get to the point system at first glance I wanted to see what teams had multiple Nba players. There are 22 teams with multiple Nba players. Below is a list of the schools with the number of players that are Nba prospects.

School # of players

• North Carolina 6 players
• UConn 5 players
• Wake Forest 3 players
• Arizona 3 players
• Ohio State 3 players
• USC 3 players
• West Virginia 3 players
• Syracuse 3 players
• LSU 3 players
• Oklahoma 2 players
• Arizona St. 2 players
• Louisville 2 players
• Duke 2 players
• Pittsburgh 2 players
• Georgetown 2 players
• Kentucky 2 players
• UCLA 2 players
• Kansas 2 players
• Texas 2 players
• Gonzaga 2 players
• Tennessee 2 players
• Marquette 2 players

The next thing I wanted to do was see the quality of these players. For example a team like LSU has 3 Nba prospects, but all 3 players (Marcus Thornton, Chris Johnson, and Tasmin Mitchell) are projected to be 2nd round picks. Compare that with Wake Forecast who has 3 players (Jeff Teague, Al-Farouq Aminu, and James Johnson) projected to be selected in this year’s first round. When I sort by the quality index you get the below list:

School - Quality index of players - # of players

• Wake Forest - 24 quailty index- 3 players
• UConn - 23 quality index - 5 players
• North Carolina -22 quality index - 6 players
• Arizona -17.5 quailty index- 3 players
• Oklahoma -17 quailty index-2 players
• Arizona St. 15 quailty index- 2 players
• Louisville - 15 -quailty index - 2 players
• Ohio State - 13 quailty index - 3 players
• Duke - 12.5 quailty index - 2 players
• Pittsburgh - 12 quailty index - 2 players
• USC - 10.5 quailty index - 3 players
• Iowa St. - 10 quailty index -1 players
• VCU - 10 quailty index -1 players
• Georgetown - 8.5 quailty index - 2
• Kentucky -8 quailty index - 2 players
• UCLA - 7.5 quailty index - 2 players
• Davidson - 7 quailty index - 1 players
• Kansas - 6.5 quailty index - 2 players
• Texas -6.5 quailty index - 2 players
• West Virginia - 6 quailty index - 3 players
• Gonzaga - 5.5 quailty index - 2 players
• Tennessee -5.5 quailty index - 2 players

I am going to be using the information above in picking my Final Four and unfortunately the above picture isn’t pretty for any non-UNC fans out there. It looks like according to that data UNC is easily going to make it to the Final Four and probably has the best chance of anybody at cutting down the nets in Detroit. Of course the analysis above also favors a team like Wake Forest, who is looking to me more and more like the only non-#1 seeded teamthat could win the title.

In fact my pre-selection Sunday Final Four teams are Wake Forest, Uconn, UNC, and Oklahoma.