Boys Basketball Tournament Review

The WIAA Boys Basketball Tournament came to a close on Saturday by naming state champions in each of the WIAA's five divisions. This post serves as a before-and-after, comparing what the models predicted before the tournament to what actually transpired on the hardwood.

First up, the state championship teams. The chart below shows the pre-tournament probability that each of the teams would win the state title. In many cases, a low probability reflects how difficult a team's tournament run was expected to be rather than expectations of poor performance. Cochrane-Fountain City earns the title of the least expected champion with only a 7.9% chance of winning.

Diving deeper, the chart below shows the least likely tournament runs. To qualify for this list, a team needed to win at least a regional championship and have one of the two least likely tournament runs in their division. Similar to the above list, these probabilities reflect the pre-tournament rating of the team, the expected difficulty of their path, and the length of their tournament run. The least likely tournament run goes to Sectional Runner-Up, Cedar Grove-Belgium, which had only a 0.02% of becoming the sectional runner-up (or better) before the tournament began.

Another view of similar data is shown below. This chart shows the 10 largest rating increases for teams during the tournament. The rating change measures similar results as the prior chart (unexpected wins) but also includes margin of victory as a main driver of the model's ratings. Wausau East received the largest rating increase.

No review of tournament surprises would be complete without looking at the individual games. The following exhibit shows the least likely upsets that occurred during the tournament. Sheboygan South takes the top spot here after their defeat of Hartford which had a pre-game probability of 3.3%.

And finally, it is time to review how the model performed during the tournament. The following exhibit only uses games between teams that were seeded in the same group (through sectional finals for division 1 and through sectional semifinals for divisions 2-5). The higher seed in these matchups only won 78.2% of the time. The model predicted the winner correctly in 82.0% of games which was better than the seedings and was close to the model's own expectations (82.1%). The main driver of the model's superior performance was the picking of upsets. In the 77 games where the model disagreed with the seedings, the model was correct 47 times.

Girls Basketball Tournament Review

The WIAA Girls Basketball Tournament came to a close on Saturday by naming state champions in each of the WIAA's five divisions. This post serves as a before-and-after, comparing what the models predicted before the tournament to what actually transpired on the hardwood.

First up, the state championship teams. The chart below shows the pre-tournament probability that each of the teams would win the state title. In many cases, a low probability reflects how difficult a team's tournament run was expected to be rather than expectations of poor performance. Cuba City earns the title of the least expected champion with only a 1.0% chance of winning.

Diving deeper, the chart below shows the least likely tournament runs. To qualify for this list, a team needed to win at least a regional championship and have one of the two least likely tournament runs in their division. Similar to the above list, these probabilities reflect the pre-tournament rating of the team, the expected difficulty of their path, and the length of their tournament run. As expected, there are several state champions on this list. However, the least likely tournament run goes to Sectional Runner-Up, Eau Claire Immanuel Lutheran, which had only a 0.5% of becoming the sectional runner-up (or better) before the tournament began.

Another view of similar data is shown below. This chart shows the 10 largest rating increases for teams during the tournament. The rating measures similar results as the prior chart (unexpected wins) but also includes margin of victory as a main driver of the model's ratings. Unsurprisingly, Cuba City received the largest rating increase.

No review of tournament surprises would be complete without looking at the individual games. The following exhibit shows the least likely upsets that occurred during the tournament. Kettle Moraine takes the top spot here after their defeat of Oregon which had a pre-game probability of 9.1%.

And finally, it is time to review how the model performed during the tournament. The following exhibit only uses games between teams that were seeded in the same group (through sectional finals for division 1 and through sectional semifinals for divisions 2-5). The higher seed in these matchups only won 81.52% of the time. The model predicted the winner correctly in 86.02% of games which was not only better than the seedings but was also better than the model's own expectations (85.13%). The main driver of the model's performance was the picking of upsets. In the 47 games where the model disagreed with the seedings, the model was correct 33 times.

WIAA Girls Basketball State Tournament

The WIAA State Tournament has arrived. Games will be played Thursday (D3, D4), Friday (D1, D2, D5), and Saturday this week. Make sure to check out the season recaps, team comparisons, and game projections for the remaining games:

• Division 1
• Division 2
• Division 3
• Division 4
• Division 5

Boys Soccer Playoff Brackets Released

The brackets for the WIAA boys soccer state tournament have been released. In most cases, sectional groups of approximately 16 teams are seeded together. Sectional #1 in each division splits the seeding process into two groups. Each grouping is seeded by the coaches in that grouping. 

From the WIAA tournament procedures:

Coaches should consider these factors when determining their seeds (factors are not listed in any order of preference):

(a) Coaches comments.
(b) Head-to-head competition against teams in their regional grouping.
(c) Comparative scores against like opponents.
(d) Conference standings.
(e) Relative strength of schedule.
(f) Overall win-loss record.
(g) Other special factors (e.g., injury of a key player, etc.).

In general, the seedings were in line with the weekly ratings produced here. Below are the teams that received a seed 4+ positions different from what this website's ratings would have assigned:

 

Notes and takeaways:

• The coaches significantly underseeded teams more often than they significantly overseeded teams.
• Most of the differences occur in the middle seeds where it can be more difficult to separate teams. All but two of these differences involved a team moving between a bottom half seed (9+) and a top half seed (1-8).
• Many of the rating differences are very close despite the large seeding diffrence. For example, Division 3 - Sectional 3:
• #11 Seed - West Salem (948)
• #12 Seed - Whitewater (943)
• #13 Seed - Lake Mills (942)
• #14 Seed - Monroe (964)
• #15 Seed - Jefferson (940)
• #16 Seed - Cambridge/Deerfield (945)
• #17 Seed - Dodgeville/Mineral Point (966)
• The rating system does weight recent results more heavily; whereas, the coaches may place more value on the overall season performance. Additionally, the rating system does not know which comments or special factors are considered during the meeting.

Fall Sports Rankings Updated

The Wisconson fall sports rankings have been updated with a new format (again). The link to a pdf file with the current rankings can also be found on the sidebar.

The fall rankings include:

• Football
• Girls Volleyball
• Boys Volleyball
• Boys Soccer

This new document includes some interesting new elements:

• Largest Weekly Rating Changes
• Surprise Results (Upsets)
• Strength of Schedule
• Top Offense and Defenses