March 4, 2014

There weren't many meaningful matchups last night. UNC was the only ranked team in action, and barely won at home over Notre Dame, in what could have been a nasty blemish on their resume.

As a statistician, I hate outliers. They always muck up nice data sets, and skew results into significance that may not otherwise be. As applied to Bracketology, outliers are that game where a mediocre school beat a powerhouse on a down night, or that 2-seed met the #150 RPI team on the night they went 12-14 from behind the arc. Lots of bizarre things can happen over the course of a season, so in an attempt to sift through those outliers, I want to ignore each team's best win and worst loss. Below is a list of each of the 48 At Large teams' 2nd best win and 2nd worst loss. This data isn't currently factored into my projections, but I will likely incorporate it by Selection Sunday for my final predictions.

***table to be added as soon as I get home to Chrome...for a teaser, the teams that stuck out the most to me were Texas (2nd best win #11 Iowa St, 2nd worst loss #37 Kansas St) and Gonzaga (2nd best win #58 Arkansas, 2nd worst loss #154 San Diego).

1's: Arizona, Wichita State, Florida, Villanova
2's: Syracuse, Wisconsin, Kansas, Creighton
3's: San Diego State, Virginia, Saint Louis, Duke
4's: Cincinnati, New Mexico, Iowa State, Massachusetts
5's: Louisville, Michigan, Connecticut, North Carolina
6's: VCU, UCLA, Michigan State, Gonzaga
7's: SMU, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Ohio State
8's: Memphis, Texas, George Washington, Saint Joseph's
9's: Arizona State, Oregon, Colorado, Pittsburgh
10's: Iowa, BYU, Kansas State, Oklahoma State
11's: Dayton, Missouri, Arkansas, Southern Miss
12's: Xavier, Stanford, Baylor, Providence, Toledo, Green Bay
13's: North Dakota State, Iona, Belmont, Stephen F. Austin
14's: Harvard, North Carolina Central, Georgia State, Delaware
15's: Boston University, New Mexico State, Mercer, Vermont
16's: UC Santa Barbara, Davidson, Robert Morris, Weber State, Radford, Alabama State

FFO: Saint Mary's, Boise State, California, Middle Tennessee
NFO: Saint John's, Tennessee, Minnesota, Nebraska