A historical analysis of the 2024 NCAA Tournament field
No, I'm not sure why they seeded it like this, either
No fancy intro here, either. It’s 9:12 PM and I gotta be out the door no later than 6:30 AM for an 11-mile run. Who scheduled the NCAA Tournament in the middle of my marathon training? Rude.
Before I forget, this is the last non-paywalled post of the entire NCAA Tournament. Sign up for $18/year.
I did a form of this last year, but not really on Selection Sunday itself. This year it’s more fun and/or pertinent to make sure we get the goods in here. I have a spreadsheet, a huge one, with data from 2002-present. Most everything of interest statistically about a team can be found in it, though I always think of more crap to add. Anyway, these are the important bits. First, let’s go overall. I’ll do more region stuff tomorrow.
Everything noted below is over the last 22 NCAA Tournaments, from 2002 to present.
1 seeds
At an average AdjEM of +29.43, this is the 6th-strongest batch of 1 seeds in history.
Out of 88 1 seeds from 2002 to now, Houston has the 19th-highest Final Four odds at 42.4%. The 18 teams ahead of them averaged 3.6 wins, with 10 of them making the Final Four.
At 38.3%, UConn has the fourth-lowest odds of any KenPom #1 team since 2002 to make the Final Four.
At 20.9%, North Carolina’s Final Four odds rank 77th of 88 1 seeds since 2002. Of the 14 1 seeds to be under 25%, just two made the Final Four (2003 Texas, 2018 Kansas).
Another way of determining how it’ll all work out: Sweet Sixteen draw difficulty. At just +5.56 AdjEM better than their average Round of 32 opponent, North Carolina has the third-hardest path to the Sweet Sixteen in the last 22 years for any 1 seed. A beneficiary, however, is UConn: at +16.15, theirs is the 13th-lightest.
Perhaps a sign of the times: the best Elite Eight odds of any 1 seed are Purdue at 57.5%. That’s just the 29th-highest since 2002 and the lowest high for any 1 seed since 2014.
2 seeds
Another strong batch: at +25.52, the 7th-strongest in Tournament history.
If you like your 2 seeds to have unusually good Final Four odds, Arizona (28.5%) and Tennessee (22.7%) are both among the top-30 in 2 seed history.
If you don’t like that, perhaps avoid Marquette, who sits 14th-lowest in history at 13.1% to make the Final Four. No one below 14% has ever made it (0-for-14).
3 seeds
For the second year in a row and the third in four, the 3 seeds rate worse than the 4 seeds.
They’re still solid, though: +22.38 AdjEM, or 10th-best since 2002.
Nothing super novel here, but at +20.03, Kentucky is the lowest-rated 3 seed of the season. They would’ve been the second-highest last year.
4 seeds
A tremendous group this year with an average of +23.76 AdjEM, the fourth-best EVER and the highest since 2016-17. That season: no 13-over-4. All four made the Sweet Sixteen. Before that: 2013-14, which saw the same.
2023-24 Auburn has the fourth-highest Final Four odds of any 4 seed ever, only topped by 2013-14 Louisville (Sweet Sixteen), 2022-23 Tennessee (Sweet Sixteen), and 2004-05 Louisville (Final Four).
The lone massive negative outlier? Kansas, who sits at just 36.8% to make the Sweet Sixteen. 4 seeds below 38%: 6-for-24 in making it.
5 seeds
Finally, a just-fine group. At +20.49 AdjEM, this is the 11th-best batch of 5 seeds, so pretty average.
6 seeds
AN ACTUALLY INTRIGUING GROUP! At +17.88 AdjEM, this is the seventh-worst group of 6 seeds on record.
This is the worst group of 6 seeds, on average, since 2013…when one of four made the Sweet Sixteen. The closest comparisons are actually 2014 and 2016, which saw 6 seeds go 3-5 in the Round of 64.
At 49th overall, South Carolina is the third-lowest ranked 6 seed in KenPom-era Tournament history. The other eight sub-40 6 seeds went 3-5 in the Round of 64, and only one (2007 Vanderbilt) saw the second weekend.
7 seeds
For what would’ve been the first time since 2015, the 7 seeds nearly toppled the 6 seeds, with an average AdjEM of +17.64. It’s the 8th-best batch ever.
8 seeds
At a +16.87 AdjEM, this is the 11th-best batch of 22. Fine, nothing special. I’m more interested in the
9 seeds
Who have a +17.34 AdjEM, the fifth-highest on record. This is the largest gap the 9 seeds have had on the 8s since 2016, and along with 2023, the highest-rated group since 2014.
10 seeds
+15.85 AdjEM. Good group, nothing that special. We’ll dive in more when I’ve slept.
11 seeds
Unfortunately, here’s where the slop starts. At +13.61 AdjEM, this is the lowest-rated group of 11 seeds since 2018 and the eighth-lowest overall.
12 seeds
It gets worse. At +11.38 AdjEM, this is the fourth-worst group of 12 seeds on record and the second-worst to grace the Tournament since 2016. They’re saved by the 5 seeds being about average on their own, so we should get around one upset, but it’s a rough group.
13 seeds
Of the available options, this is the least rough relative to history at an average +8.56 AdjEM. The problem: the 4 seeds are so strong that this is the second-largest gap ever between 4 and 13 seeds, only topped by 2017, a year in which exactly one 4/13 game finished with a single-digit scoring margin.
14 seeds
Truly, truly unfortunate. Conference championship week shredded this group. At an average of +3.83 AdjEM, this is the second-worst batch of 14 seeds since 2002. It’s only ‘topped’ by 2022, a group that went 0-4 with a combined scoring margin of -96. Don’t expect much.
15 seeds
At +0.93 AdjEM, this is the worst batch of 15 seeds since 2010. Again: awful conference championship week. Awful.
16 seeds
Well, if those made you feel rosy, strap in. At -5.53 AdjEM on average, this is the worst batch of 16 seeds since 2016. The closest 1/16 game that year was an 83-67 win by UNC over FGCU in a game that UNC led by 25 with 7 minutes to play.
What does it all mean?
Now, let’s get into gap territory. And boy, it’s a bummer if you like upsets.
The gap between 1 and 16 seeds is +34.96 AdjEM on average, the third-highest since 2002 and the highest in any Tournament since 2019.
The gap between 2 and 15 seeds is +24.59 AdjEM on average, the fourth-highest since 2002 and the highest since 2021. (Which did have a 15-over-2!)
The gap between 3 and 14 seeds is +18.54 AdjEM on average, the third-highest since 2002 and only surpassed by 2022 (no upsets) and 2017 (also no upsets).
Lastly, the gap between 4 and 13 seeds is +15.2 AdjEM on average, the second-highest of all-time and only surpassed by 2017 (no upsets).
What this means is as follows: of your 16 protected seeds, you have an unusually high shot of seeing a lot of them make the Round of 32. In fact, if you were to average the efficiency margins of the 2024 13-16 seeds, they would be the worst in our 22-year database by over half a point. The only years in the same stratosphere were 2002, 2004, 2015, and 2017…which saw the 1-4 seeds go a combined 61-3 in the Round of 64. For those of us who adore the chaos this Tournament so often gives us, this doesn’t look like a good year for it.
The good news is that latter rounds may save us. At a +12.32 AdjEM advantage on 8/9 seeds, this year’s 1 vs. 8/9 gap is about average, as is the 2 vs. 7/10 gap of +8.77. Plus, we’ll have old reliables like 5 vs. 12 (+9.11 on average, around one upset expected) and 6 vs. 11 (+4.27 on average with the worst group of 6 seeds since 2013). So, hey: you’re probably not going to get anything as insane as this previous conference tournament week. Such is the price you pay for upsets before the upsets you actually want.
One intriguing thing of note: for the Round of 64 specifically, the correlation equation I ran pulls up 2008 as a decent comparison. While not the crazy Tournament(s) we’ve come to know and love, that still had some fun to it: five upsets from the 11-13 seed lines, just none from 14-16. It also saw three 10+ seeds make the Sweet Sixteen.
Alternately, for Round of 32 stuff, one that pops out big time is 2014. That saw six of the 16 1-4 seeds fail to see the second weekend. I also like 2010 and 2011 a lot here too, two Tournaments with bizarre endings that didn’t see the chaos begin to hit until the Round of 32. My point is this: be patient. This Tournament likely won’t deliver the crazy on Thursday or Friday. Stay around for the weekend and you should get a good payoff somewhere.