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Sports > Columnists > Kathleen Nelson > Story
NCAA panel is avoiding bracket bias, analysis says
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/17/2007
Kathleen Nelson
Sports Columnist Kathleen Nelson
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Joe Martinich was as stunned as most viewers around here a year ago, when he listened to Jim Nantz and Billy Packer accuse the NCAA Tournament selection committee of a bias favoring mid-major teams.

The announcers "went overboard," Martinich said. "And, as we know, they turned out to be wrong," because of the success of Bradley, Wichita State and George Mason.

The mid-majors' success caused Martinich to ponder all the injustices the committee is alleged to have perpetrated over the years. A professor of operations management at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Martinich possesses the statistical tools and skills to determine whether the committee had developed a long-term conference bias.

First, he defined the majors as the six BCS conferences and the defunct Big 8, all others as non-major conferences. Then, he chose to focus on teams eligible for an at-large berth with an RPI between 21 and 79, the range associated with bubble teams.
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Martinich used the "gory details" from Jerry Palm's College RPI data base, the same stats that the selection committee uses to pick the tournament field. He focused on six independent variables: RPI rank; conference RPI rank; net conference wins, determined by subtracting losses to conference teams from victories over conference teams; total wins against RPI top 25 teams, net wins against RPI 26-50 teams; and net wins against RPI 51-100 teams.



The results of Martinich's statistical analysis matched the committee's selections about 90 percent of the time. On average, two teams that fit the statistical model were not selected by the committee, and two teams that the committee selected did not fit the statistical model. Of the 31 discrepancies since 1994, 22 were within five places of the selection cutoff point.

"When they say that RPI is just one tool, they mean it," Martinich said. "The conference games and conference tournaments matter a lot." The selection committee is quoted ad nauseam to that effect each year. Martinich's statistics back their assertions.

Since the committee's work matches his statistical analysis so closely, Martinich concluded that the committee appears to base its selection on defensible, objective criteria and is relatively consistent, which removes the threat of a consistent bias toward major or non-major conferences.

But among the anomalies can be found vindication for Missouri State fans. The Bears are the victims of the committees' two worst injustices, in 2000 and this year. Martinich's analysis listed the Bears 12 spots above the cutoff both years, yet the committee passed them over.

Another anomaly appeared in 2005, when the NCAA changed the RPI formula to give more weight to a road loss and less to a home win. From 1994 to 2004, the committee left out 10 teams from major conferences, 13 from non-majors that fit the statistical model. Since 2005, though, the committee has left out just one team from a major conference, seven from non-majors.

So, if anything, the opposite of Packer's assertion has been true. In technical terms, Martinich said, "Something's fishy. It almost looks like they're basing their decisions on the old RPI formula, even though they don't. This is something I want to look at."

Though he joked that he hoped his research would "predict future outcomes so I could make a million and retire early," Martinich said the NCAA could use it as a way to monitor selection and seeding. The committee could use the research to defend their selections, since the majority of decisions that bracketologists, fans and coaches hail as injustices in reality are consistent.

His study "is a lot like instant replay," Martinich said. "When the committee gets lambasted for being inconsistent, they can point to the data and say, 'No. This is consistent. Look at our history.'"
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