CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The NCAA basketball tournament is set to begin next week, with 136 men’s and women’s teams vying for a chance to compete and advance. Millions of people not only watch the games, but also fill out brackets hoping to win bracket challenges or bragging rights for picking upsets. Sheldon H. Jacobson, a professor in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has been tackling the issue of picking winning brackets for more than a decade. He developed the web site Bracketodds as a resource for experts and novices looking to gain an edge in assembling their brackets. He discussed the tournament and its patterns with News Bureau biomedical sciences editor Liz Ahlberg Touchstone.
What kinds of patterns have you seen emerge in the March Madness tournament bracket when analyzing which seeds reach which rounds?
Nearly 20 years ago, I became intrigued by how predictable some games were, while others were true toss-ups, based purely on what seed the teams were assigned by the selection committee. I posed this question to my student at that time, Douglas King, and we explored when seeds are informative and when they are not. This launched our research on March Madness, which eventually led to the creation of the Bracketodds website.
We have found that two or more No. 10, 11 or 12 seeds routinely win in the Round of 64. The Sweet Sixteen nearly always — 35 of the past 40 tournaments — has at least one team seeded No. 11 or higher. It is most common to have just one or two No. 1 seeds that reach the Final Four, even though it seems unimaginable that any of the No. 1 seeds could lose before the Final Four. In fact, having four No. 1 seeds in the Final Four is less likely than having zero No. 1 seeds.
Are upsets really as unpredictable as they seem?
Pinpointing which particular team will pull an upset is difficult. What is more predictable is the presence of upsets in a bracket. We know that at least one of the No. 11 or No. 12 seeds will win a game in the Round of 64. We just do not know which one it will be. Given that games are played on a court, not on a computer, this is why upsets occur.
What advice can you give people putting together their brackets this tournament?
Be light on upsets in the Round of 64. Though a few will likely occur, these teams rarely advance beyond the Sweet Sixteen — except perhaps No. 11 seeds, which survive better than all other double-digit seeds. Also, build your brackets from the inside out. In fact, the optimal way is to start with the Final Four or Elite Eight teams and build around them.
What does the Bracketodds website provide? Does it use artificial intelligence?
The site houses data, lots of data, about how seeds have performed over the past 40 tournaments. For example, we provide information on how many games each seed is expected to win in the tournament based on their past performance. One would expect that the better the seed, the higher the number of expected wins. This is not completely the case. No. 11 seeds are expected to win more games than No. 9 and No. 10 seeds, for example.
Given that there are over 9 quintillion possible brackets to choose from — that is a nine followed by 18 zeros — the sheer number of combinations is overwhelming. So we created an AI-generated bracket simulator that creates brackets based on historical data trends. Though predicting the perfect bracket is highly improbable, with a bit of data-driven AI smarts, the brackets our simulator generates are representative of what the past 40 tournaments have produced.
Given that Illinois is ranked in the top 10 teams in the country, where do you see them landing in the tournament?
As a top seed, the Ilini have a good path to the Sweet Sixteen. After that, it depends on who they play. Their offensive analytics are very strong. They are one of the most talented offensive teams in the nation and perhaps even for several years. Their Achilles’ heel may be their defense. Any team that slows their offense could spell the Illini’s exit path from the tournament. If their offense stays in high gear, watch out!
