NCAAB
Water Cooler Talk: 80 Quick Facts About This Year’s NCAA Tournament
Looking to have a conversation with your co-workers about the NCAA Tournament, but know nothing about college basketball? This should help.

No one wants to be the person at work who knows nothing about college basketball during March Madness.

It's OK if you're not really into the sport -- plenty of people aren't. But you should have a general idea of who's playing who, which players are best, and which teams are expected to make big runs in this year's big dance.

So to help, Pythagorean Rating.

2. This year's top 10 within the rating includes Kentucky, Arizona, Wisconsin, Virginia, Villanova, Gonzaga, Duke, Utah, Oklahoma and Notre Dame.

3. The only team in that top 10 that's not a 1, 2 or 3 seed in this year's tournament is Utah.

4. Utah got a 5 seed in the big dance (another name for the tournament) after losing four of their final seven games, dropping two games to Oregon, one to Arizona, and an ugly one to Washington.

5. However, per our nERD metric -- which tells us how many points we should expect a team to win by against an average opponent on a neutral court -- Utah is the eighth-best squad in the country with a top-15 offense and defense.

6. The 1 seed in Utah's region is Duke, a team that ranks fifth in our power rankings.

7. Duke can play offense just as well as anyone, led by freshman Jahlil Okafor, who's arguably the best college basketball player in the country.

8. The Blue Devils (that's Duke) struggle a little on defense though, ranking 78th in the country according to our numbers.

9. Speaking of struggling defenses, the worst five defensive teams in this year's tournament include Lafayette, Eastern Washington, Belmont, Texas Southern and Indiana.

10. Indiana probably doesn't deserve to be in the tournament, and they've lost 9 of their last 14 games.

11. Don't pick Indiana to go far in this year's dance.

12. Indiana's Round of 64 opponent is Wichita State, a 7 seed, who's underseeded according to our metrics.

13. Two years ago, Wichita State made it to the Final Four as a 9 seed.

14. According to our numbers, the team in 2013 would lose to this year's team by 0.57 points on a neutral court.

15. Don't sleep on the Wichita State Shockers.

16. Don't sleep on a 12/5 upset, either, as it's happened six times over the last two tournaments alone.

17. If one happens, our numbers like This is what a seven-and-a-half foot tall human being playing high school basketball looks like.

62. According to nERD, 16 teams are worse than UC Irvine in this year's tournament.

63. The team ranking last is Hampton, who won their play-in-game last night.

64. Hampton has the 263rd best offense in the country, which places them in the 17th percentile.

65. The second-worst offense in this year's dance is Manhattan, who rank in the 41st percentile and lost to Hampton last night.

66. The third-worst offense is San Diego State, an 8 seed who got an at-large bid out of the Mountain West.

67. San Diego State got an 8 seed because of their defense, which was sixth-best in the country with an 83.21 Adjusted Defensive Rating.

68. If they beat St. John's in the Round of 64, San Diego State will more than likely face Duke, who, as mentioned earlier, can ball offensively but can't play D.

69. The Aztecs made it to the Sweet 16 last year.

70. I may have just talked myself into an upset.

71. We all love upsets, and according to our own Brandon Gdula, teams we should watch for in the Round of 64 are Ohio State (10 seed), Valparaiso (13 seed), Buffalo (12 seed), Davidson (10 seed) and Texas (11 seed).

72. Texas is an intriguing Cinderella team, as they rank 19th in nERD after facing the 14th-toughest strength of schedule this year.

73. The Longhorns struggled in Big 12 play, but of their five most recent losses (each to highly-ranked tournament teams Iowa State, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Kansas), they lost by an average of 4.8 points per game.

74. Texas ranked 10th in offensive rebounding percentage and 31st in defensive rebounding percentage this year.

75. They could face ACC Tournament champion Notre Dame in the Round of 32 -- Notre Dame ranked 165th in rebounding rate this season.

76. The winner of that potential game may not matter though, because Kentucky is the region's 1 seed.

77. According to nERD, Kentucky's 23.23 score is the second-best rating we've seen since the turn of the century.

78. Kentucky has the fourth-best Adjusted Offensive Rating and the best Adjusted Defensive Rating in the entire country.

79. Kentucky is undefeated.

80. Our metrics give Kentucky a 43.18% chance to win this year's NCAA Tournament.

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