If you've already submitted your NCAA tournament bracket to the office pool without consulting online hoops guru Ken Pomeroy (kenpom.com), you may not have invested wisely.
Pomeroy, author of the Basketball Prospectus, may be the ultimate hoops geek. On his site, he pulls together scores and stats for all 344 Division I teams, performs some Pythagorean analysis and spits out rankings. During the past 10 years, Pomeroy's top-ranked team has won the national championship four times, including Kansas last year. His second-ranked teams have won five times.
Memphis, a two seed in the tournament, gets Pomeroy's stamp of approval this year, followed by North Carolina, Connecticut and Louisville, all one seeds. Thinking about making Binghamton your Cinderella pick? Don't do it! Pomeroy has the Bearcats at 162. You're better off with North Dakota State at 71 or Cleveland State at 68.
Wisconsin is ranked 30th, but the Badgers' first-round opponent, Florida State, is 35th. If the Badgers get to the second round, they'll likely face Xavier, which Pomeroy ranks 24th. Sweet Sixteen, here we come!
Pomeroy also tries to determine each team's luck factor. He does this by figuring out the deviation between a team's actual record and its predicted record. Perhaps not surprisingly, he has Wisconsin ranked as one of the unluckiest teams in the country, at 315.
