Even more interesting to me is how they come up with in-game percentages as to who is going to win. We all do that to some degree. Five minutes to go and your team has a ten point lead. You are probably going to win. So it is over 50%. But is it 60%? 85%? They know. At least I would say that their guess is as good as it gets.
I want to give Jay Boice and Nate Silver credit because I'm just relaying what they say is how their group comes up with those percentage win chances. I will try to do their explanation justice. So with a bit of paraphrasing, here we go,
- You you are ahead by 10 a with five minutes to go. The question becomes - How often have teams in that same situation done that in the past?
- They use regression analysis based on various game situations in the past. "The past" being the scores from all of the NCAA games over the past five years.
- It makes a difference if that team that is ahead is really the better team, so they also factor in the pre-game win probabilities. That team currently in the lead may be more lucky than good.
- Finally, what is the current situation? It's five minutes to go. But who has the ball. Is one of the teams getting ready to shoot free throws?
- They don't account for everything, e.g., a player has fouled out and won't be available the rest of the game. That certainly could have an impact.
- There probably are a number of factors that are just too much to deal with, so they don't.
Their results are pretty impressive. I haven't checked them out in real time. Its always after a game has been played. I'll have to remember to do that. Looking at them after the fact, though, their results seem pretty impressive. You can see some of their March Madness work here: 2017 March Madness Predictions
