What if the NCAA Tournament was Reseeded?

Each year, the first round of the NCAA tournament offers multiple upsets, and this year was no different, with 7 double-digit seeds winning in the first round. As KenPom has pointed out multiple times, seeding doesn't matter, but matchups do. So consider the question: what if the NCAA tournament was reseeded after each round, like the NFL playoffs, the NHL playoffs, and some conference tournaments (such as the NEC)?


I decided to test this idea out on the South region (for simplicity I just included Albany as the 16-seed since they won their play-in game). Here are the probabilities for each team to win the region, under the current format, before any first or second round games were played:

Seed	Team	Regional Winner
1	Florida	33.59%
16	Albany	0.03%
8	Colorado	0.99%
9	Pittsburgh	5.57%
5	VCU	6.55%
12	Stephen F. Austin	0.76%
4	UCLA	10.63%
13	Tulsa	0.92%
6	Ohio St.	7.12%
11	Dayton	1.45%
3	Syracuse	7.78%
14	Western Michigan	0.34%
7	New Mexico	5.22%
10	Stanford	2.54%
2	Kansas	16.36%
15	Eastern Kentucky	0.15%

For perspective, if the tournament was reseeded after each round, the second round matchups for the top seeds would look like this now:

Seed	Team	Current Opp	Reseeded Opp
1	Florida	Pittsburgh (9)	Stephen F. Austin (12)
2	Kansas	Stanford (10)	Dayton (11)
3	Syracuse	Dayton (11)	Stanford (10)
4	UCLA	Stephen F. Austin (12)	Pittsburgh (9)

I altered my Monte Carlo simulator to determine the new probabilities of each team advancing out of the region, and ran 10,000 simulations to gather the following results:

Seed	Team	Current Format	Reseed Format
1	Florida	33.59%	37.80%
16	Albany	0.03%	0.02%
8	Colorado	0.99%	0.95%
9	Pittsburgh	5.57%	5.29%
5	VCU	6.55%	6.33%
12	Stephen F. Austin	0.76%	0.48%
4	UCLA	10.63%	10.58%
13	Tulsa	0.92%	0.68%
6	Ohio St.	7.12%	6.19%
11	Dayton	1.45%	1.03%
3	Syracuse	7.78%	7.67%
14	Western Michigan	0.34%	0.17%
7	New Mexico	5.22%	4.23%
10	Stanford	2.54%	1.78%
2	Kansas	16.36%	16.75%
15	Eastern Kentucky	0.15%	0.06%

Florida gains a boost, but no other team really changes all that much. Reseeding should benefit the higher seeds and hurt the lower seeds, which it does, but only marginally.