The Bump (or Lack Thereof) From Winning Your Conference Regular Season

Stemming from my earlier post on whether teams see a bump from winning their conference tournament, I have received demands to follow this up with the same analysis but for conference regular season titles.

I can now recreate the chart from the last post with both types of conference titles considered:

Year	Champion	Conference	Conf Tourney	Conf Reg Season	>= 1	Both
2018	Villanova	Big East	1	0	1	0
2017	North Carolina	ACC	0	1	1	0
2016	Villanova	Big East	0	1	1	0
2015	Duke	ACC	0	0	0	0
2014	Connecticut	AAC	0	0	0	0
2013	Louisville	Big East	1	1	1	1
2012	Kentucky	SEC	0	1	1	0
2011	Connecticut	Big East	1	0	1	0
2010	Duke	ACC	1	1	1	1
2009	North Carolina	ACC	0	1	1	0
2008	Kansas	Big 12	1	1	1	1
2007	Florida	SEC	1	1	1	1
2006	Florida	SEC	1	0	1	0
2005	North Carolina	ACC	0	1	1	0
2004	Connecticut	Big East	1	0	1	0
2003	Syracuse	Big East	0	1	1	0
2002	Maryland	ACC	0	1	1	0

8/17 won their conference tournament, 11/17 won their conference regular season, 15 /17 won at least 1 of these, and 4/17 won both.

I can see how far each team progressed similar to last time as well:

Finish	Count	%	Cumul %
Missed	1	1.0%	100.0%
First Round	5	4.9%	99.0%
Second Round	22	21.6%	94.1%
Sweet 16	18	17.6%	72.5%
Elite 8	25	24.5%	54.9%
Final Four	13	12.7%	30.4%
Championship	8	7.8%	17.6%
Champion	10	9.8%	9.8%
Total	102	100.0%	100.0%

Note: In the case of a tie, I choose the #1 seed in that year's conference tournament (thus which team won the tiebreaker)

Second Note: The Big East and SEC used to have divisions; in these cases I took the clear better conference record

Third Note: I had to add a new category of "Missed" to account for 2012 Washington, which has the distinction of winning the Pac 12 regular season outright and still missing the tournament

This probability curve now looks like a team squarely in between a 1 and a 2 seed:

This curve makes sense, as a team showing consistency over a full regular season is a better team, and will thus end up being seeded higher too. In fact, winning the regular season will get you a top 2 seed 75% of the time, which backs up the above graph:

Seed	Conf Tourney	Conf Reg Season
1	39	48
2	20	33
3	14	10
4	12	6
5	6	5
6	4	2
7	2	0
8	1	2
9	1	1
10	1	0
11	3	0
12	3	0
13	1	0
14	1	0
Missed	0	1