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Wednesday, March 17, 2021

"What are the odds?" Of Any In-State Team, or All #1 Seeds, Reaching the Final Four

While tickets are not available yet on Ticketmaster (or most of the secondary), the Final Four is on track to be a less premium event than normal (pandemic aside). Using my past six seasons of predicted brackets from the MDS Model, we can calculate the odds of a team from within the host state reaching the Final Four, or all four #1 seeds making it to the semifinals, which has only occurred once before, in 2008.


Usually there's a decent chance of an in-state team (this year, from Indiana) reaching the Final Four, but this year Purdue is the only team from the state in this year’s field, resulting in lower than normal chances of at least one school from the home state reaching the Final Four: 


The probability of all 1-seeds reaching the Final Four, on the other hand, is higher than normal - the second highest in recent years. This is largely boosted by Gonzaga, which has a 52.7% chance of reaching the Final Four (30-35% for the 1-seed is average). Even then, this is dwarfed by 2015, which was buoyed largely by Kentucky (78.5%, by far the highest ever in my model, and actually broke it in 2015).

 

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