Quant Facts: 28-18

Kentucky's win in the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship Game brings our quant fact predictions to 28-18 for a winning percentage of 60.9% in published predictions on our book's blog.  We have done particularly well during the Final Four over the past three years, with our focus on factors related to:

• Leadership both on the court (All-Americans) and behind the bench (coaching),
• Experience - which leads to confidence
• Consistency - factors that relate to a consistently high level of play.  

March Madness 2012: Championship Game (NY Times)

Excerpt from our article in the New York Times.

Consistency: Research has shown that consistency and error measures are also important to winning championships. Historical data was not as readily available for some of the statistics (data goes back 13 seasons), but the team with the higher 3-point shooting percentage has won 10 of the last 13 title games. Teams with the higher free throw percentage have gone 9-4 over the past 13 championship games.

In the table below, we list the performance of Kentucky and Kansas in the categories related to consistency like 3-point shooting and free-throw percentage. We also included turnovers and a defensive measure because these are also championship traits. Kentucky holds the advantage in most of these statistical measures.

Read more here:

http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/02/keeping-score-comparing-kentucky-and-kansas-on-the-stat-sheet/

Carlton J. Chin, a portfolio strategist, and Jay P. Granat, psychotherapist, are authors of “Who Will Win the Big Game? A Psychological & Mathematical Method.” They have previously written about the World Series, the N.B.A. finals, and the Super Bowl.

Time-Lapse: Final Four Court Setup

This is a fun time-lapse video of the court set-up for this year's Final Four in New Orleans.  It took five weeks to set things up -- but you can watch it in two minutes!