Breaking the Basketball Bracket: A Guide to the South Region

The top half of the NCAA tournament’s South bracket seems ripe for a few upsets that should give hope to underdogs and help in office pools.

Pitt is led by a senior, NBA-bound PG in Lamar Patterson (19th best Value Add player). Colorado star Spencer Dinwiddie was close to him in the rankings when he was injured in January, but though Colorado played well without him Pitt should pull the upset. Tulsa has improved from 118 to 68 in Value Add in a month to be one of the best teams in the country and have a real chance to beat VCU.

Home Advantage: UCLA had to travel to Philadelphia a few years ago to lose to VCU in a tournament game, so even if VCU’s havoc shuts down Tulsa look for the Bruins to have the edge against VCU in San Diego.

The following are the Value Add Rankings for each player in the top half of the South Region, their team’s seed, height, year in school and which players are NBA prospects (all caps) as well as which of the other players are guards (small “g”). The teams are Albany (16-seed), Colorado (8), Florida (1), Mount St. Mary’s (16), Pittsburgh (9), Stephen F. Austin (12), Tulsa (13), UCLA (4) and VCU (5).

The items listed for the top few players on each team should be the biggest considerations along with injured players, the home advantage, and which team enters the tournament hot (which we define as improving the most at www.kenpom.com over the past month of the season). The system is a precise measurement of how many points a player adds to his team’s score per game over the player who takes his place. Every score (three-pointer, two-pointer or foul shot), assist, offensive rebound, foul drawn, etc. helps a team score while every turnover and missed shot costs the team points. On defense, every steal, blocked shot, defensive rebound, turnover forced, and opponent’s missed shot takes points off the board while every basket or offensive rebound allowed adds to the opponent’s score. The player’s offensive and defensive combination calculates together with the help of the stats at www.kenpom.com. How many points a player adds to his team’s score appears in the offensive category (shown as “off” in the table below), and his overall impact on points once defense is factored appears as “Total” on the table.