Injuries, Hot Streaks, and Ratings for All March Madness Teams

As prep for our March Madness predictions, we lay out the basics for the 85 teams with even a faint hope of being one of the 68 selected Sunday. This sheet gives each team’s Sagarin rating, a plus or minus for whether they finished the season hot or cold, and the Value Add of any key players who are injured for returning from injury based on Don’s Best report.

Michigan State’s rating is easily the best going into the tournament at 98.0. The next best teams once adjusting for injuries and how hot teams are leaves North Carolina at No. 2 at 95.5, followed by Kansas (95.2), West Virginia (94.0), Virginia (93.0), and Kentucky (92.5).

For example, both Akron and Alabama have a 78-point Value from Sagarin, and both finished the season cold enough for a minus 2, meaning their predictive rating if either received a surprise pick to the tournament would be a 76.0.

Arizona has two valuable players who missed part of the season (Kaleb Tarczewski and Allonzo Trier), who are therefore really more valuable per game than their Value Add rating in the database shows. With them back from injuries, Arizona is 1.8 points better than their rating based on their season results would indicated. However, a negative indicates a player who did play some is not expected to play — and in this case the absence of Elliott Pitts subtracts 0.2 from the team’s rating, so when we adjust Arizona’s Sagarin rating of 89 by those three player adjustments Arizona has a 90.6 rating heading into the tournament.

If Akron or Alabama received a surprise bid and played Arizona, Arizona would be projected to win by 14.6 points (90.6 rating minus 76.0).

Once the actual bids come out Sunday evening we will refer to these ratings as we fill in the projected brackets.