March Madness 2012: The NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four

With an eye towards key concepts of sport psychology, we looked at factors such as big game experience, leadership behind the bench, leadership on the court, error control, and consistency.  So important are these concepts to winning championships that they have proven to be common themes across all sports we have studied.

Experience: Over the past 27 tournaments, 15 of 27 champions have had Final Four experience from the previous three years.  Teams with more Final Four appearances in the past three years have gone 11-5 (68.8%) in championship games.  Of this year’s Final Four contestants, only Kentucky has reached the Final Four over the past three years – and with this year’s appearance, Kentucky has reached the Final Four two years in a row.
...
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.  Free throw shooting percentage is also a measure of consistency, and teams with the higher free throw percentage have gone 9-4 over the past 13 championship games.
...
So who will win the big game?  The championship factors predict that Kentucky and Ohio State will advance to the championship game.  Once the finalists are determined, this ranking, based on the factors in the table, may be used to predict the champion: (1) Kentucky, (2) Ohio State, (3) Kansas, and (4) Louisville – to win the championship.


Read more at CNN.com here:
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-769182


Carlton Chin, a portfolio strategist and MIT graduate, and Jay Granat, psychotherapist, are authors of “Who Will Win the Big Game? A Psychological & Mathematical Method.”  They have previously written about the Super Bowl, World Series, and last year’s NCAA Tournament.

Extra Motivation, Recent Performance Overvalued - Or Both?

We sometimes write (and give statistics) to show that recent performance is often overvalued by sports fans.  Here's an article that backs up this hypothesis -- and might also suggest that teams losing their conference championships might be extra-motivated to perform well in the big NCAA Men's Tournament.  From the Wall St. Journal:

For the three No. 1 seeds in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament that didn’t win their conference tournaments, there’s good news: History suggests they have as good a chance as No. 1-seeded conference champs of winning it all. Or, more precisely, a better chance. Especially North Carolina and Kentucky.

Getty Images

Ten years ago, Maryland shook off an ACC tournament semifinal loss to win six straight and the NCAA title.

As Ben Cohen noted in the Wall Street Journal today, NCAA champs generally have won their conference tournament. But a lot of those champs weren’t No. 1 seeds. Among top seeds since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, a greater proportion of those No. 1 seeds that have lost in their conference tournaments have gone on to win it all than have those that cut the nets after their conferences’ championship games: six of 26 non-champs vs. eight of 64 champs, nearly twice the percentage (excluding No. 1 seeds that played in conferences without tournaments). Since just one team can win it all each year, average tournament wins also are worth watching. And the non-conference champs rule among top seeds there, too, with an average of 3.69 wins to 3.36 for the conference champs...

Read more here:

http://blogs.wsj.com/dailyfix/2012/03/14/ncaa-tournament-top-seeds-enter-more-important-tourney/ 

Final Four Probabilities (2012 NCAA Tournament)

We were fiddling around with some statistics and came up with these probabilities of advancing to the Final Four.  The numbers may be useful when filling out your brackets.  

                                           Probability of Winning Region 

Seed	Team	Region	Final Four Prob
1	Kentucky	S	42.4%
2	Ohio State	E	41.4%
1	UNC	MW	36.2%
2	Kansas	MW	26.9%
1	Mich. State	W	22.1%
2	Missouri	W	17.7%
1	Syracuse	E	15.7%
4	Wisconsin	E	14.8%
8	Memphis	W	10.4%
5	Wich. State	S	9.6%
2	Duke	S	8.2%

March Madness -- Round 1 Results by Seed

Today is Selection Sunday for the NCAA College Basketball's Men's Tournament.  With the hugely popular office bracket pools, we thought we would summarize the results for the seeds in Round 1 of the tournament (since the NCAA Tournament went to the 64-team bracket in 1985).  With the addition of a few teams over the 64 team field over the years, we tabulated the results by the actual seeds numbering 1 to 16 (or the replacement).

Seed	Wins	Losses	Win %
1	108	0	100.0%
2	104	4	96.3%
3	92	16	85.2%
4	86	22	79.6%
5	72	36	66.7%
6	72	36	66.7%
7	65	43	60.2%
8	51	57	47.2%
9	57	51	52.8%
10	43	65	39.8%
11	36	72	33.3%
12	36	72	33.3%
13	22	86	20.4%
14	16	92	14.8%
15	4	104	3.7%
16	0	108	0%

Enjoy the Madness!

The Power of a Positive Mental Attitude

In our articles and blog, we often talk about "championship characteristics" such as confidence, leadership, focus, playing at a high level (while minimizing errors), and experience.  Interestingly, many of these championship traits can be linked to having a "positive mental attitude."    

Cognitive psychologists suggest that an individual athlete's "explanatory style" is a significant factor in influencing sports performance.  Individuals with an optimistic explanatory style consistently outperform those with a pessimistic explanatory style. [Seligman, (1990);  Hanrahan & Grove (1990)].  Their work is based on 'attribution theory' - ie. on how people explain 'good' and 'bad' events that happen in their lives.  An individual's explanatory style can be used to determine their level of optimism or pessimism - and as a consequence, their performance potential in sport.

Read more here:
http://www.sportsmind.com.au/Article-Sports-Optimism.php

Here is a less academic look at sports psychology and how Jack Nicklaus used mental imagery -- for every shot!  Jack Nicklaus wrote:

"I never hit a shot even in practice without having a sharp in-focus picture of it in my head. It's like a colour movie. First, I "see" the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes, and I "see" the ball going there: its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behaviour on landing. Then there's a sort of fade-out, and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images into reality and only at the end of this short private Hollywood spectacular do I select a club and step up to the ball."

Read more here:

http://www.brianmac.co.uk/mental.htm

And from a NASA blog -- on positive mental attitude:

Some years ago I took a survival course; the instructor asked us all to guess what might be the most valuable tool to have in a survival situation.  Matches, compass, cell phone, water -- all good guesses, but the right answer:  a positive mental attitude.

Read more here:
http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/waynehalesblog/posts/post_1222290522818.html

There is also growing evidence of the power of positive thinking and healing.  Medical practitioners and doctors cite "good results" -- for serious cases and older patients -- especially for people with positive attitudes.  

From Bernie Siegel, MD:

To induce self-healing, love your life and body... 

Do what you love and what makes you happy. Eliminate the “shoulds” from your life. Prioritize humor in your life—see if you can laugh out loud a few times each day. Think about things that have made you laugh before. Sometimes just bringing those times back to mind is enough to enjoy another good laugh. I have been saying that laughter really is great medicine for a long time now, but recently more studies have shown that the immune system really does benefit greatly from humor...

Surround yourself with positive people...  Be good to yourself and nourish your life with positive, supportive, loving thoughts...

http://berniesiegelmd.com/2012/02/q-a-with-bernie-february-27-2012/


We thought we would end this article on some approaches that champions use to gain an optimistic and positive mental attitude.  

CHAMPION FEELINGS
What do champions feel? How do they use their emotional states to generate excellence in themselves? What champion feelings do they choose? I've listed some below that I've identified in peak performers. Perhaps you can think of others. Why not choose, right now, to experience one of the following champion feelings :

• Joy - a feeling of intense happiness
• Enthusiasm - a feeling of being fully alive and energised
• Purpose - a feeling of certainty and direction in your life
• Determination - a feeling of being fully committed to a task or goal
• Courage - a feeling of strength in the face of adversity or risk
• Focus - a feeling of pinpoint concentration
• Love - a feeling of caring, and giving of yourself
• Adventure - a feeling of excitement and challenge
• Momentum - a feeling of moving to a destination
• Belonging - a feeling of connection to others
• Timing - a feeling of being in perfect sync with outside forces

Read more here:
http://www.sportsmind.com.au/Article-Champion-Thoughts-Champion-Feelings.php