A Simulation to show our chances of avoiding a Thursday play-in game

Tonight's blog post is probably my most creative one I've ever had, tapping into a statistics background to assign probabilities to shit that won't happen for quite some time. Sounds like a guy with an actuarial background, huh? As a result, I'm actually pretty proud of it, and think it is an interesting look at where we stand. I encourage you to actually keep reading even if you disagree with my upcoming tangent...

Before I pull out my crystal ball, let me go on a tangent about how bad Creighton fans behavior bothers me. While I can't help but support how much they support their team, I still cannot stand them at all. Talking basketball with them is like trying to have a conversation with a drunken baby. They don't make a whole lot of sense and they're outrageously irritable at the instant you try to challenge anything about them.

I imagine what it is like with to work with these people. If they're anything like their personality at games, they're drunk all eight hours at work at least four days a week and they most likely verbally harass their boss whenever a new project is given or any questions are asked about their work. They most likely don't have phones at their desk because they're unable to carry on anything that resembles a productive conversation. Bottom line, I guess I am trying to say I think a mascot of "drunken hobos" would make more sense than "bluejays", but I guess it doesn't fit into as many cheers...

On to something productive:

Given our tough loss to Creighton, we're now in a three way tie for sixth, seventh, eighth in the Valley. My biggest concern is that we stay the hell OUT of the play in games on Thursday. While we can most likely beat any of those teams, we'd be guaranteed to play UNI, ISU, or Creighton -- which we want to avoid at all costs right now. Given some data that is available at Ken Pomeroy's website (specifically, probabilities of winning individual games), I conducted a Monte Carlo Simulation to determine our chances of finishing fifth or sixth and thus, staying out of the play in round.

Let me state a few assumptions:

• I assumed that UNI, ISU, Creighton, and Bradley all made it in. While this is certainly not anywhere near 100%, it seemed reasonable, and it made my analysis a whole lot easier. I'm focusing on the 6-6, 5-7, 3-9, and 2-10 teams -- figuring that the teams that are above .500 are safe with only six games to play in the valley season.


• I made some simplifying assumptions for tiebreakers. This could change the probabilities a decent amount in some of the scenarios -- but for the most part, I think the order of the results should be pretty solid.


• There is no dependency on outcomes. For instance, if Drake loses three in a row, the remaining chances of winning are the same as what they were before the streak. This is the same for winning streaks as well. This is probably the one assumption that I'm not the most happy about, but it's a product of the methodology that I used. In all reality though, we're talking about six games, so I don't think this would affect results TOO much.

That said, here are my results:

As you can see from these results, the simulated probabilities of AVOIDING (i.e. finishing not 7th or below) are:

• Evansville = 0.5834
• Southern Illinois = 0.5650
• Drake = 0.4276
• Wichita State = 0.4215
• Missouri State = 0.0384
• Indiana State = 0.0002

This pretty much tells me that Indiana State has really paddled themselves up shit creek with a 2-10 Valley record. They need so much help it's virtually impossible. Due to the simplifying assumptions in my model, it might not even be possible.

Missouri State is not much better with just a near 4% chance. They are two wins behind the 5-7 bunch (which counts for a LOT) and they own no tiebreakers on anybody. We'll see them on Thursday.

Wichita State and Drake look to be the next two teams just over a 40% chance of staying out. WSU owns a tiebreaker over Indiana State (not very helpful) and possibly over Evansville -- but they're a full game behind Evansville and have nothing at this point over the rest. Drake is in a similar situation.

Southern has some help with tiebreakers over really everyone but us. If they win a few here or there, they should have the 2-0 tie breaker in the event of ties with some other teams. Finally, Evansville's 6-6 record and tiebreaker over Drake makes them sit pretty well right now.

Overall, the question I had was what our chances of staying out of the play-in game. Right now, I wouldn't bet on it. Evansville is sitting in a pretty solid seat right now, and SIU is not much further behind. If I had to put money on it, it looks like we'll be in there, playing MSU or Indiana State. Hopefully we can get on a roll though and turn the tables.