So, after the weekend, the Value Bracket in the 27th percentile nationwide -- and has lost two of the teams in its final eight: West Virginia and Arizona State. As a comparison, picking with the straight KenPom projections puts you in the 63rd percentile.
Also, a great comment on the original post about this way of picking teams, from my neighbor Ariel, who brings the math hammer down:
To add some hard numbers to this analysis: if you believe the nat’l bracket will put you in the 90th %ile, you have probability = .9^n of winning your bracket, assuming that your competition is drawn randomly from the national distribution of bracketologists, and where ‘n’ is the size of your tourney pool. If your pool has 25 contestants, your chances stand at .9^25 = 7.18% using the national bracket; with 100 contestants, your chances drop to .0026% (26 thousandths…). If using KenPom raises your performance to the 95th %ile, your odds rise sharply in a pool of 25 people to 27.73%! On the other hand, in a pool of 100 you’re still looking at .59%, which is a lot better than before, but which would still require playing in a LOT of pools to realize the edge reliably.
Thanks, Ariel!