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BTT what's better more rest or more wins

Paterfamilias

All-Big Ten
Dec 3, 2010
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I looked at the last 10 Big 10 Tournaments (not counting 2022) to find out if the fatigue of extra games hurt teams in the NCAA Tournament or not. I logged each NCAA Qualifier from the Big 10, along with their Seed earned, number of NCAA Tournament Wins, Day of their last BTT game and whether or not they had a bye.

Looking at the resulting chart (below) a few things stand out, which I might use going forward in filling out my brackets.
  1. -Teams that win on Thursday, but lose on Friday, do amazingly well in their first round NCAA Tournament games.
  2. -Teams that lose on Saturday, whether they had a bye or not, tend to underachieve relative to expectations.
  3. -Teams that play on Sunday, whether they had a bye or not, tended to overachieve relative to expectations.
  4. -Teams that qualified for the NCAA, in spite of losing on Thursday, were right at expectations
Here is the chart...

btt%20rest.PNG


I used this site to calculate expected NCAA Wins based on Seed https://bracketodds.cs.illinois.edu/seedadv.html

Lastly, if we look at Sunday Winners vs Losers we get...

Winner expected to have (based on Seed) 24.79 NCAAT wins and 6.49 Sweet 16's. Actual was 27 wins and 8 Sweet 16's
Loser expected to have (based on Seed) 16.55 NCAAT wins and 4.29 Sweet 16's. Actual was 17 wins and 6 Sweet 16's

Hopefully what I did here makes some sense! I'll put the full spreadsheet here in this thread later today, just in case anybody is interested enough to look at it more closely.
 
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I looked at the last 10 Big 10 Tournaments (not counting 2022) to find out if the fatigue of extra games hurt teams in the NCAA Tournament or not. I logged each NCAA Qualifier from the Big 10, along with their Seed earned, number of NCAA Tournament Wins, Day of their last BTT game and whether or not they had a bye.

Looking at the resulting chart (below) a few things stand out, which I might use going forward in filling out my brackets.
  1. -Teams that win on Thursday, but lose on Friday, do amazingly well in their first round NCAA Tournament games.
  2. -Teams that lose on Saturday, whether they had a bye or not, tend to underachieve relative to expectations.
  3. -Teams that play on Sunday, whether they had a bye or not, tended to overachieve relative to expectations.
  4. -Teams that qualified for the NCAA, in spite of losing on Thursday, were right at expectations
Here is the chart...

btt%20rest.PNG


I used this site to calculate expected NCAA Wins based on Seed https://bracketodds.cs.illinois.edu/seedadv.html

Lastly, if we look at Sunday Winners vs Losers we get...

Winner expected to have (based on Seed) 24.79 NCAAT wins and 6.49 Sweet 16's. Actual was 27 wins and 8 Sweet 16's
Loser expected to have (based on Seed) 16.55 NCAAT wins and 4.29 Sweet 16's. Actual was 17 wins and 6 Sweet 16's

Hopefully what I did here makes some sense! I'll put the full the full spreadsheet here in this thread later today, just in case anybody is interested enough to look at it more closely.
Good stuff Pater
 
I looked at the last 10 Big 10 Tournaments (not counting 2022) to find out if the fatigue of extra games hurt teams in the NCAA Tournament or not. I logged each NCAA Qualifier from the Big 10, along with their Seed earned, number of NCAA Tournament Wins, Day of their last BTT game and whether or not they had a bye.

Looking at the resulting chart (below) a few things stand out, which I might use going forward in filling out my brackets.
  1. -Teams that win on Thursday, but lose on Friday, do amazingly well in their first round NCAA Tournament games.
  2. -Teams that lose on Saturday, whether they had a bye or not, tend to underachieve relative to expectations.
  3. -Teams that play on Sunday, whether they had a bye or not, tended to overachieve relative to expectations.
  4. -Teams that qualified for the NCAA, in spite of losing on Thursday, were right at expectations
Here is the chart...

btt%20rest.PNG


I used this site to calculate expected NCAA Wins based on Seed https://bracketodds.cs.illinois.edu/seedadv.html

Lastly, if we look at Sunday Winners vs Losers we get...

Winner expected to have (based on Seed) 24.79 NCAAT wins and 6.49 Sweet 16's. Actual was 27 wins and 8 Sweet 16's
Loser expected to have (based on Seed) 16.55 NCAAT wins and 4.29 Sweet 16's. Actual was 17 wins and 6 Sweet 16's

Hopefully what I did here makes some sense! I'll put the full the full spreadsheet here in this thread later today, just in case anybody is interested enough to look at it more closely.
Something that I left out is that IU this year became the Big 10's first Saturday loser (3rd game) to have to play in Dayton. Iowa played in Dayton in 2014 and lost after losing on Thursday in BTT. Michigan in 2016 won in Dayton (like IU), but lost in the rd64 game after losing on Friday (2nd game) of BTT.

I'm going to check the other major conference to see if anybody else has had to do what IU tried to do this past week.
 
Thanks! Obviously it helped IU this year. But, if you’re already a high seed, the rest can’t hurt …. But most importantly, imo,
Why risk injury? Like if Kofi goes down during IU game this year?? That game meant nothing for Illinois.
 
Something that I left out is that IU this year became the Big 10's first Saturday loser (3rd game) to have to play in Dayton. Iowa played in Dayton in 2014 and lost after losing on Thursday in BTT. Michigan in 2016 won in Dayton (like IU), but lost in the rd64 game after losing on Friday (2nd game) of BTT.

I'm going to check the other major conference to see if anybody else has had to do what IU tried to do this past week.
Pater - I think it's awesome that you are trying to provide data on this board. Thank you for doing that.

I do, however, suspect it will be difficult to find any historical data that provide a comparison for playing the late play-in game, swapping out insufficient aircraft provided by the NCAA, sitting on a Tarmac for four hours, making a cross country flight, arriving at 7am local time, and playing a tournament game.

I could be wrong, and if you find it, you truly are the man.

And, again, I think you're the man for just attempting to share data with us. Thank you again.
 
Pater - I think it's awesome that you are trying to provide data on this board. Thank you for doing that.

I do, however, suspect it will be difficult to find any historical data that provide a comparison for playing the late play-in game, swapping out insufficient aircraft provided by the NCAA, sitting on a Tarmac for four hours, making a cross country flight, arriving at 7am local time, and playing a tournament game.

I could be wrong, and if you find it, you truly are the man.

And, again, I think you're the man for just attempting to share data with us. Thank you again.
Lol... right on! I'm going to post the list here in a bit, but putting aside the flight plan issues, what IU was trying to do (3rd Conference Tournament game played Saturday, then play Tuesday and Thursday) has only been done once since they started the first four.

NC State, back in 2012, followed the same cursed path to a rd64 loss also. All of the feel good stories of teams making runs or mini runs were way easier. Mostly 1 or 2 conference tourney games then 4, 5, 6 days of rest leading into Dayton game.

In general I think it's better to keep winning in conference tourney play, but it was wrong the position that they put IU in. Way wrong after looking at these other teams who've had to go the Dayton path. Borders on criminal when you factor in shipping them to Portland and the flight mix-up.

Wait till you see this list... I'm glad I looked it up. At the very least, IU should've played on Wednesday and not shipped to Portland.
 
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In general I think it's better to keep winning in conference tourney play, but it was wrong the position that they put IU in.

At the very least, IU should've played on Wednesday and not shipped to Portland.
IU HAD to keep playing, otherwise they were NIT bound. I’m sure they expended a ton of energy coming back from 17 down to beat Michigan. Then they had to play 2 more games. Lots of energy expended , but it’s their own fault.

then there was the game in Dayton. The best case scenario for IU was having that game in Dayton, give the travel excuse and quick prep time excuse to Wyoming, and play close to our own backyard, in front of our fans. That was a gift and it was the only reason we even advanced to play st Mary’s (imo).

St Mary’s had a decided advantage playing us on more rest, having more time to prep and playing closer to home. But, they earned it. Now, the travel fiasco was awful and I’m sure played some part. But, even if we had another couple of days of rest I’m not convinced that the results would have been any different. We quit.

in a post earlier this season I said that IU lost to Michigan because they were wore out from the ticker tape parade and White House visit after FINALLY beating PU. I think the same thing happened.

IU made the tournament and won a game. Mission accomplished!
 
IU HAD to keep playing, otherwise they were NIT bound. I’m sure they expended a ton of energy coming back from 17 down to beat Michigan. Then they had to play 2 more games. Lots of energy expended , but it’s their own fault.

then there was the game in Dayton. The best case scenario for IU was having that game in Dayton, give the travel excuse and quick prep time excuse to Wyoming, and play close to our own backyard, in front of our fans. That was a gift and it was the only reason we even advanced to play st Mary’s (imo).

St Mary’s had a decided advantage playing us on more rest, having more time to prep and playing closer to home. But, they earned it. Now, the travel fiasco was awful and I’m sure played some part. But, even if we had another couple of days of rest I’m not convinced that the results would have been any different. We quit.

in a post earlier this season I said that IU lost to Michigan because they were wore out from the ticker tape parade and White House visit after FINALLY beating PU. I think the same thing happened.

IU made the tournament and won a game. Mission accomplished!
UCLA owned St. Mary's last night and proved that St.Marys was not some machine they were made out to be. We made them look way better than they are especially in the second half. We quit basically. Sure lots of factors involved but St. Mary's is not some to 15 elite team.
 
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Here's the list of other Dayton teams from the Power Conferences since the First Four. The list is in order of days rest between last conference tournament game and their date in Dayton. Anybody who won an NCAAT game on 4 days rest or less, I listed the site of their next game. You'll notice the teams who made nice runs out of the First Four were mostly well rested.

Edit- the 2017 Notre Dame and Rutgers lines are supposed to be 2022

days%20rest.PNG

days%20rest2.PNG
 
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Here's the list of other Dayton teams from the Power Conferences since the First Four. The list is in order of days rest between last conference tournament game and their date in Dayton. Anybody who won an NCAAT game on 4 days rest or less, I listed the site of their next game. You'll notice the teams who made nice runs out of the First Four were mostly well rested.

days%20rest.PNG

days%20rest2.PNG
Thanks for all this work. Very interesting.
 
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IU HAD to keep playing, otherwise they were NIT bound. I’m sure they expended a ton of energy coming back from 17 down to beat Michigan. Then they had to play 2 more games. Lots of energy expended , but it’s their own fault.

then there was the game in Dayton. The best case scenario for IU was having that game in Dayton, give the travel excuse and quick prep time excuse to Wyoming, and play close to our own backyard, in front of our fans. That was a gift and it was the only reason we even advanced to play st Mary’s (imo).

St Mary’s had a decided advantage playing us on more rest, having more time to prep and playing closer to home. But, they earned it. Now, the travel fiasco was awful and I’m sure played some part. But, even if we had another couple of days of rest I’m not convinced that the results would have been any different. We quit.

in a post earlier this season I said that IU lost to Michigan because they were wore out from the ticker tape parade and White House visit after FINALLY beating PU. I think the same thing happened.

IU made the tournament and won a game. Mission accomplished!
Agree with every bit of that. We barely earned the right to have the path that we had. My point is, look at that list! The committee should not have played IU on Tuesday. That's something that should be looked into. What was wrong with Wednesday?? It may be going too far, but if they have to put the screws to you it should be either/or short rest or close proximity post Dayton.

As you say, IU earned what they got, but, as you can see, what we earned was the worst First Four schedule ever handed out!
 
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Agree with every bit of that. We barely earned the right to have the path that we had. My point is, look at that list! The committee should not have played IU on Tuesday. That's something that should be looked into. What was wrong with Wednesday?? It may be going too far, but if they have to put the screws to you it should be either/or short rest or close proximity post Dayton.

As you say, IU earned what they got, but, as you can see, what we earned was the worst First Four schedule ever handed out!
Yeah I agree. Unfortunately it’s about money. What other fan base would fill up Dayton that quickly? On Monday we were all excited, it looked like the perfect draw. The travel issues really hurt. Wednesday / Friday may have been better . On the flip side, a Wednesday game probably tilts things towards Wyoming a little bit.
 
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Agree with every bit of that. We barely earned the right to have the path that we had. My point is, look at that list! The committee should not have played IU on Tuesday. That's something that should be looked into. What was wrong with Wednesday?? It may be going too far, but if they have to put the screws to you it should be either/or short rest or close proximity post Dayton.

As you say, IU earned what they got, but, as you can see, what we earned was the worst First Four schedule ever handed out!
We did it to ourselves. Win one or two more in the big ten and we are a 10 seed. People forget we finished 9-11.
 
We did it to ourselves. Win one or two more in the big ten and we are a 10 seed. People forget we finished 9-11.
Yeah I know. I've just seen some people say "Look at Notre Dame, they had to go to San Diego". True, but the Irish came into Dayton off a weeks rest.
 
Yeah I agree. Unfortunately it’s about money. What other fan base would fill up Dayton that quickly? On Monday we were all excited, it looked like the perfect draw. The travel issues really hurt. Wednesday Friday may have been better . On the flip side, a Wednesday game probably tilts things towards Wyoming a little bit.
People thought it was a great draw until we got smoked and suddenly St.Marys was some machine. UCLA proved they were not a machine as they handled them pretty easily. We just played our worst game of the year and then wilted. Not sure one day of rest would have changed things but St.Marys is not 30 points better than us. If that was true UCLA would be 45 points better than us.
 
Yeah I know. I've just seen some people say "Look at Notre Dame, they had to go to San Diego". True, but the Irish came into Dayton off a weeks rest.
Yeah it's a crappy deal but you should still never lose by 30 to a team like St.Marys. UCLA beat them easily
 
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