What are the numbers telling us about WSU’s path to a March Madness auto-bid?
With the calendar now officially turned over to March, it is time for postseason college basketball.
This year’s postseason looks much different than any other year for the Washington State Cougars. WSU will be making their first appearance in the WCC tournament, which is much different than the Pac-12 tournament they’re used to. The bracket is much different, requiring the lowest seed to win six games in six days as opposed to the Pac-12’s four in four days. There also aren’t as many at-large bids for the conference up for grabs. The men’s side will very likely be only sending Saint Mary’s and Gonzaga and a possible third team if neither of those two win the tournament. On the women’s side, the conference will likely only be sending it’s tournament champion on an auto-bid. This means if WSU wants to send a team to the big dance for the fifth straight year, they will need to win the WCC tournament.
The men’s team heads to Las Vegas as the six seed, playing one of Pacific, San Diego, or Loyola Marymount for the right to play the three seed San Francisco. If they win their first game on Saturday, March 8th, and then beat San Francisco, they will play the two-seed Gonzaga Bulldogs. Win that, they play for the conference championship on Tuesday, March 11th. Four wins in four days for the right to head to the big dance.
WSU will most likely see the LMU Lions first, a team they handled fairly easily early in the season, beating them 73-59 in Pullman. Using a formula close to what KenPom uses to calculate win probability, the Cougars would have about a 57% chance of beating the Lions. If they run into their boogeyman in the Pacific Tigers, that takes a jump to 78.52%. And should they see the San Diego Toreros, 79.65%. Those numbers take a steep decline if they move on to play the San Francisco Dons in the quarterfinals. Despite beating the Dons earlier this year, WSU would have about a 29.62% chance of beating the Dons to get to the semi-finals. If they survive the Dons and get to the semi-finals, they will run into the rival Gonzaga Bulldogs and have just a 10.15% chance of moving on to the championship game. In the title game, they will most likely see the Saint Mary’s Gaels, whom they’d have a 12.33% chance of defeating to win the WCC. They could also run into the Santa Clara Broncos, Oregon State Beavers, Pepperdine Waves, or Portland Pilots from the other side of the bracket.
With all of these numbers in place, it was time to run some simulations to see how things could turn out in the WCC tournament. I simulated the bracket 400 times. 200 focusing on where WSU finished in the tournament and another 200 looking at who won it all.
In the first 200 simulations, here’s how things shook out for WSU:
In the next 200 simulations, just looking at who wins the tournament, here’s who won:
This gave WSU a championship and March Madness berth in one of the 400 simulations. Or, 0.25% of the time.
The women’s team has much more favorable odds to get the conference crown. Entering as the three-seed, Kamie Ethridge’s team just needs to win three games in three days, as opposed to David Riley’s team staring at four in four days. The 2023 Pac-12 Champion Cougar team won four games in five days, beating California, Utah, Colorado, and UCLA to punch their ticket to the big dance. The latter three are all being ranked.
Their path is far less daunting than the 2023 team. They will open on Sunday against one of Pepperdine, San Diego, Pacific, or Saint Mary’s. Saint Mary’s is the most likely opponent, being the six-seed and needing to win just one game to meet WSU in the quarterfinals. The Cougars swept the Gaels, most recently beating them in the penultimate game of the regular season 72-62.
Similar to the men, I was able to plug in the numbers from Barttorvik to run a simulated bracket. The numbers gave WSU a 79.78% chance to beat Saint Mary’s, an 89.35% chance to beat San Diego, a 72.61% chance to beat Pacific, and a 92.63% chance to beat Pepperdine. If the Cougars get by one of those four, they will meet the back-to-back defending WCC tournament champion Portland Pilots. WSU dropped both of their regular season meetings against the Pilots and are sitting at a 43.24% chance to dethrone the champs. In the championship, they will most likely see the Gonzaga Bulldogs, who, like Portland, swept WSU this season. The Cougars have a slightly better chance to beat the Bulldogs than the Pilots at 46.03%. They can also see LMU, Santa Clara, San Francisco, or Oregon State out of the other side of the bracket if Gonzaga were to be upset. All of which they would be a favorite against.
I again ran 400 simulations. 200 solely focused on where WSU finished and the other 200 recording who won the tournament.
The first batch of 200 sims focused on just WSU looked like this:
In the next 200 simulations, here’s who won the tournament:
This equates out to WSU winning the WCC about 17.5% of the time in 400 simulations. Or, a 17.5% chance Tara Wallack and Emma Weightman get matching tattoos. Not bad!
While they may not be the favorites, they still have a fighters chance to steal an auto-bid away from a top two-seed in the WCC. Crazier things have happened in college basketball, and after all, this is March.