I think in a lot of ways March Madness is more fun than the NBA
I mean the NBA has elite players who have been working on their craft for years, but the
NCAA is a lot more unexpected. Because it features tiny schools like Georgia
State beating off much bigger powerhouse schools like Baylor
This isn’t by accident. The very structure of the tournament increases the chance of
upsets occurring, compared to the NBA playoffs.
Obama: "There's going to be an upset somewhere!"
The biggest thing by far is that each round is just a single game instead of a best of seven series
Obama: “There’s gonna be an upset somewhere!” If you had the games if you had two teams
playing 1000 games, the favorite would definitely win.
But the smaller the sample size, means theres a higher chance of the unlikely outcome occuring
NCAA games are also shorter -- 40 minutes instead of 48, further reducing the sample size.
When you’re on offense the shot clock tells you how long you have before you have to take
a shot. In college you can take up to 35 seconds. Which means that underdogs can slow down the
game and cut down on the number of posessions for their opponents.
All these games are also played on neutral
courts, so the favored team usually doesn’t have any home court advantage
And often times if you have a neutral crowd, they’ll start cheering for the underdog
because they want to see the upset. Additionally, the three-point line is closer
in to the basket than in NBA. Which means that three pointers are easier to shoot.
The closer three allows for a “high variance strategy” Shooting a lot of threes can backfire.
But if you hit the shots, it can allow you to beat a team you wouldn’t otherwise.
All these factors mean that, every year, a few big underdogs upset top teams. Usually,
this happens in the earlier rounds, but on occasion, it happens in the final four — or
even the championship.