5 vs 12 - not so bad for "Power" conference schools

Lots of noise is made about 12 seeds upsetting 5 seeds in the NCAA tournament. Since 2008, 12 seeds have won 17 of the 36 contests - just under half. With our mighty Golden Gophers matched up against some little school from the middle of Tennessee, I looked through the brackets on SR-CBB to see if the results are different when a 5 seed from a power conference plays a mid-major. I also broke down the other three possible matchups. Turns out the big schools do just fine.

For this exercise, power conferences are Big Ten, Big East, Big 12, Pac 12, ACC and SEC. Sorry, MWC, A10 and AAC!

*upset


P6 5 vs Mid 12
2016 Indiana over Chattanooga
*2016 Yale over Baylor
2016 MD over SDkSU
*2016 UALR over Purdue
2015 WV over Buffalo
2015 Utah over SFA
2015 Arkansas over Wofford
*2014 NDSU over Oklahoma
2012 Vandy over Harvard
2011 K State over Utah State
*2011 Richmond over Vandy
2011 Arizona over Memphis
2010 Texas A&M over Utah St
2010 Michigan St over New Mexico St
*2009 WKY over Illinois
2009 Purdue over UNIa
2008 Notre Dame over George Mason
2008 Michigan st over Temple

5 of 18 (28%) upsets. That's not especially Cinderellaey.


P6 5 vs P6 12
*2013 Oregon over OKSt
*2013 Ole Miss over Wiscy
2011 WV over Clemson
*2009 Wisconsin over Florida St
*2008 Villanova over Clemson

4 of 5 (80%) upsets. Power conference 12 seeds are gutty warriors! Except Bucky...they got lucky in 2009 (and choked in 2013!).



Mid 5 vs P6 12
2014 StL over NC State
*2013 Cal over UNLV
*2012 SFla over Temple
*2009 Arizona over Utah (MWC)

3 of 4 (75%) upsets. Again, there's nothing more dangerous than a pissed-off power conference bubble team!


Mid 5 vs Mid 12
2015 UNIa over Wyoming
*2014 Harvard over Cincinnati (AAC)
*2014 SFA over VCU
2013 VCU over Akron
*2012 VCU over Wichita St
2012 New Mexico over Long Beach
*2010 Cornell over Temple
2010 Butler over UTEP
*2008 WKY over Drake

5 of 9 (56%) upsets. I imagine lots of small-school losers dribbling balls off their feet and passing to the refs in these clown-show games.



P6 is 16-6 (73%) vs Mids regardless of seed in 5-12 games. Mid-major 5 seeds only manage to win 38% of the time. The fearsome reputation of the 12 seed is built on the ashes of mid-majors.

Great breakdown. Thanks for sharing.

Wow...great stats!

BeenHazy said:

The fearsome reputation of the 12 seed is built on the ashes of mid-majors.

Click to expand...

Quit using facts and evidence.

(Awesome post)

Good stuff!

Actually makes me feel a little confident. But just a little.

Very interesting. Combining the last two sections you can see that when mid majors were the 5 seeds they were upset 8 out of 13 times.

5 vs 12 - not so bad for "Power" conference schools

Let's say that the committee believes the 5th seed teams are ranked 16-20, and the 12 seed teams are 44-48. I'd be curious during the regular season how many 44-48 ranked teams beat 16-20. Probably happens a lot. Probably near the same mark as in this discussion. What I think is interesting in the 5v12 discussion is that it is a popular upset pick. Statistically if the probability of a 44-48 team beating a 16-20 team is 25%, then the odds would be that each year one 12 would beat a 5. It isn't that crazy of a notion. Which one? If you are wrong you get 2 wrong on the bracket.


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I think the whole 5 vs 12 thing gets a lot of pub because it is the last matchup where upsets happen relatively often. I don't have the time to look up the stats, but I remember seeing an article that showed the difference between number of upsets in the 6v11 and 5v12 matchups isn't very big. But the difference between number of 5v12 upsets and 4v13 upsets is quite large.

Basically, it is just a rule of thumb for anyone making NCAA picks who doesn't pay much attention to basketball and is just doing their bracket for the office pool or whatever -- you won't look stupid if you just pick all the 1-4 seeds to win in the first round and pick a few upsets starting when you get to the 5 seeds.

I've been looking for things like this all week to make myself feel better about things. I'm confident in the Gophers' ability to win this game, but what I've figured out is that no amount of stats or past occurrences makes it any more or less likely that the Gophs are going to win on Thursday. What needs to happen is this game needs to get played. Then we'll know. I hate the anticipation.

VERY VERY GOOD STUFF!!! Bravo These are the kinds of stats that I love, they crack me up. And research like this can help a person kick major booty in a bracket challenge, especially if someone did this kind of research for all the various matchups and combined it with the research they did looking at where all the Champions rate in the Ken-Pom ratings.

bizzle22 said:

I think the whole 5 vs 12 thing gets a lot of pub because it is the last matchup where upsets happen relatively often. I don't have the time to look up the stats, but I remember seeing an article that showed the difference between number of upsets in the 6v11 and 5v12 matchups isn't very big. But the difference between number of 5v12 upsets and 4v13 upsets is quite large.

Basically, it is just a rule of thumb for anyone making NCAA picks who doesn't pay much attention to basketball and is just doing their bracket for the office pool or whatever -- you won't look stupid if you just pick all the 1-4 seeds to win in the first round and pick a few upsets starting when you get to the 5 seeds.

Click to expand...

Since expansion to 64:
#4 vs. #13 (102-25) 80.3%
#5 vs. #12 (99-49) 66.9%
#6 vs. #11 (96-52) 64.9%

Take away the 19-17 since 2008 and you have a record of 80-32, 71.4 % for the first 28 years. That fits nicely between the success rates of the 4 and 6 seeds. P6 #5's 72.2% success since 2008 is virtually an exact match (as close as it can be in an 18 game sample).

BeenHazy said:

Since expansion to 64:
#4 vs. #13 (102-25) 80.3%
#5 vs. #12 (99-49) 66.9%
#6 vs. #11 (96-52) 64.9%

Take away the 19-17 since 2008 and you have a record of 80-32, 71.4 % for the first 28 years. That fits nicely between the success rates of the 4 and 6 seeds. P6 #5's 72.2% success since 2008 is virtually an exact match (as close as it can be in an 18 game sample).

Click to expand...

I have no idea where you pulled those numbers from but they are incorrect. Here are the correct numbers since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

#4 vs #13 (102-26) 79.7%
#5 vs #12 (82-46) 64.1%
#6 vs #11 (82-46) 64.1%
#7 vs #10 (78-50) 60.9%
#8 vs #9 (64-64) 50.0%

Like I said, pretty big difference between the 5-line and the 4-line. In fact there's a bigger difference between 5 seeds and 4 seeds than there is between 5 seeds and 9 seeds.

Here is a link to the article: http://m.herosports.com/news/ncaa-tournament-bracket-predictions-record-first-round-ahah

This isn't meant to alarm my fellow Gopher fans. Teams play the games, not seeds, and I have no doubt we are taking MTSU seriously.

Good catch! I wasn't careful enough looking at the data on Mcubed. Those are records since seeding was introduced in 1979, with a missing loss for a 4 seed.

5 seeds opened 17-3 (85%) in the 48 team era from 1980 to 1984. If the NCAA had automatic qualifiers in those days, those 12 seeds were the weakest AQs of the era.

From expansion through 2007, 5s were 63-29 (68.5%) vs 12s.

UNC-Wilmington up big on UVA already. Hopefully this will be the only 12-5 upset of the day (ok, I wouldn't mind seeing Princeton beat Notre Dame either).