VBelo Scouting Report: April 12, 2023

MIVA Tournament Projections

Apr 12, 2023

Another day without matches, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to talk about. On Saturday, the MIVA bracket was set and we had a three-way tie atop the leaderboard. With tie-breakers, Ball State ended up with the #1 seed, followed by Loyola and Ohio State. But that is old news. Let’s take a look at the VBelo Projections for this tournament.

MIVA Tournament Projections

Methodology

For each tournament, I run a simulated version of the matches through VBelo. In total, I run 50,000 simulations to capture a complete picture of the likely outcomes. The code counts each time a team advances to the next round and if they eventually win the tournament. After counting all of the outcomes, we are able to see how likely each tournament outcome is (in a percentage).

Tournament Format

The simulation copies the exact format of each tournament. For the MIVA, all 8 teams make the tournament and no one receives a bye. The higher seed is the home team for each match. This is a pretty straight forward 8 team format, which is so nice compared to some of the other tournaments.

Projections

Okay, let’s get to it.

Taking the #1 seed is huge as it guarantees home court advantage for the entire tournament. Ball State is the favorite to repeat as MIVA champion with a 40% chance of winning it all. Unsurprisingly, the top 3 seeds all have at least a 79% chance of advancing to the semifinals. It seems very likely that one of those top 3 teams will end up winning the tournament as they have a combined 84% chance of being crowned champions.

As we have seen this year, the MIVA is a very strong conference and if there are any upsets in the quarterfinals, these projections will change significantly. In 50,000 simulations, every team was able to win this tournament (as unlikely as that may seem). That is one of the great parts of these projections: it’s not about who will win, but who is likely to win.