In the men’s pool, there are 22 contestants still alive. Ranked in order of the number of the remaining 128 scenarios in which they win, we have:

Matt Thomsen 22
Ryan Kessler 19
Mike Boyd 12
Mike Wiser 10
Joshua Krause 9
Pat McGriff 7
Jimmy Smith 7
Joe Wright 5
Ian Auzenne 5
Kevin Pilz 4
Brooks Mason 4
Joe Hiegel 4
Mike Rollins 4
John Schultz 4
Tony Miller 4
Yvette Webster 3
Lief Olsen 2
Rhett Umphress 2
John Bishop 2
Michael Crow 1
Paul Freelend 1
Erin Hall 1

(The obsessed reader will notice that this sums to 132, not 128 — there remains a possibility for a tie for first, which I count in the victory totals of anyone who is part of that tie)

However, not all scenarios are equally likely. As an example, Ryan Kessler wins in 19 of the remaining scenarios…but in every one of the scenarios in which he wins, either Marquette or Wichita State wins the overall tournament. In contrast, Joe Hiegel wins in only 4 scenarios, but these are the 4 scenarios where Florida beats Louisville in the championship, a much more likely result.

To try to quantify probabilities of contestants winning, I took data from 538, the statistical projection site run by Nate Silver. He has listed the probabilities of each team winning in each of the remaining rounds. Using that data, I calculated what the probability of a team winning a game is conditional on knowing that it has advanced to that game. These numbers are incomplete, as they don’t take into account, the way Nate’s model does but doesn’t provide enough data to easily replicate, how likely a team is to win against a given particular opponent. That is, if Louisville defeats Duke, the numbers I am providing give them the same probability of advancing to the championship whether they play Ohio State or Wichita State to get there. Nevertheless, it’s a reasonable starting point.

Taking this into account, we can rank the remaining contestants on their probability of winning the pool.

Jimmy Smith 12.22 %
Joe Hiegel 11.59 %
Mike Boyd 10.95 %
Matt Thomsen 10.90 %
Joshua Krause 8.80 %
Mike Wiser 8.07 %
Pat McGriff 7.60 %
Michael Crow 6.53 %
Kevin Pilz 3.383 %
Paul Freelend 3.380 %
Ian Auzenne 3.36 %
Yvette Webster 3.30 %
John Schultz 1.92 %
Rhett Umphress 1.71 %
Mike Rollins 1.56 %
Ryan Kessler 1.50 %
Lief Olsen 1.10 %
Brooks Mason 0.76 %
Joe Wright 0.69 %
Tony Miller 0.14 %
Erin Hall 0.10 %
John Bishop 0.02 %

If I had a Twitter account we could be trolling each other all week.

GOOOOOOO CYCLONES, BEAT THE IRISH!

:-)