The computer ranking system out of Georgia Tech seems to hold no grudge against the school’s ACC basketball foes: It predicts North Carolina’s Tarheels will be the one team standing at the end of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
The Logistic Regression Markov Chain (LRMC) system designed by three Georgia Institute of Technology professors (Joel Sokol, Paul Kvam and George Nemhauser) also has the University of Pittsburgh, University of Memphis and University of Louisville headed to the Final Four, with Memphis losing to North Carolina in the final game on April 6. Georgia Tech, nor any other school in Georgia, qualified for the March Madness this time around.
LRMC’s track record is solid. Last year it predicted that the University of Kansas, the eventual winner, would win. It had the rest of the Final Four correct as well. I suspect the system will be right again this year, at least on UNC.
The computational system spits out its results after chewing on scoreboard results, home court advantage, margin of victory and other factors. Michigan State, Boston College and Utah all have potential for going further than their seedings might indicate this year, according to the system.
The system also has a fallback plan: “Suppose North Carolina loses in the first round, our prediction would change at that point,” Sokol said in a statement. “In that case, Pittsburgh would be who we predict as the winner.”
