Fighting Illini Still Undefeated—Will They Win the National Title?
With March Madness quickly approaching, basketball lovers are all abuzz. Questions being asked and analyzed by everyone from ESPN broadcasters to business executives are: Who will make it into the NCAA Tournament? Who will the number 1 seeds be?
One team that is definitely creating a buzz for its March Madness prospects is Illinois. The Illinois men’s basketball team is undefeated this season. They are in the midst of the fourth best start ever by a Big Ten team. Also, their 13 game road win streak is currently the longest in the nation. On Wednesday night, their victory over Penn State marked their 26th win in a row, setting a new school record for most consecutive wins. However, Illinois player Dee Brown points out that “the record was nice, but the Illini’s ultimate goal is a national title.” Brown had 11 assists and scored 19 points in the victory against Penn State. As a team, the Illini made 67 percent of their shots. Also, they were 12 of 28 from 3 point range. Illinois went on to win the game 83-63.
However, is Illinois good enough to win the national title?
Link to article about Illinois win over Penn State
posted by Anonymous at
8:29 PM
1 Comments:
Statisticians aren't especially excited by streaks unless it's the statistician's undergraduate team winning all of its regular season games in the 2003 - 2004 basketball season and being (briefly) ranked number one in the country:) Here's how to think about streaks in sports. When Illinois plays it has a certain probability of winning, p(v). Since Illinois is a good team the probabiity of winning each game is most likely greater than .5. So the chances of Illinois' 26 game winning streak is p(v1)*p(v2)*...p(v26) (that is, multiply each of the probability of winning each game).
This is not to take anything away from an undefeated team, but if you look at the distribution of streaks over the long haul they tend to match up pretty well with what you would expect from a probability histogram.
By
John Topoleski, at 10:13 AM
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