Being ranked #1 on 2nd week of January: a historic analysis

[OrlandoCuse]

So I thought it would be interesting to see how teams fared that were ranked #1 (AP Poll) on the second week January, going back the last 16 seasons, to see if it was a good indicator of future results in the NCAA tourney. The results were interesting:

Year; Team; NCAA seed; NCAA result
2011 OSU, 1 seed, L in Sweet 16
2010 Texas, 8 seed, L in First round
2009 Pitt, 1 seed, L in Elite 8
2008 UNC, 1 seed, L in Final 4
2007 UNC, 1 seed, L in Elite 8
2006 Duke, 1 seed, L in Sweet 16
2005 Illinois, 1 seed, L N.C. game
2004 Duke, 1 seed, L Final 4
2003 Duke, 3 seed, L Sweet 16
2002 Kansas, 1 seed, L Final 4
2001 Duke, 1 seed, Won N.C.
2000 Cinci, 2 seed, L 2nd Round
1999 UConn, 1 seed, Won N.C.
1998 UNC, 1 seed, L Final 4
1997 Kansas, 1 seed, L Sweet 16
1996 UMass, 1 seed, L Final 4

• The results were very mixed when trying to predict the National Champion, as the January week 2 poll #1 only produced 2 out of 16 National Champions. (12.5%)
• Out of the 16 teams to be ranked #1 in the 2nd week of January, 8 of them went on the at least the Final Four (50%).
• Out of the 16 teams, 13 went on to get a #1 seed. This would have been 14 out of 16 had Kenyon Martin not broken his leg in the C-USA tourney, causing Cinci to slip to a 2 seed in 2000. I'll split the difference between 13 and 14, and say we have an 85% chance of getting a 1 seed, based upon historic data.
• Texas in 2010 is really the only team that was ranked #1 at this point in the season to fall completely off the map.

*I'll try to update this analysis every week that we remain #1.

 

[pfister1]

Looks like we can count on getting into the tournament.

 

[Marsh01]

That Texas team re-wrote the definition of free fall.

 

[Knicks411]

Totally a random week to pick, but pretty crazy Duke was the #1 5 time sin 7 years at this point in time.

 

[ORANGEsPHK]

I think one metric that you should add is how long they maintained the #1 position up to the date you chose for your analyses. There are a surprisingly lot of teams that only last one week at #1 and it would be interesting to see what the trend is there. If you have the time .. of course

 

[EastCoast2]

Yeah but what % of those teams didn't leave the Eastern Time Zone until January?

 

[CusefanATL]

Totally a random week to pick, but pretty crazy Duke was the #1 5 time sin 7 years at this point in time.

i re-looked over 5 times... im pretty sure it is 4 out of 6.

i have no idea why i was so interested in this, but for some reason i was.

 

[cpatrocks]

I think one metric that you should add is how long they maintained the #1 position up to the date you chose for your analyses. There are a surprisingly lot of teams that only last one week at #1 and it would be interesting to see what the trend is there. If you have the time .. of course

I think both # of weeks at #1 at this juncture and # of losses for the #1 team at as of this date would both be interesting to look at

 

[Knicks411]

i re-looked over 5 times... im pretty sure it is 4 out of 6.

i have no idea why i was so interested in this, but for some reason i was.

Yes, I can't count. I'm not sure what I did there.

 

[OrlandoCuse]

I think one metric that you should add is how long they maintained the #1 position up to the date you chose for your analyses. There are a surprisingly lot of teams that only last one week at #1 and it would be interesting to see what the trend is there. If you have the time .. of course

Interesting data point. I'll try to incorporate it next week (as long as we're still #1 ).