It's conference tournament time, which is the extended first act of the beautiful play we call March Madness. That means it's also conference tournament odds time, and people are breaking down Xavier's chances of making an extended run in the Big East tournament. First, we'll take a look at what Ken Pomeroy has to say on things:
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Good news! Ken Pom thinks Xavier is a lock to make it out of the first round of the Big East tournament. Of course, that's likely because Xavier already has a bye, but I'm not here to quibble over fine points. Pomeroy gives X slightly better than a coin toss chance at winning one game and about a one in five shot at winning two. One win probably gets X in, and I have to imagine two almost certainly does. The odds aren't great according to Pomeroy, but there also far from awful.
Somebody called What If Sports also ran some Big East tournament simulations. Because (a) they have a nice-looking site and (b) I know next to nothing about how to simulate a basketball game thousands of times, I'm just kind of assuming they're at least a little bit credible. They give Xavier a 52.6% of beating Marquette and a 29.1% chance of knocking off Creighton in the next round. Since they only simulate the matchups of their winners, they didn't give numbers on Xavier's chances for winning the tournament or even making the final. What they did do was show what a little quick math tells me is about a 15.3% chance that X gets two wins at MSG.
Finally, a nice man named Jimmy Shapiro representing Bovada.lv emailed me with his/their odds for the Big East tournament. I don't know enough about gambling to know exactly what these mean, but I do know you want a lower number as the numerator for your team's fraction.
Villanova Creighton 7/4 St. John's 6/1 Xavier Marquette 12/1 Georgetown 12/1 Providence 15/1 Butler Seton Hall 100/1 DePaul 500/1 |
Those numbers are purely informational, as I have no plans to make any bets with a stranger named Jimmy Shapiro and I would advise you to exercise the same caution. The bottom line is that Jeff Borzello - one of the most consistently accurate bracket projectors out there - has Xavier in the last four in right now. X needs to pick up a win or two, and the numbers are less encouraging than they could be.