Stacked South- Is Coach Calipari correct?

UK head coach John Calipari believes the South region is the toughest of the four regions in the NCAA tournament.

“They stacked the region,” Calipari said. “The only thing I was happy about – I heard they were trying to get an exemption for the Heat to be the second seed in our bracket, and they weren’t allowed to get that so they couldn’t put them in there too.”

Is he statistically accurate, however?

We put together a spreadsheet and analyzed RPIs and W-L records of the two thru 16 seeds in each region.

South RPI Wins Loses East RPI Wins Loses
2-Duke 5 27 6 Ohio St. 7 27 7
3-Baylor 8 27 7 Florida St. 17 24 9
4-Indiana 16 25 8 Wisconsin 22 24 9
5-Wichita St. 12 27 5 Vanderbilt 25 24 10
6-UNLV 18 26 8 Cincinnati 42 24 10
7-Notre Dame 40 22 11 Gonzaga 24 25 6
8-Iowa St 33 22 10 Kansas St. 49 21 10
9-UConn 32 20 13 Southern Miss. 20 25 8
10-Xavier 37 21 12 West Virginia 56 19 13
11-Colorado 62 23 11 Texas 50 20 13
12-VCU 39 28 6 Harvard 35 26 4
13-New Mexico St. 59 26 9 Montana 73 25 6
14-South Dakota St. 43 27 7 St. Bonaventure 79 20 11
15-Lehigh 91 26 7 Loyola Maryland 77 25 8
16-Play-In 166 18 15 UNC Asheville 103 24 9
all seeds 44.07 365 135 45.27 353 133
two thru 15 35.36 347 120 41.14 329 124
two thru 10 22.33 217 80 29.11 213
West RPI Wins Loses Midwest RPI Wins Loses
Missouri 10 30 4 Kansas 6 27 6
Marquette 9 25 7 Georgetown 14 23 8
Louisville 13 26 9 Michigan 11 24 9
New Mexico 27 27 6 Temple 19 24 7
Murray St. 21 30 1 San Diego St. 26 26 7
Florida 28 23 10 St. Mary’s (Calif.) 29 27 5
Memphis 15 26 8 Creighton 23 28 5
Saint Louis 31 25 7 Alabama 36 21 11
Virginia 52 22 9 Purdue 45 21 12
Colorado St. 30 20 11 North Carolina St. 48 22 12
Long Beach St. 34 25 8 Play-In 45.5 22 11
Davidson 65 25 7 Ohio 47 27 7
Play-In 43.5 25 7.5 Belmont 58 27 7
Norfolk St. 128 25 9 Detroit 125 22 13
LIU Brooklyn 81 25 8 Play-In 120.5 23 11
all seeds 39.17 379 111.5 43.53 364 131
two thru 15 36.18 354 103.5 38.04 341 120
two thru 10 22.89 234 61 23.22 221 70

From both a RPI and win-loss standpoint, the West Region looks to be the toughest from top to bottom. They have two teams with 30 wins and the statistically toughest eight seed (Memphis).

If you just use RPI as a gauge, the South has the toughest two, three, six and 10 seeds in the field.

The play-in game that features Mississippi Valley State and Western Kentucky makes the numbers a bit murky. We averaged the two teams for the purposes of this chart, but WKU’s RPI of 189 definitely had an impact in the averages. That is why we added a line and looked at just the two thru 15 seeds and then also just the two thru 10 seeds.

If you look at just seeds two thru 15, the South has the highest RPI ranking and the second highest total of wins.

Overall, however, the numbers are pretty close across the board.

The tournament committee certainly set up some interesting story-lines in the South Region, but it doesn’t statistically appears to be slanted against Calipari’s Cats.