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March Madness 2023: Why Your NCAA Tournament Bracket Is a Business School

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March Madness is a delightfully inefficient market. Every year, a selection committee gathers to place a value on 68 college-basketball teams, and fans make predictions based on all sorts of information available to them. Every year, they are thrilled to be proven very wrong. 

The beauty of the four days of men’s and women’s basketball games this week is that nobody has any clue what to expect besides chaos. There are underdogs that defy the odds to find success and favorites that melt into the most spectacular failures this side of Silicon Valley Bank. But what gets lost every year in the aftermath of improbable wins is why they happen—and how those explanations apply beyond the basketball court. 

What can you learn from the NCAA tournament’s wildest outcomes? These are some of the lessons worth keeping in mind as those upsets leave your brackets in tatters. 

Get risky 

The single most effective strategy for underdogs can be oddly hard for them to accept. They have to embrace being underdogs. 

Only in basketball can a bunch of men from Princeton University be considered underdogs, but few people thought the Tigers had a future beyond the first round of the 1996 tournament. For one thing, they were the No. 13 seed. For another thing, they were playing the University of California, Los Angeles, the defending national champion. 

But on Princeton’s bench that day in a baggy sweater was the most important person in the arena: a diminutive, white-haired, 65-year-old known as Yoda. 

His real name was Pete Carril, and the coach who died last year pioneered the methodical Princeton offense, a clinical style of play in which his teams milked the clock in search of good shots. It also happened to be a formula for pulling off upsets. By slowing the pace and decreasing the number of possessions in a game, Princeton was increasing the variance and the possibility of a statistical fluke—and its probability of success. 

Princeton did something else against UCLA that seemed like a radical idea that only an underdog could love. Mr. Carril was one of the first people in basketball to grasp that 3-pointers were worth more than 2-pointers—not just a bit more, but 50% more, an insight that has since warped the National Basketball Association and every level of the sport. As other coaches whined about the 3-point line, Mr. Carril recognized an opportunity hiding in plain sight. He told his teams to fire away. 

Those two ideas became the foundation of Princeton’s game plan against UCLA: slow down and shoot threes. Mr. Carril’s team executed it to perfection. 

Princeton guard Sydney Johnson with coach Pete Carril, a.k.a. Yoda, after the team’s upset win over UCLA.



Photo:

Jamie Squire/Allsport/Getty Images

The brilliance of this approach is that it was designed to inject the most random event in sports with more randomness. It was risky, but that was the point. A startup can’t take on

Apple

and expect to battle the world’s richest company for smartphone dominance, just as the Princeton Tigers couldn’t beat teams with more talent at their own game. Their best shot of leveling the playing field was redrawing the lines of competition. They would only win if they could drag UCLA into an entirely different, barely recognizable type of basketball, one that would have been no less bizarre if Mr. Carril’s team had turned the rectangular court into a rhombus.

That sort of bold thinking is how the underdogs of any industry begin to growl—and win. The final score that day: Princeton 43, UCLA 41. 

Also, get lucky 

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, used a version of the Princeton formula to beat Virginia in 2018, which was the greatest upset in the history of the men’s NCAA tournament: It was the first time that a No. 16 seed had ever knocked off a No. 1 seed. Virginia was the slowest team in the country that year, meaning it was surprisingly vulnerable to a monumental upset, and UMBC relied heavily on 3-pointers that day. Once again, it worked. 

But there is another lesson in the story of the underdog Retrievers: They got lucky.

Anyone who doesn’t acknowledge the role of luck in their professional success is someone you probably don’t want to get into business with. What we attribute to skill is often nothing more than pure chance, and success is a measure of how we respond to that circumstance. 

There isn’t a neat method of quantifying luck in most workplaces. In basketball, there is. In fact, the statistical website kenpom.com ranks teams by their luck, the difference between their actual and expected winning percentages based on their numbers. 

And the team at the very top of these rankings in 2018 was UMBC. 

College basketball’s luckiest team wouldn’t have been playing Virginia if a few bounces and breaks hadn’t gone their way. UMBC made the most of them. The No. 1 team in luck beat the No. 1 team in the field by 20 points. 

Jairus Lyles of the UMBC Retrievers drove to the basket during the team’s 2018 victory over Virginia. Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
The UMBC Retrievers celebrate in their locker room after defeating the Virginia Cavaliers in the first round of the 2018 NCAA tournament. John Joyner/NCAA Photos/Getty Images
The on-court aftermath of the Retrievers’ 20-point victory. Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Jairus Lyles of the UMBC Retrievers drove to the basket during the team’s 2018 victory over Virginia, top left. The Retrievers celebrated their 20-point victory, top right and above. Getty Images (3)

First can be better than best

UMBC was the first No. 16 seed to win in the men’s tournament, but the first time it ever happened was in the women’s bracket 20 years earlier. The underdog in that game was Harvard University.

Harvard also had some luck on its side that day, as two key players for top-seeded Stanford University were injured right before the 1998 tournament, and the Crimson wasted no time capitalizing. They came out fast, raced to a double-digit lead midway through the first half and went into halftime up 43-34. The unprecedented no longer seemed impossible.

It’s not exactly a secret that there is a first-mover advantage in business and basketball, but getting ahead is especially useful in matchups of lopsided resources. Startups and upstarts challenge incumbents by seizing an early lead—think Netflix, once known for stuffing DVDs into paper envelopes, beating the rest of Hollywood to streaming. Underdogs can’t afford to be conservative and wait for the right strategy while operating from a position of weakness. That’s how companies go bankrupt and teams get blown out in the NCAA tournament. 

But the way Harvard started that day helped shape how the game ended. The longer they hung around, the better their chances of survival. By the time Stanford rallied back in the second half, Harvard was confident that it could win. And it did. 

The Harvard women’s basketball team after defeating top-seeded Stanford during the 1998 tournament.



Photo:

Aaron Suozzi/Associated Press

Never let a crisis go to waste 

The school from New Jersey that charmed the nation last year made other basketball underdogs look more like Great Danes.

There was nothing particularly likely about tiny Saint Peter’s University beating the mighty University of Kentucky in the first round or becoming the first No. 15 seed to reach the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament. But the most unlikely part of the fairy tale was how it began: with an outbreak of Covid-19.

Saint Peter’s figured out how they wanted to play while they weren’t playing. When the virus ripped through their locker room and shut down the program for nearly a month in the middle of the season, Peacocks coach Shaheen Holloway used the stoppage to reimagine his defense, tinker with lineups and experiment with ideas. The only thing he forgot to do was order the glass slippers for a Cinderella run. Their record was 3-6 at the time, but they went 19-6 the rest of the season and credited the extended break for their turnaround. 

Most people would rather root for Duke than spend another moment thinking about the pandemic. But last year’s March Madness provided a reminder that organizations will always find ways to profit from unforeseen and seemingly unfortunate events. 

Tesla

sold millions of electric cars.

Moderna

created a vaccine and billions of dollars in market value. TikTok benefited from gazillions of lost productivity hours. 

And a basketball team called the Peacocks managed to win three games in the NCAA tournament.

After beating Kentucky in the first round last year, Saint Peter’s became the first No. 15 seed to reach the Elite Eight round of the men’s NCAA tournament.



Photo:

Darron Cummings/Associated Press

Write to Ben Cohen at [email protected]

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8


March Madness is a delightfully inefficient market. Every year, a selection committee gathers to place a value on 68 college-basketball teams, and fans make predictions based on all sorts of information available to them. Every year, they are thrilled to be proven very wrong. 

The beauty of the four days of men’s and women’s basketball games this week is that nobody has any clue what to expect besides chaos. There are underdogs that defy the odds to find success and favorites that melt into the most spectacular failures this side of Silicon Valley Bank. But what gets lost every year in the aftermath of improbable wins is why they happen—and how those explanations apply beyond the basketball court. 

What can you learn from the NCAA tournament’s wildest outcomes? These are some of the lessons worth keeping in mind as those upsets leave your brackets in tatters. 

Get risky 

The single most effective strategy for underdogs can be oddly hard for them to accept. They have to embrace being underdogs. 

Only in basketball can a bunch of men from Princeton University be considered underdogs, but few people thought the Tigers had a future beyond the first round of the 1996 tournament. For one thing, they were the No. 13 seed. For another thing, they were playing the University of California, Los Angeles, the defending national champion. 

But on Princeton’s bench that day in a baggy sweater was the most important person in the arena: a diminutive, white-haired, 65-year-old known as Yoda. 

His real name was Pete Carril, and the coach who died last year pioneered the methodical Princeton offense, a clinical style of play in which his teams milked the clock in search of good shots. It also happened to be a formula for pulling off upsets. By slowing the pace and decreasing the number of possessions in a game, Princeton was increasing the variance and the possibility of a statistical fluke—and its probability of success. 

Princeton did something else against UCLA that seemed like a radical idea that only an underdog could love. Mr. Carril was one of the first people in basketball to grasp that 3-pointers were worth more than 2-pointers—not just a bit more, but 50% more, an insight that has since warped the National Basketball Association and every level of the sport. As other coaches whined about the 3-point line, Mr. Carril recognized an opportunity hiding in plain sight. He told his teams to fire away. 

Those two ideas became the foundation of Princeton’s game plan against UCLA: slow down and shoot threes. Mr. Carril’s team executed it to perfection. 

Princeton guard Sydney Johnson with coach Pete Carril, a.k.a. Yoda, after the team’s upset win over UCLA.



Photo:

Jamie Squire/Allsport/Getty Images

The brilliance of this approach is that it was designed to inject the most random event in sports with more randomness. It was risky, but that was the point. A startup can’t take on

Apple

and expect to battle the world’s richest company for smartphone dominance, just as the Princeton Tigers couldn’t beat teams with more talent at their own game. Their best shot of leveling the playing field was redrawing the lines of competition. They would only win if they could drag UCLA into an entirely different, barely recognizable type of basketball, one that would have been no less bizarre if Mr. Carril’s team had turned the rectangular court into a rhombus.

That sort of bold thinking is how the underdogs of any industry begin to growl—and win. The final score that day: Princeton 43, UCLA 41. 

Also, get lucky 

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, used a version of the Princeton formula to beat Virginia in 2018, which was the greatest upset in the history of the men’s NCAA tournament: It was the first time that a No. 16 seed had ever knocked off a No. 1 seed. Virginia was the slowest team in the country that year, meaning it was surprisingly vulnerable to a monumental upset, and UMBC relied heavily on 3-pointers that day. Once again, it worked. 

But there is another lesson in the story of the underdog Retrievers: They got lucky.

Anyone who doesn’t acknowledge the role of luck in their professional success is someone you probably don’t want to get into business with. What we attribute to skill is often nothing more than pure chance, and success is a measure of how we respond to that circumstance. 

There isn’t a neat method of quantifying luck in most workplaces. In basketball, there is. In fact, the statistical website kenpom.com ranks teams by their luck, the difference between their actual and expected winning percentages based on their numbers. 

And the team at the very top of these rankings in 2018 was UMBC. 

College basketball’s luckiest team wouldn’t have been playing Virginia if a few bounces and breaks hadn’t gone their way. UMBC made the most of them. The No. 1 team in luck beat the No. 1 team in the field by 20 points. 

Jairus Lyles of the UMBC Retrievers drove to the basket during the team’s 2018 victory over Virginia. Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
The UMBC Retrievers celebrate in their locker room after defeating the Virginia Cavaliers in the first round of the 2018 NCAA tournament. John Joyner/NCAA Photos/Getty Images
The on-court aftermath of the Retrievers’ 20-point victory. Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Jairus Lyles of the UMBC Retrievers drove to the basket during the team’s 2018 victory over Virginia, top left. The Retrievers celebrated their 20-point victory, top right and above. Getty Images (3)

First can be better than best

UMBC was the first No. 16 seed to win in the men’s tournament, but the first time it ever happened was in the women’s bracket 20 years earlier. The underdog in that game was Harvard University.

Harvard also had some luck on its side that day, as two key players for top-seeded Stanford University were injured right before the 1998 tournament, and the Crimson wasted no time capitalizing. They came out fast, raced to a double-digit lead midway through the first half and went into halftime up 43-34. The unprecedented no longer seemed impossible.

It’s not exactly a secret that there is a first-mover advantage in business and basketball, but getting ahead is especially useful in matchups of lopsided resources. Startups and upstarts challenge incumbents by seizing an early lead—think Netflix, once known for stuffing DVDs into paper envelopes, beating the rest of Hollywood to streaming. Underdogs can’t afford to be conservative and wait for the right strategy while operating from a position of weakness. That’s how companies go bankrupt and teams get blown out in the NCAA tournament. 

But the way Harvard started that day helped shape how the game ended. The longer they hung around, the better their chances of survival. By the time Stanford rallied back in the second half, Harvard was confident that it could win. And it did. 

The Harvard women’s basketball team after defeating top-seeded Stanford during the 1998 tournament.



Photo:

Aaron Suozzi/Associated Press

Never let a crisis go to waste 

The school from New Jersey that charmed the nation last year made other basketball underdogs look more like Great Danes.

There was nothing particularly likely about tiny Saint Peter’s University beating the mighty University of Kentucky in the first round or becoming the first No. 15 seed to reach the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament. But the most unlikely part of the fairy tale was how it began: with an outbreak of Covid-19.

Saint Peter’s figured out how they wanted to play while they weren’t playing. When the virus ripped through their locker room and shut down the program for nearly a month in the middle of the season, Peacocks coach Shaheen Holloway used the stoppage to reimagine his defense, tinker with lineups and experiment with ideas. The only thing he forgot to do was order the glass slippers for a Cinderella run. Their record was 3-6 at the time, but they went 19-6 the rest of the season and credited the extended break for their turnaround. 

Most people would rather root for Duke than spend another moment thinking about the pandemic. But last year’s March Madness provided a reminder that organizations will always find ways to profit from unforeseen and seemingly unfortunate events. 

Tesla

sold millions of electric cars.

Moderna

created a vaccine and billions of dollars in market value. TikTok benefited from gazillions of lost productivity hours. 

And a basketball team called the Peacocks managed to win three games in the NCAA tournament.

After beating Kentucky in the first round last year, Saint Peter’s became the first No. 15 seed to reach the Elite Eight round of the men’s NCAA tournament.



Photo:

Darron Cummings/Associated Press

Write to Ben Cohen at [email protected]

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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