NCAA Predictions: Saturday, March 22

The predictions below are based on TAPE matchups which compare teams in 20 statistical rate categories to determine how they stack up against each other, and then applies those rates to a possession model to determine how many points each is likely to score against the other.

7 West Virginia 75                      11 Kansas St.    62
2 Duke          77  (72 poss.)           3 Wisconsin     68  (66 poss.)

6 Purdue        64                       5 Notre Dame    66
3 Xavier        67  (64 poss.)           4 Washington St 69  (63 poss.)

6 Marquette     65                       8 UNLV          62
3 Stanford      66  (66 poss.)           1 Kansas        77  (67 poss.)

9 Texas A&M     60                       5 Michigan St.  67
1 UCLA          66  (63 poss.)           4 Pittsburgh    68  (63 poss.)

Notes:

• Both of the games in the south region project as ridiculously close. Over 65.76 possessions, Stanford has a miniscule 0.39 point advantage over Marquette (66.02 to 65.63). Michigan State and Pittsburgh are even tighter, with the Panthers only 0.24 points better than the Spartans over 63.08 possessions (67.94 to 67.70).
• The TAPE projected spreads are within a couple points of all the Vegas spreads for every game except A&M-UCLA, which Vegas has at 10.5 (according to Yahoo!'s Live Odds page as of 1:25 a.m. EDT). TAPE likes the Aggies to shoot well enough (46% from the floor) to keep the game close.
• Once again, this is the slow side of the bracket; only West Virginia-Duke projects to be played at a faster than normal pace, and four of the games look to be played even below Big Ten speed.

UPDATE - 12:35 p.m. 3/22/08: I updated the TAPE numbers this morning through last night's games (the previous version was through the end of the conference tournaments last Sunday) and re-ran today's games. None of the winners changed, and only 3 games saw any movement of the expected spreads: WVU-Duke and KSU-Wisconsin each tightened by about 1 point, while UCLA gained about a half-point more of a cushion on A&M. The two super-close games are still close, but the gap in each widened slightly; Stanford now has a 0.61-point advantage over Marquette (66.12-65.51, 65.59 poss.), and Pittsburgh is now a 0.80-point favorite over Michigan State (68.31-67.51, 63.13 poss.).