The following table provides each team’s percent chance of advancing to a given round, based on a simulation using our win probability models¹. This allows us to view each team’s chances of making the Elite 8, Final 4, or any other round, and to compare that team to others in the field. For example, in the first row, our models give Arizona a 98.4% chance of advancing to the 2nd round, 51.0% chance of making the Final 4, 31.6% chance of making the title game, and 24.1% chance of winning it all.

Before you take out a loan and bet it all on Arizona to win it all, let me start by saying that last year, Michigan State would have been near the top of this list – likely with a 99.5% chance of beating Middle Tennessee in the first round…. On the bright side, Villanova would have been right there with them, and they were a far less popular choice. If you are using this to help fill out your bracket, it is worth considering how these numbers play along with popularity (e.g., if you pick UNC to win it all – and they win – there are likely plenty of others in your pool who also had UNC). This tool can help identify teams that may be less popular choices, but still have a decent shot at making a deep run.

These numbers also highlight the impact of the bracket layout (i.e., where teams are placed, and who is in their region). For example, if the 3 best teams are all on the left side of the bracket, in a simulation, those 3 teams will eat away at each other and decrease each of their chances of winning it all (even if they are the best teams). If the 4th best team is on the other side of the bracket all alone, you might be better of picking them. Check out our full bracket here.

¹This table was populated using a simulation of 10,000 tournaments for each of our 6 probabilistic models (60,000 tournaments in total). For each tournament, random numbers were generated for each game and compared with the given model’s win probability for that game (advancing either Team1 or Team2 depending on where the random number fell). For example, consider tournament #1, model #1, and game #1. For this game, model #1’s win probability for Team1 is 90%. A random number between 0 and 1 is generated – if the number generated is greater than 0.90, we advance Team2 to the next round, and if it is 0.90 or less, we advance Team1 to the next round. This process is repeated for each game, tournament, and model. The results of each 10,000 tournament simulation were added together so that each model’s predictions have equal weighting.