March Madness 5: Teams with the Experience Guards to Pull Upsets

 As of March 12 at 9 p.m., a total of 80 teams could still make the tournament either by being selected for winning their conference championship game. Nothing can be more important to an upset bid then good, experienced guards. This is where a Mid-Major can sneak up and stun a more experienced younger team.

To get a mathematical measurement, we take the www.valueaddbasketball.com ranking of each senior guard on each team then take half of the value of each junior guard on the same team to get a total. Of the 80 teams, 22 do not have any junior or senior guards with value so those teams are a zero in these rankings.

The top 3 teams in the tournament based on this metrix are:

1. Villanova looks like the national champion based on this criteria, with a senior point guard Collin Gillespie ranking as the 8th best player in the country (10.15), with junior guard Justin Moore in the top 2% of all players (we include half of his 7.59 in this ranking, and senior guard Brandon Slater in the top 3% of all players (6.73). They won the Big East title today.

2. Illinois star is center Kofi Cockburn, but their next three most valuable players are all senior guards - Trent Frazier (top 2% at 7.30), Alfonso Plummer (top 4%, 6.10) and Jacob Grandison (top 7%, 5.21).

3. Vermont. After watching Vermont's senior guards dominant UMBC 82-43 in the American East title game today, we must wonder if that conference has another big upset brewing. It has been years since Vermont sunned Syracuse in the opening round, but only a few years since their victim today, UMBC, became the first 16-seed to beat a 1-seed with a 74-54 win over a UVA team that went onto win the title the next year.

Our all-time Value Add Basketball rankings indicate senior guard Ben Shungu is the fourth Vermont player to rank in the top 2% of all players, with the first one being the senior Value Add All-American Taylor Coppenrath who scored 16 points in that 60-57 win against Syraucse in 2005. 

Here is how the rest of the team's rank based on good, experienced guards.

Rnk	Best Experienced Guards	Adj Value Add
1	Villanova	25.93
2	Illinois	21.89
3	Vermont	19.26
4	Texas Tech	18.10
5	Texas	18.04
6	UCLA	17.58
7	Seton Hall	17.08
8	San Francisco	16.63
9	Wyoming	15.64
10	SMU	15.40
11	Houston	15.34
12	Connecticut	15.31
13	Gonzaga	15.14
14	Alabama	14.98
15	Oklahoma	14.95
16	Richmond	14.86
17	BYU	14.83
18	Wake Forest	14.64
19	Kansas	13.66
20	UAB	13.59
21	Michigan	12.99
22	Northern Colorado	12.91
23	Providence	12.59
24	Kentucky	11.49
25	Arkansas	11.48
26	Memphis	11.29
27	Baylor	10.42
28	Davidson	10.33
29	Princeton	10.30
30	Purdue	10.00
31	Colgate	9.48
32	Xavier	9.32
33	TCU	9.21
34	Longwood	9.10
35	Rutgers	9.02
36	Iowa	8.52
37	Yale	8.13
38	Marquette	7.95
39	Wisconsin	7.77
40	USC	7.49
41	Bryant	6.67
42	Virginia Tech	6.54
43	Duke	6.09
44	Delaware	5.60
45	Louisiana Tech	5.30
46	Tennessee	5.23
47	Chattanooga	5.19
48	Creighton	5.06
49	Texas A&M	4.95
50	Indiana	4.77
51	Notre Dame	4.38
52	North Carolina	4.21
53	Auburn	4.07
54	Arizona	3.24
55	Southeastern Louisiana	2.92
56	LSU	2.81
57	Akron	2.64
58	Texas Southern	2.44
59	Boise State	0.00
60	Cal State Fullerton	0.00
61	Colorado State	0.00
62	Georgia State	0.00
63	Iowa State	0.00
64	Jacksonville State	0.00
65	Kent State	0.00
66	Long Beach State	0.00
67	Loyola-Chicago	0.00
68	Miami (FLA.)	0.00
69	Michigan State	0.00
70	Montana State	0.00
71	Murray State	0.00
72	New Mexico State	0.00
73	Norfolk State	0.00
74	Ohio State	0.00
75	San Diego State	0.00
76	South Dakota State	0.00
77	St. Mary's (CA)	0.00
78	St. Peter's	0.00
79	Texas A&M-Corpus Christi	0.00
80	Wright State	0.00