When efficiency is brought up regarding basketball predictions, you’d typically expect to hear about offensive efficiency or defensive efficiency, statistics that measure how effectively a team or player scores or prevents others from scoring, respectively. Energy efficiency is usually restricted to comparing washing machines or power generation, but what if each team in the NCAA Basketball Tournament was scored on the energy efficiency of its institution, as well as metrics ranking them on sustainability, environmental stewardship, and other ‘green’ factors?

A few weeks ago, I posted an article that ranked all 351 schools eligible to participate in March Madness and showed what the field of 68 teams would look like if they were based on the average of three different sustainability scores. In setting the field this way, some teams made the tournament (and made deep runs) that would normally never get a chance in the actual NCAA Basketball Tournament (including crowning American University as ‘2018 Green March Madness Champion’). But now that the real 2018 field of teams has been set based on actual basketball measures, we can use the same sustainability ranking system play out the tournament if sustainability determined the winners. Who would be the Cinderella teams, the major upsets, and the National Champion if all the players in the tournament lost their talent in a ‘Space Jam’-like incident and the winners of each game were instead determined by each school’s efforts towards sustainability, energy efficiency, and environmentalism?

Let’s find out!







Metrics used

The same metrics will be used to determine winners in this article that were used to determine the field for the previously described Green March Madness Tournament, so if you’ve already read that (or if you don’t care to read the methodology and just want to skip to the end to see if your school has bragging rights in this alternative method to crowning a champion) then feel free to skip over this recap of the three sets of metrics used to determine the rankings.

After research into the topic, I found three prominent third-party measurements that score and rank the efforts of institutions of higher learning in the United States to incorporate sustainable practices, energy-saving measures, and environmentally-friendly practices (with the latest version of each score pulled in later February 2018).

The Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) uses its Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) to measure how successfully institutions have been performing in sustainability matters. The mission statement of STARS details how it “is intended to engage and recognize the full spectrum of colleges and universities- from community colleges to research universities- and encompasses long-term sustainability goals for already high-achieving institutions as well as entry points of recognition for institutions that are taking first steps towards sustainability.”

STARS is completely voluntary, transparent, and based on self reporting. Dozens of different metrics are included in the STARS measurements, including in the categories of curriculum (e.g., whether the institution offers sustainability-focused degree programs), campus engagement (e.g., whether sustainability-related outreach campaigns are held on campus), energy use (e.g., availability of clean and renewable energy sources on campus), transportation (e.g., inclusion of alternative fuel or hybrid electric vehicles in the institution’s fleet), and many more that are found in the credit checklist.

Based on performance based on these metrics, each school can earn up to 100 points and a corresponding rating of STARS Reporter, STARS Bronze, STARS Silver, STARS Gold, or STARS Platinum. Because STARS is self-reported, institutions can continually make improvements and resubmit for a higher score. Any schools not participating in the STARS program received a score of zero for the sake of this exercise.

The Cool Schools Ranking

The Sierra Club publishes an annual ranking called the Cool Schools Ranking to measure which schools are doing the most towards the Sierra Club’s broader sustainability priorities. The data for the Cool Schools Ranking largely comes from the STARS submissions as well, though with some key changes— the Sierra Club identifies the 62 questions of the STARS survey that they consider the most crucial to their definition of sustainability and put that data in a custom-built formula, they only use information submitted or updated to STARS within the past year, and they asked institutions to also detail what moves they have made to divest their endowment from fossil fuel companies (a question not asked by STARS).

As with STARS, participation in the Sierra Club’s rankings is completely voluntary and transparent, ultimately resulting in a numeric value on the 1000-point scale to use for the rankings. For use in the calculations of final green score for the sake of this article, all eligible teams had their Cool Schools Ranking score divided by 10 so it would be on a 100-point scale like the STARS rating, while schools that were not included in the ranking were given a score of zero.

SaveOnEnergy Green Score

The last of the three rating systems is the 2017 Green Score given by SaveOnEnergy.com. The goal of this scoring system is to give credit to institutions making “noteworthy progress in eco-friendliness and sustainability.” The SaveOnEnergy Green Score takes the top 100 schools in the U.S. News & World Report and awards them scores based on their Princeton Review Green Score, as well as state data on farmers markets, local public transportation options and walkability scores, density of parks in the area of the school, state data on clean and renewable energy options, and availability of green jobs.

The data for the SaveOnEnergy Green Score is a mix of voluntary data (e.g., data submitted to the Princeton Review Green Score) and mandatory statistics (e.g., state data on energy options and green jobs). In the end, SaveOnEnergy takes all of these factors to create a final score out of 100. However the score is only published for the top 25 schools, and the remaining schools are ranked without their score displayed. To account for this, a best-fit equation was used to correlate ranking with the score of the top 25 schools and extrapolated that equation to determine a score for the remaining ranked schools. Schools that did not make the SaveOnEnergy Green Score list were given a score of zero.

Final ‘Green Score’ for each school

In the end, all 351 schools that participate in Division I basketball (representing 32 different athletic conferences) were given a final score that was the average of the STARS score, the Cool Schools Ranking score divided by 10, and the SaveOnEnergy Green Score, so that the final score is also on a 100-point scale (the final scores for all schools can be found in this article’s accompanying Google Spreadsheet).

Before moving forward, let’s make clear that this ranking system is mostly just for an overview of sustainability scores among schools based on publicly available data and should by no means be considered comprehensive. Indeed, each of the three ranking systems make clear that there are many more schools that care about energy and the environment and are also making great strides that happen to not appear on these lists. These schools might not have the time or resources to submit their data, the submission of the data to these third parties was not a priority to those schools, or they simply weren’t included on the U.S. News & World Report Top 100 Universities list and so their data was not included in the SaveOnEnergy Green Score list.

That being said, schools that take the time to report their sustainability are demonstrating a commitment to sustainability causes that should be applauded and recognized. While there are many schools that didn’t report their data that are certainly still environmentally conscious, the submission of data can be considered a sign that transparency regarding sustainability is important to those in charge and thus the reporting schools earn a well-deserved high final green score towards this sustainability March Madness scoring. For that reason, the rest of this article will unapologetically use the final green score as the definitive factor to determine sustainability rankings of the schools.

Playing out the tournament

Again, we’re starting now with the actual 68-team field set by the selection committee for the 2018 NCAA Basketball Tournament. That field of teams and matchups is shown below:

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Now playing out the first weekend of games, assuming the team with the higher final green score wins (and the rare ties between schools who both scored zero being decided by the seeding of the teams), we see the following winners:

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All told, over 48 games played during the first four days of the tournament (ignoring the play-in games), upsets only occurred 13 times in what looks like a typical number of upsets. Historically slightly more than four teams seeded 11 or worse win a first round game, while this green first round has six such upsets. Adding to the intrigue, these first two green rounds featured the first ever number 1 seed losing in the first round (Penn beating Kansas), while two ‘buzzer beaters’ come in the form of New Mexico State outpacing Clemson by 2.4 and CS Fullerton squeaking past Purdue by just 0.09!

That leaves us with a Sweet Sixteen field that looks like the following:

Of these 16 teams, some interesting points include the following:

Five teams come from the Atlantic Coast Conference, three teams come from the Big 10 Conference, three teams come from the Southeastern Conference, two teams come from the American Athletic Conference, one team comes from the Missouri Valley Conference, one team comes from the Big East Conference, and one team comes from the Mid-American Conference;

This green Sweet Sixteen has five remaining teams seeded 7 or worse, while the NCAA Tournament only has three such Cinderellas on average; and

Looking at the top seeds, only two out of four 1 seeds remain, while three out of four 2 seeds remain.

Taking the tournament two rounds further gives the following green Final Four:

I had honestly expected that playing out the NCAA Tournament according to these sustainability metrics would result in a completely outlandish Final Four, but for the most part this outcome is surprisingly realistic with one 1 seed, one 2 seed, one 3 seed, and one 11 seed (when, in fact, LSU, George Mason, and VCU have all made Final Fours as 11 seeds, the lowest seed to make it that far). Also all four teams already have a national championship on their resume (thanks to those who pointed out and corrected my initial claim that Loyola did not have one– they actually won it all back in 1963-64!), so the most sustainable schools represented by the 2018 NCAA Basketball Tournament are also surprisingly basketball powerhouses!

Playing out the rest of the tournament to find the overall winner, we find…

Drumroll…

…

…

The winner of the 2018 March Madness Tournament played out using sustainability rankings is Loyola (IL)! Led by a top 10 ranking from the Sierra Club and a top 25 ranking from STARS, there was no stopping this scrappy school from becoming the lowest seeded team to ever win the whole tournament– talk about Cinderella! A pat on the back is due to all the Final Four teams, as they have set themselves ahead of the pack as schools that prioritize the future of energy and the environment, along with many of the other teams that performed well in this ranking process.

Congratulations to Loyola, and best of luck to the rest of the teams next year– you now have a full year to make improvements on campus and report your data to the great sustainability accountability organizations that are keeping watch over our colleges and universities. And I suppose we can now give all the NCAA basketball players their talents back and have them settle it on the court like they do every year…

Final bracket played out

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To see the field get set from scratch using sustainability, see this blog post on the idea. To see a similar process used to determine who would have won the 2017-18 NFL season based on sustainability, check out this previous blog post. Lastly, to learn about the intersection of green issues with sports, see this interview I did with the writer of the Green Sports Blog.

Sources and additional reading

2018 NCAA Tournament Bracket: CBS Sports

Cool Schools 2017 Full Ranking: Sierra Club

SaveOnEnergy 2017 Green Report: Top Universities in the U.S.: SaveOnEnergy

The Sustainable Tracking, Assessment & Rating System: Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education

About the author: Matt Chester is an energy analyst in Washington DC, studied engineering and science & technology policy at the University of Virginia, and operates this blog and website to share news, insights, and advice in the fields of energy policy, energy technology, and more. For more quick hits in addition to posts on this blog, follow him on Twitter @ChesterEnergy.