As the first half of pool play games wraps up, I can rerun my model using the day’s results. Here are the updated predictions after Day 1 (sorted by overall chance to win the tournament):

On the Men’s side, things seemed to be surprisingly wrapped up after only a single game of action. The strong teams that dropped a game (Brown, Georgia, UMass, Minnesota) are all still heavily favored to move on – the model still views them as heavy favorites, although perhaps these early losses revealed a gameplan for some Day 2 upsets. There were very few impactful upsets today, but the big win by Northwestern over Stanford sets up a potential do or die matchup between NUT and Auburn tomorrow afternoon. Carleton’s early dominance has predictably seen their chance of winning the tournament grow, with UNC and Oregon staying strong as well.

For the Women, the results initially appeared skewed to me. How could teams like British Columbia and UCSD be so likely to advance, but so unlikely to win their pool? But the results do make sense. BC has two easy matchups tomorrow and only needs one win, but is already behind UNC and Pitt in their pool, who are both 2-0. UCSD again only needs one win, but would need to go 2-0 while Texas goes 0-2 in order to earn a bye.

There is some more potential for craziness tomorrow here on the women’s side, as Oregon has shockingly dropped their first two games, but still have a 1-in-3 chance to move on out of Pool D, with NC State surging in the forecast. A big matchup for Oregon against Ohio State in the final round could very well be an early elimination game. In Pool B, one more upset by Michigan might be enough to earn a surprise bid into the bracket. Dartmouth still remains the favorite to win, but I do think the model is underestimating their chances substantially – perhaps the parameters I’ve built into the model work better for the Men’s USAU rankings than the Women’s.