No conference has more on the line in this year’s NCAA tournament than the Mountain West Conference. With a number of teams making the big show, there are grumblings that the MWC is getting seeded higher than deserved.

Much of the criticism centers on the fact that some teams in the Mountain West have scheduled games against division II teams, which does not affect their RPI’s, and thus their ranking. In the end, these teams still have to beat good teams, but their RPI boost may contribute to securing higher seeds in the tournament. What’s most intriguing is that these teams are not well covered by the national media, so it is unclear what type of respect the conference merits.

Against this backdrop, all eyes are on the MWC teams. If they don’t live up to their rankings, future selection committees may remember. The stunning losses for UNLV (5) and New Mexico (3) this week have certainly hurt the conference, but a deep run by the likes of San Diego could even things out. .

All of this talk brings up an old analysis (see: Things we already knew about the NCAA tournament) of first round winning percentages from a couple of years ago. I thought I would update that analysis to see how perception and performance differ in the tournament. First, I calculate “perceived” conference strength”, which combines the number of teams from each conference in the tournament and the seeding of each of those teams. Then, I related those weightings to first round winning percentages. As I stated last time, this is obviously a limited approach, but still fun to look at. Conferences that have elite teams that make deep runs aren’t accounted for here. So here is the data from 2010-2013.

The PAC-12 is clearly seeded lower than their performance. This is not hard to see as many of these teams have upset higher seeds in recent years. The PAC-12 has not been highly regarded for years, and was predicted to go 0 for 5 in the tournament this year.

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