2011 NCAA Tournament: Is Offensive Rebounding Percentage key to Tournament Success?

What: Along the Olentangy's March Madness Competition

When: March 15th - April 4th

Where: CBSSports.com Official Link

Password: buckeyes

Directions: Sign up for a CBS Sports account (if you have one already, you're set) and follow the above link to our specific bracket. The password is "buckeyes" in all lower-case. Fill out the clickable bracket and hit the "Save" button located at the bottom of the screen, and you're done.

Possible Strategy: The Offensive Rebounding Percentage Method.

Every SB Nation college site is providing an analysis of the NCAA Tournament today as part of a campaign sponsored by Allstate, and as a means of kicking off our first bracket competition as a member of the SB Nation family, I've decided to detail my personal philosophy for picking this year's field.

Last year's Final Four had three teams ranked within the top ten nationally in offensive rebounding percentage with Butler being the only, and extreme, outlier. After coming upon this figure, I checked out the previous two NCAA Final Fours to see if it was merely an aberration, or if it could be viewed as a trend. The image to the right is a little difficult to make out, but it contains the offensive rebounding percentages of the twelve teams that have made up the Final Four over the past three seasons.

Michigan State, Connecticut, North Carolina, and Villanova comprised the 2009 Final Four, and three of the teams were in an upper-tier cluster of offensive rebounding percentage. Two of the teams, Michigan State and Connecticut, ranked in the top ten nationally while North Carolina fit just inside the top twenty at nineteen. Again, we have an outlier in Villanova.

The 2008 Final Four was notable for lacking an outlier. All four teams placed in the top 25 in offensive rebounding percentage with eventual winner Kansas ranking 22nd. The best rebounding team in the country that season, North Carolina, advanced to the Final Four, but the Tarheels were run out of the building by Kansas in the semifinal round. Offensive rebounding percentage's weakness as a predictive method is partially revealed by that semifinal game, and further revealed by other head-to-head results throughout the past three tournaments. West Virginia should have defeated Duke last year, and Butler should have never even made the Final Four. Memphis should have lost to UCLA in 2009, and Villanova should have lost a handful of times before making it to the Final Four in 2008.

Think of the method, then, not as an absolute predictor of results, but as a floor that teams usually must clear to be eligible for Final Four contention. The average percentage of these twelve teams is 38.83%, a figure that would place this hypothetical average team at eighth in the country this season. Butler's incredible run last March was fun to watch, but it wreaks havoc on the data's average. The Bulldogs 256th ranking skews the average national ranking so badly that it's completely non-representative of the trend. The median corrects for Butler's influence, and it places the hypothetical team as the eleventh ranked offensive rebounding team nationally.

A 38.83% average and 11th nationally ranked median? That's a clear trend. But why does offensive rebounding percentage correlate to success in March?

One of the best basketball writers in the country, ESPN's Eamonn Brennan, ably sums up the pragmatic purpose of offensive rebounding:

The trend is clear: Offensive rebounding percentage is consistently correlated to success in the NCAA tournament. Why? Because it allows a team to have off-shooting nights and still find ways to put points on the board. Shooting can go cold in a heartbeat. When this happens to an average offensive rebounding team, that squad is essentially left to shake its head, wonder why it couldn't get hot, and plan a return to glory in 2011. Offensive rebounding is more consistent. You can either do it or you can't. And when all else fails offensively, rebounds will always be there. Get them, get the ball on the rim and get easy buckets. Hot shooting not required.

In a tournament setting, consistency is key over a period of games. Defensive play is largely more predictable than shooting success, so an offensive category that remains consistent can augment a team's offensive performance over time. With that in mind, Pittsburgh is an attractive Final Four candidate. The Panthers have the second best offensive rebounding percentage in the country and arguably the easiest region.

Ever wish that more things worked like college brackets? That you could seed everything that way? Top 64 pre-game foods. Top 64 college players. Well, now you can do just that with your friends, with the Allstate BFF Brackets, which takes your 64 top Facebook friends (an algorithm seeds them based on interaction) and seeds them in four regions, exactly like the real tourney. Once the tourney starts, your friends advance with the corresponding seeds – till one is left standing. Check it out at http://apps.facebook.com/bffbrackets/