The Furman men’s basketball team reacts to the news of their No. 15 seed placement in the NCAA Tournament during a Selection Sunday watch party at Timmons Arena. Photo by Nathan Gray, Furman University.
Every March, hope and probability collide in the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. This year, Furman University enters the bracket as a No. 15 seed – exactly the kind of team fans hope might become a Cinderella. The math, however, tells a more cautious story.
Liz Bouzarth, Kevin Hutson and John Harris ’91, Department of Mathematics
For Furman math professors Kevin Hutson and Liz Bouzarth and John Harris ’91, the drama of March is rooted in probabilities. Each year the trio analyzes tournament matchups using a data-driven model that estimates the likelihood of upsets across the bracket. When they ran the numbers for this year’s tournament, Hutson says the Paladins face long – but not hopeless – odds.
“Furman has about a 7% chance of an upset,” Hutson says. “That’s sort of the bad news. The good news is if you look at all the 15 seeds this year, that’s the best chance any of them has.”
That number comes from a model built and refined over more than a decade, often with help from Furman students. Hutson, Bouzarth and Harris pull game-by-game statistics from ESPN and season metrics from analytics databases, then run the data through a variety of techniques – regression models, clustering analysis, decision trees and historical matchup comparisons. Each model contributes to what Hutson calls an “ensemble model,” blending multiple analytical perspectives into a single upset probability.
The work doesn’t stay inside the classroom. Each year their analysis is shared with sports journalists, including writers at The Athletic, who use the probabilities to identify the tournament’s most likely upsets and the storylines hidden in the numbers.
Still, Bouzarth emphasizes that the model doesn’t predict winners—it measures likelihood.
“The type of information we provide is the probability of an upset,” she says. “Anybody can do with that information what they want.”
That uncertainty is exactly what makes March Madness so compelling. Even the best models miss surprises. When the team ranks the 10 most likely upsets each year, Hutson says, “we usually hit about five or six out of that 10,” while a few unexpected results slip through.
And that’s where Cinderella stories live.
A 7% probability might sound small. But in a tournament defined by chaos, it’s also enough to imagine the possibility that Furman could beat the numbers, bust a few brackets and turn a sliver of probability into one of March’s most memorable moments.
