Analysis: BE Regular Season vs. BE Tourney

Something that's been brought up a few times on HoyaTalk is the relative merits of winning the Big East regular season title and/or league tourney title.

I thought I'd look at the performance of the top 2 regular season (RS) teams and BET finals (F) teams in the NCAAs, to see if any pattern emerges. Overall, regular season 1st or 2nd place teams average 2.2 wins the the NCAA, while BET finalists average 1.9 wins.

I broke the teams into 8 groups. For example, a team that finished 1st in the regular season, and lost the BET finals game will be labeled: (#1, #2), followed by count (number of teams) and average NCAA wins. Okay, here we go:

Team	Count	Average
(#1,#1)	11	2.6
(#1,#2)	8	2.0
(#1,no)	8	2.1
(#2,#1)	7	3.0
(#2,#2)	6	1.7
(#2,no)	14	1.6
(no,#1)	9	0.9
(no,#2)	14	1.8

For top-2 teams from the regular season, there does seem to be a correlation between winning the BET title and playing well in the NCAAs. Generally, RS 1st place teams do slightly better than 2nd (2.3 vs. 2.0), but the 2nd place team that wins the BET is the strongest of all groups (noting small sample sizes).

On the other hand, finishing worse than 2nd in the regular season but winning the BET does not appear to be a precursor to an NCAA run (think 'Cuse last season). But strangely, a team that finished 3rd or worse regular season, then lost the BET finals is just short of even odds to make the Sweet 16, on average.