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Patriot League Tournament Odds: Who's the Favorite?

Ed. Note: To the front page! Remember, folks: Instead of leveraging yourself deep into soy futures, think about an investment strategy that includes taking Bucknell and the over.

Much like the odds I ran for the ACC Conference Tournament (those turned out fantastic, didn't they?), I come bearing odds of each team winning the Patriot League conference tournament title.

My ratings are based on the same theories as the team-by-team profiles Sir Hoya Suxa presented earlier (all of your Patriot League knowledge can be found here; use it and impress your friends tomorrow when everyone you know gathers 'round to watch the tournament) and the numbers found at the awesome-sauce Tempo Free Lax.

The one difference is that I have two models, one using raw data adjusted for schedule and then one that uses regressed shooting rates and then adjusts for schedule. I average the two ratings to get an overall snapshot at each teams talents.

Without any more stalling, your Log 5-based Patriot League Conference Tournament odds look as such:

Patriotleaguetournament_medium

You can click the image to enlarge.

Colgate: The Raiders are the top seed in the tournament, thus get a 10% boost in the ratings for home field. As such, that makes the game against Bucknell look more lopsided than it actually is. Without the home field, I have Colgate rated as a 0.759 Pythagorean win percentage while Bucknell sits at 0.715. Kick in the home field, however, and Colgate is expected to win this matchup about 71% of the time. There is around a 24% chance that the Raiders face Army in the championship game and this is the "easiest" of the two potential championship match ups for Colgate. They're expected to beat Army 76.4% of the time. However, there's a 47% chance that they face the second-seeded Lehigh Mountain Hawks. In this match up, Colgate are 61.8% favorites. This all put together gives the Raiders a 47.3% chance to win the conference tournament and lock up the automatic NCAA Tournament birth.

Bucknell: The Bison are the under dogs against Colgate in the first round, expected to win just 29.1% of the time. However, if they do win, their most likely opponent will be the Mountain Hawks, with a 19.4% chance of that match up occurring. Unfortunately, the Mountain Hawks would be favored in that game. Bucknell-Army only has around a 9.7% chance of happening for the league title. Bucknell would be close to 60-40 under dogs against Lehigh but 57-43 favorites over Army. This, put together, gives the Bison a 13.2% chance to win the tournament title.

Army: The Black Knights are the worst of the four teams in the tournament.They have a 0.654 Pythagorean win percentage in my system -- quite good; that makes them 16th in my system overall -- but the top of the Patriot League is just too damn good. Army has just a 33% chance of getting to the championship tilt. If they do get there, however, Bucknell is their best match up where they are just 57-43 'dogs. That just has a 9.7% chance of occurring, however. Against the top-seeded Raiders, Army has a 23.6% chance to win. This, put together, gives Army just a 9.8% chance to win the title.

Lehigh: The Mountain Hawks actually rate higher than Colgate in my system -- 0.791 versus 0.759 -- but the home field for Colgate represents the difference. They'd be slight favorites (55%) to beat Colgate, theoretically, if it were a neutral site game. However, Lehighare about 62-38 under dogs against the top seed should both advance -- which has a 47.3% chance of happening. If Bucknell upsets the Raiders, however, Lehigh becomes the favorites. Their chances of winning the conference tournament are 29.7%.

This isn't the most wide-open tournament (Hello, ECAC!) but it's worth noting that the long-shot -- Army -- still win this tournament around one-in-every-10 times. The lowest seed -- Bucknell -- wins it around 13% of the time and the two favorites are very evenly matched. So long as nothing flukey happens, any of the possible title game match ups should be entertaining lacrosse.

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