First, I have been recording, among many other numbers, the DEFENSIVE EFFICIENCIES of all of the teams in each match-up. I have disregarded any negligible disparities between two teams, so for any match-up that has a difference of 3.0 or less in the defensive efficiency between the two teams, I have thrown that game out.
Here is the interesting part. For each match-up that has a larger disparity of 3.0 in the defensive efficiency of the two teams playing, THE TEAM WITH THE BETTER DEFENSIVE EFFICIENCY IS NOT ONLY WINNING, BUT COVERING AT A RECORD OF 17-3 (I'm including Memphis in the win column of this, some might have bought it down to 24; if not, it's still 16-4). There are two teams that won, but did not cover, being Duke and Tennessee. The only team that had the better defensive efficiency, but lost, was Clemson, and as we all know, they blew a huge lead. Maybe this is not a large enough sample size to hold true over the long run, but I've never capped this extensively before. I will be watching this trend for the remainder of the tournament, and probably playing some of the games that fit the mold, to see if the trend holds true. For anyone that wants to take a look, I am using https://kenpom.com/stats.php for defensive efficiency stats. Any opinions are welcome,and I would especially like to hear if anyone has ever noticed something similar to this before.