A generative model for predicting outcomes in college basketball

Ruiz Francisco J. R. () and Fernando Perez-Cruz
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Ruiz Francisco J. R.: University Carlos III in Madrid – Signal Theory and Communications Department. Avda. de la Universidad, 30. Lab 4.3.A03, Leganes, Madrid 28911, Spain

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 2015, vol. 11, issue 1, 39-52

Abstract: We show that a classical model for soccer can also provide competitive results in predicting basketball outcomes. We modify the classical model in two ways in order to capture both the specific behavior of each National collegiate athletic association (NCAA) conference and different strategies of teams and conferences. Through simulated bets on six online betting houses, we show that this extension leads to better predictive performance in terms of profit we make. We compare our estimates with the probabilities predicted by the winner of the recent Kaggle competition on the 2014 NCAA tournament, and conclude that our model tends to provide results that differ more from the implicit probabilities of the betting houses and, therefore, has the potential to provide higher benefits.

Keywords: NCAA tournament; Poisson factorization; Probabilistic modeling; variational inference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1515/jqas-2014-0055

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