I have created several Monte Carlo simulations over the past year to try and determine probabilities for various sporting events. This week I decided to tackle the Texas Six-Man state tournament. (I will publish more bracket evaluations as the week goes on)

For the past 21 seasons, I have been producing rankings for six-man football. For those of you who do not know the history, I would fax my rankings to newspapers across the state and several would actually publish them. I eventually put together a newsletter, The Huntress Report, where I would add scores, game stories, stats and schedules to the rankings and mail (or fax) to subscribers. Eventually I moved to a website, where I would update the information a week behind, so that my subscribers would be getting the freshest information first. That all was scrapped in 1999 when I decided to go 100% to the website (www.sixmanfootball.com).

METHODOLOGY

You can read some of my earlier posts (see below here at sixmanguru.com) where I discuss Monte Carlo simulations if you are interested. In this case I played the UIL Division I tournament 100,000 times using probabilities calculated from the ratings on my website. To account for upsets and a more Bayesian methodology, I modified the teams ratings to also simulate my rating systems (generally) after each round. I also recorded each round a team lost and below are the results.

Crowell, the defending DI state champions, wins the title again a whopping 33.1% of the time and reached the finals over 41% of the time.

TEAMBI-DISTRICTAREAQUARTERSSEMISFINALSCHAMP
Crowell8686126842526411843842633097
Ira168469048411789920657316435
May1911845019585289152688214257
Blum939628172808927327225659806
Borden County1619524064215972503648368272
Happy992521253346862444740755614
Abbott266924293401841647493303027
Water Valley22717633998220251213901762
Valley2146050424142761082513811634
Gordon306141826535123941452271357
Knox City83154419296271484664879
Grady4202741247113294300508589
Highland9131432703476935478527
Aquilla7330828131736042971795427
Sterling City44824471096529782373383
Zephyr17303556782197234771296274
Anton83805848446662544254247
Newcastle69386115551509426781046241
Garden City55176396514328411224210
Ropes579733237969382288218204
Marfa77283206471378374151167
Nazareth785401702827241409143156
Milford9060497252622335697130
Santa Anna48258467372667170553994
Rochelle51742440202323141642970
Spur90075512137848906466
Leverett’s Chapel3559959216451553112118
Eden826971450224612497714
Chester447965291217174629914
Tioga980897937752805013
Campbell552044329911542815111
Savoy64401336781719159385

The good news is every teams has a chance to win it all — even Savoy. The bad news — it appears they only an approximate 5 in 100,000 chance. I did run this a few times and they did get as high as 12 in one of the iterations. Tioga, a team that loses 98.1% of the time in the first round actually has a better chance than Savoy with 12 wins.

Another thing that stands out would be the fact that Ira, despite winning the title a theoretical 16.4% also seems to lose in the first round (16.8%) much more often than teams like Crowell (8.7%) or May (an amazing 1.9%). This goes to show that despite the 45-point expected spread on the Ira-Knox City game, it is still a much more difficult match-up for the Bulldogs than Highland or Tioga will be for Crowell and May, respectively.

Also interesting to note is that the East wins a dominant 70.2% of the time.

The most common final is a rematch of last year’s, May v. Crowell, with Blum v Crowell coming in next. The good news for May is they reach the final 41.1% of the time, which is a very good season. Blum is expected to reach the final about 32.4% of the time.

Wednesday I will release my UIL DII simulation results (they are already done, but it is my anniversary and we are going out for dinner). I will release the private school results either late Wednesday or early Thursday.