Universal Information Services

After three awesome weeks of basketball we have arrived at the title game for the NCAA March Madness Tournament. The initial analysis by Universal Information Services looked at the top four seeds going into the tournament. This data showed Kentucky was the overwhelming favorite to take the title this year, with Wisconsin and Duke coming in a distant second and third. Villanova never had a shot according to our data. As the games played out, we got one thing right, ‘Nova had no shot, as they were bounced from the tourney very early by NC State. As for our analysis predicting Kentucky would win, the media was wrong in that aspect, although they did come close – very close.

Today we focused on the title game that will take place this evening, Wisconsin vs. Duke. We took another sampling of stories, just like in our first analysis, but this time applied our Impact Score for both teams based on the correlation of the terms “win,” “winner” or “champion.” Using our Impact Score to measure media results allows an organization to gain deeper insight through qualitative analysis.

Within the sampling of media mentions, we found some common themes. One them in particular was talked about extensively in large publications such as CBS.com, New York Times and SBNation.com. Effectively, that emerging theme says Duke has very little depth on their bench. According to CBS.com, Duke only dresses 10 players for a game and really only uses about eight of those players. Duke relies heavily on their starting five. On the other hand, Wisconsin has multiple options who can come off the bench and make an impact. A small percentage of the stories that we analyzed told readers, “not to buy into the narrative that Duke’s depth problems wouldn’t affect the outcome of the game,” while others told us the depth of the Blue Devils would be the downfall of the game. Now whether or not Wisconsin beats Duke remains to be seen. The big takeway is that when analyzing and measuring media results, little can be learned unless you look deeply into a story’s qualitative elements.

Our bold prediction: Wisconsin wins.