A March Madness Exercise- Let's Use The RPI Metric To Pick Our Bracket

The Rating Percentage Index (RPI) is a metric used by the NCAA basketball committee to help select teams for the tournament. With bracket-mania now in full swing, we thought it would be interesting to see how we might use the RPI to help fill out our bracket.

Assumptions:
Higher seeds are expected to beat lower seeds.
Upsets are expected in the tournament; lower seeds beating higher seeds.

Our Bracket Filling Rules/Methodology:

• In each round, we expect the same number of upsets as there have been in the last 3 tournaments (mean, rounding down to a whole number).
  
• Calculate the differential in RPI between teams playing each other.
  
• In each round, the specified number upsets expected (X) will be selected  by the X smallest differentials in RPI between teams playing each other. 

Upsets Expected Based on Previous 3 Tournaments:
Round of 64=9
Round of 32=4
Round of 16=3
Round of 8=2
Final 4=0
Championship Game=0

So here is the bracket- we'll grade our accuracy after the tournament. Enjoy!