ESPN Men's Basketball

The instant the field of 65 is announced on Selection Sunday, tourney pool players will gain access to an arsenal of statistics powerful enough to break down every team to its atomic elements. What fans won't gain, however, is any insight into which statistics matter most in determining tourney success. That's why it's easy for even the most knowledgeable bracket researchers to shoot themselves in the foot. It's one thing to know a team's PPG, RPI or SOS; it's another to know which of these stats make a difference.

One thing is clear -- even to those bracket-challenged know-nothings that keep winning your pool: seeding is the single best determinant of a team's tourney fate. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the four highest seeds have accounted for 76 of the 88 Final Four teams and have won 20 of 22 tourneys in the modern era. The real challenge is to figure out which of these high-seeded teams will advance, which will drop out early … and which dark horses will deal the upset blows.

That's where the attribute PASE, or "performance against seed expectations," analysis comes in. We quantified whether teams possessing a variety of key attributes exceeded or fell short of the win totals that their seeding warrants. We'll list the top 10 overall contributors to tourney overachievement and the bottom five factors for underachievement. Then we'll examine the key characteristics of over- and underperformance for each seed class -- favorites (Nos. 1 and 2 seeds), contenders (Nos. 3 through 6 seeds), toss-ups (Nos. 7 through 10 seeds), long shots (Nos. 11 through 14 seeds) and pushovers (Nos. 15 and 16 seeds)

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