by gkhd11a » Wed May 25, 2011 10:42 am
Not surprising, think of the mathematics. A 100 win team playing an 87 win team, what would be the expected chance of winning, based on the winning percentages.
A 100 win team wins 61.7% of the time a 87 win team 53.7 percent of the time during the regular season. Therefore we have a total of 61.7 plus 53.7 = 115.4 total chance of winning as the lower level teams where we run up the record to get our wins in excess of 81 are eliminated. So the 100 win team has a 61.7 / 115.4 or 53.5% expected chance of winning. An advantage but not really very large advantage.
Increasing the wins to 108 gives a 55.4% chance of winning. So upsets should be mathematically common. Meaning even if the 108 win team won the first three games of the playoffs it has a .446 * .446 *.446 *.446 or about one in 25 chance of losing 4 in a row to the 87 win team, which I think would be very frustrating.