The Eastern Regional bracket’s top half–the slate of games that appear higher as you look at the seedings–matches up Virginia-Coastal Carolina, Michigan State-Delaware, Cincinnati-Harvard, and George Washington-Memphis. Unlike in the other portion of games in the East, prognosticators might be better off making the safe picks here.  

The most likely upset appears to be the Ivy League champions surprising Cincinnati. Twelfth-seeded Harvard has improved from 47 to 33 (www.kenpom.com) in the final month of the season while Cincinnati has stayed stagnant at 24. Harvard has been the better team by a slight edge, and they look good to surprise unless Sean Kilpatrick (5th best player in Value Add) can come come up huge.

Home Advantage: George Washington could have the edge in Raleigh to pull the upset in the opening round against Memphis in a battle of two cold teams.

The following are the Value Add Rankings for each player in the top half of the East Region, their team’s seed, height, year in school, and which players are NBA prospects (all caps). The teams are Cincinnati (5-seed), Coastal Carolina (16), Delaware (13), George Washington (9), Harvard (12), Memphis (8), Michigan St. (4) and Virginia (1). 

The items listed for the top few players on each team should be the biggest considerations along with injured players, the home advantage, and which team enters the tournament hot (which we define as improving the most at www.kenpom.com over the past month of the season). The system is a precise measurement of how many points a player adds to his team’s score per game over the player who takes his place. Every score (three-pointer, two-pointer or foul shot), assist, offensive rebound, foul drawn, etc. helps a team score while every turnover and missed shot costs the team points. On defense, every steal, blocked shot, defensive rebound, turnover forced, and opponent’s missed shot takes points off the board while every basket or offensive rebound allowed adds to the opponent’s score. The player’s offensive and defensive combination calculates together with the help of the stats at www.kenpom.com. How many points a player adds to his team’s score appears in the offensive category (shown as “off” in the table below), and his overall impact on points once defense is factored appears as “Total” in the table.

Top East Bracket Players (teams in order they appear on bracket: table.tableizer-table { border: 1px solid #CCC; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif font-size: 12px; } .tableizer-table td { padding: 4px; margin: 3px; border: 1px solid #ccc; } .tableizer-table th { background-color: #104E8B; color: #FFF; font-weight: bold; }

Rnk Player Seed Team Ht Yr NBA/g Off Total
994 Badou Diagne 16 Coastal Carolina 6′ 7″ So   0.43 0.76
1030 Warren Gillis 16 Coastal Carolina 6′ 3″ Jr g 0.75 0.73
1287 Elijah Wilson 16 Coastal Carolina 6′ 4″ Fr   0.96 0.48
1955 Colton Ray-St Cyr 16 Coastal Carolina 6′ 5″ Fr   0.00 0.13
2080 Michel Enanga 16 Coastal Carolina 6′ 5″ So   0.00 0.08
2305 Tristian Curtis 16 Coastal Carolina 6′ 7″ So   0.00 0.01
  El Hadji Ndieguene 16 Coastal Carolina 6′ 10″ Sr   0.00 0.00
  Eric Smith 16 Coastal Carolina 6′ 0 Sr   0.00 0.00
  Josh Cameron 16 Coastal Carolina 6′ 1″ Jr g 0.00 0.00
  Uros Ljeskovic 16 Coastal Carolina 6′ 8″ So   0.00 0.00
55 Malcolm Brogdon 1 Virginia 6′ 5″ So   3.41 4.84
213 Joe Harris 1 Virginia 6′ 6″ Sr   2.88 3.10
239 London Perrantes 1 Virginia 6′ 2″ Fr g 1.95 2.90
312 Akil Mitchell 1 Virginia 6′ 8″ Sr   0.84 2.45
358 Anthony Gill 1 Virginia 6′ 8″ So   2.01 2.19
611 Mike Tobey 1 Virginia 6′ 11″ So C 0.62 1.42
678 Justin Anderson 1 Virginia 6′ 6″ So   0.94 1.30
1500 Darion Atkins 1 Virginia 6′ 8″ Jr   0.04 0.34
1807 Evan Nolte 1 Virginia 6′ 8″ So   0.29 0.20
223 Isaiah Armwood 9 George Washington 6′ 9″ Sr   1.72 3.01
283 Patricio Garino 9 George Washington 6′ 6″ So   1.93 2.61
284 Kevin Larsen 9 George Washington 6′ 10″ So   2.95 2.61
288 Kethan Savage 9 George Washington 6′ 3″ So   1.30 2.59
292 Joe McDonald 9 George Washington 6′ 1″ So g 1.48 2.57
403 Maurice Creek 9 George Washington 6′ 5″ Sr   2.11 2.04
1872 Nick Griffin 9 George Washington 6′ 3″ Fr   0.33 0.17
1880 Nemanja Mikic 9 George Washington 6′ 8″ Sr   0.32 0.16
2175 Miguel Cartagena 9 George Washington 6′ 2″ Fr   0.00 0.05
2298 John Kopriva 9 George Washington 6′ 8″ Jr   0.00 0.01
104 Joe Jackson 8 Memphis 6′ 1″ Sr PG 3.33 4.02
161 Shaq Goodwin 8 Memphis 6′ 9″ So PF 1.89 3.46
208 Michael Dixon 8 Memphis 6′ 1″ Sr   2.70 3.11
413 Chris Crawford 8 Memphis 6′ 4″ Sr   1.08 2.00
597 Austin Nichols 8 Memphis 6′ 8″ Fr   1.45 1.45
885 Nick King 8 Memphis 6′ 7″ Fr   0.60 0.93
940 David Pellom 8 Memphis 6′ 7″ Sr   1.06 0.85
1568 Geron Johnson 8 Memphis 6′ 3″ Sr   0.00 0.31
  Kuran Iverson 8 Memphis 6′ 10″ Fr   0.00 0.00
5 Sean Kilpatrick 5 Cincinnati 6′ 4″ Sr g 5.87 7.52
44 Justin Jackson 5 Cincinnati 6′ 8″ Sr   1.41 5.05
216 Titus Rubles 5 Cincinnati 6′ 7″ Sr   1.10 3.07
468 Jermaine Sanders 5 Cincinnati 6′ 5″ Jr   2.00 1.82
486 Troy Caupain 5 Cincinnati 6′ 3″ Fr   0.77 1.75
796 Kevin Johnson 5 Cincinnati 6′ 2″ Fr   0.68 1.09
1024 Shaquille Thomas 5 Cincinnati 6′ 7″ So   0.56 0.74
1580 David Nyarsuk 5 Cincinnati 7′ 1″ Sr   0.18 0.30
1865 Jermaine Lawrence 5 Cincinnati 6′ 9″ Fr   0.00 0.17
1922 Ge’Lawn Guyn 5 Cincinnati 6′ 2″ Jr   0.00 0.15
218 Steve Moundou-Missi 12 Harvard 6′ 7″ Jr   2.35 3.06
224 Wesley Saunders 12 Harvard 6′ 5″ Jr g 1.87 3.00
492 Laurent Rivard 12 Harvard 6′ 5″ Sr   3.10 1.74
496 Kyle Casey 12 Harvard 6′ 7″ Sr   0.67 1.72
562 Jonah Travis 12 Harvard 6′ 6″ Jr   1.38 1.52
722 Brandyn Curry 12 Harvard 6′ 1″ Sr   0.88 1.23
1002 Siyani Chambers 12 Harvard 6′ 0 So g 1.44 0.76
1397 Evan Cummins 12 Harvard 6′ 9″ So   0.19 0.40
  Agunwa Okolie 12 Harvard 6′ 8″ So   0.00 0.00
181 Davon Usher 13 Delaware 6′ 6″ Sr   3.41 3.23
267 Jarvis Threatt 13 Delaware 6′ 2″ Jr g 1.38 2.74
451 Carl Baptiste 13 Delaware 6′ 9″ Sr   1.91 1.88
847 Kyle Anderson 13 Delaware 6′ 2″ Jr   2.01 1.00
875 Devon Saddler 13 Delaware 6′ 2″ Sr   1.89 0.94
1545 Marvin King-Davis 13 Delaware 6′ 7″ So   0.63 0.32
2252 Cazmon Hayes 13 Delaware 6′ 4″ Fr   0.05 0.02
  Devonne Pinkard 13 Delaware 6′ 6″ Fr   0.00 0.00
45 Gary Harris 4 Michigan St. 6′ 4″ So SG 3.80 5.04
158 Branden Dawson 4 Michigan St. 6′ 6″ Jr SF 2.25 3.51
226 Adreian Payne 4 Michigan St. 6′ 10″ Sr PF/C 2.46 2.97
355 Denzel Valentine 4 Michigan St. 6′ 5″ So   1.80 2.22
414 Keith Appling 4 Michigan St. 6′ 1″ Sr   2.71 2.00
507 Matt Costello 4 Michigan St. 6′ 9″ So   1.64 1.68
670 Travis Trice 4 Michigan St. 6′ 0 Jr   1.82 1.31
800 Kenny Kaminski 4 Michigan St. 6′ 8″ Fr   1.64 1.08
1748 Alvin Ellis 4 Michigan St. 6′ 4″ Fr   0.00 0.22
2057 Alex Gauna 4 Michigan St. 6′ 9″ Jr   0.18 0.09
2081 Gavin Schilling 4 Michigan St. 6′ 9″ Fr   0.16 0.08
2315 Russell Byrd 4 Michigan St. 6′ 7″ Jr   0.00 0.00