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NCAA Tournament Bracket Prediction: FiveThirtyEight's Interactive and Statistical Outlook Favors Florida-Louisville Title Match

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Nate Silver said he has made a career in political forecasting by picking the favorite to win, a practice that will not be of any use in this year's NCAA Tournament.

In a new piece for his site, FiveThirtyEight.com, Silver projected Louisville as the favorites to win the title. However, they are given a 15 percent chance to win, which is followed by Florida at 14 percent and Arizona at 13 percent.

Silver's statistical outlook on the 2014 NCAA Tournament is based on the theory that there is not one favorite in the entire field to win it all.

"The team that our statistical model regards as the favorite to win it all, Louisville, has just a 15 percent chance of doing so," Silver wrote. "In other words, there's an 85 percent chance that Louisville won't cut down the nets again and that I'll be wrong."

The site has launched an interactive bracket that displays each team's probability of reaching the next round and their chances of winning it all. Arizona has the highest chance of reaching the Final Four, thanks to its projected schedule, but has the third-highest chance at making the championship game.

Arizona, the projected champions of the Western region, would have to face the team favorite to win the Midwest, Louisville. Florida, the likely South champs, are projected to see Michigan State coming out of the East. Florida has a 26 percent chance of making the final game and 14 percent chance of winning it. Michigan State, on the other hand, is one of five teams with at least a five percent chance of winning it all.

Beyond that, there are 10 teams whose best hope at the national title is four percent at best, followed by the rest of the field given less than one percent.

A collaboration with ESPN, FiveThirtyEight's bracket model took into account several rankings and predictors from around the sports world to generate its figures. In addition, the model took into account weekly polls from the Associated Press, USA Today and the nation's coaches.

By FiveThirtyEight's model, here are the Elite Eight and Final Four teams as well as the National Champion.

Elite Eight:

Florida (62%), Arizona (58%), Louisville (54%), Duke (43%), Kansas (42%), Villanova (41%), Wisconsin (40%), Michigan State (39%)

Final Four:

Arizona (42%), Florida (41%), Louisville (38%), Michigan State (24%)

National Championship:

Florida (26%) (14% chance to win), Louisville (24%) (15% chance to win)

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