Wharton High School
Data Science Competition:
Basketball Tournament Predictions

About the Competition

Student teams will use team-level box score data from an entire regular season of women’s college basketball to rank teams after the regular season and then predict winning percentages of a subset of games in post-season play.

Students will receive a complete regular season of data that includes team statistics that inform decision-making.  Based on the regular season game results, student teams will report two results:

  • Rank the top 64 teams from high to low to inform the post-season tournament bracket.   
  • Predict the probabilities of Team A winning over Team B for a subset of post-season games.  

The full competition will take part in 3 phases, as listed below:

Phase 1

Basketball Tournament Predictions

Phase 2

Semi-finals – Description & Slide Presentation

Phase 3

Virtual Presentation

Submission and Scoring

  • Phase 1: Rankings and Probabilities will be auto-scored. 
  • Phase 2: 25 detailed submissions will be reviewed and scored by a defined rubric.
  • Phase 3: The top 5 teams present via Zoom live to judges. Judges deliberate and announce 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners.