2012 National Championship Prediction

The college basketball simulation engine must not work on Sundays because it waited a day to bust out a great April Fools' joke.

If only I were kidding. John Calipari may not find the punch line all that funny.

After sticking with and projecting the Kentucky Wildcats to cut down the nets round after round, the sim-engine flipped statistical allegiances in a Kansas versus Kentucky National Championship game. We ran 2,001 simulations of the initial bracket of 64, Sweet 16 and Final Four – in each case the Cats reigned supreme.

Keeping with tradition, we re-simulated the title game 2,001 times. To our surprise, the Jayhawks won the first batch of games over 54 percent of the time. Due to the close margin of victory and simulation trend favoring Kentucky each round prior, we elected to run the title game 2,001 more times. This was not to give an edge to the Wildcats, but to verify that the sim-engine did, indeed, favor Kansas in a head-to-head matchup.

It did.

The second batch of 2,001 simulations generated the same result. Kansas, which has had to play from behind a number of times this tournament, is favored to win in over 54 percent of the simulations by an average score of 72-70.

WhatIfSports.com's college basketball simulation engine predicts the Kansas Jayhawks to beat the Kentucky Wildcats tonight in New Orleans.

It would be Kansas head coach Bill Self's second National Championship with the Jayhawks (2008).

Ryan Fowler is the Content Manager for WhatIfSports.com. He can be reached at rfowler@whatifsports.com.