ESPN's Jay Williams knows what it takes to win the NCAA Tournament.
The former Duke Blue Devils star led Coach K's program to a national title in 2001. He was a frontrunner to win another one in 2002, though Duke was upset by Indiana in the Sweet 16.
Now, Williams is analyzing the game for ESPN. However, he might want to re-take a statistics class at Duke. His claim about St. John's NCAA Tournament chances is going viral on Monday morning.
Williams is claiming that St. John's has about a 50 percent chance to "win the whole thing."
"I give St. John's a 50 percent chance of winning this whole thing," he said.
Does Williams understand how percentages work?
If you think St. John's has a 50 percent chance to win the NCAA Tournament, that would mean you're giving them basically a 90 percent chance of winning every remaining game. Is it 90 percent likely that they beat Duke? Of course not.
In reality, St. John's probably has a less than 5 percent chance of winning the NCAA Tournament. ESPN's computer model, the Basketball Power Index, gives Duke a 23 percent chance of winning it all. The Blue Devils have the highest percentage of any team in the field.
St. John's, meanwhile, is just over 1 percent.
College basketball fans are roasting Williams for his opinion
"Jay, you need to go back to Duke and take a course on statistics and probabilities. There’s 4 wins left to a title, to have a 50% chance, it requires like a 85% chance to win every game left (Duke, UConn, Houston, Zona/Michigan). They have a 25% chance vs Duke, like 2% overall," one fan wrote.
"Dude needs to give up his Duke card. Of course he says this. If it was Kansas playing Duke he would be picking the Jayhawks," one fan added.
"Even if you gave St. John's an 80% chance to win in each of their 4 remaining games, they would still not have a 50% of winning the whole thing. What are we doing man 😂," one fan added.
"50?! They can’t shoot lol," one fan added.
Duke and St. John's will meet in the Sweet 16 on Friday night. The game will air on CBS.
