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Fort Wayne knocked off Indiana Tuesday night in an overtime thriller of the Indiana Classic, prevailing by a score of 71-68. Some have heralded it as an early-season miracle, while local media outlets in Indiana referred to it as a "historic" win. While it is historic in the sense that it was Fort Wayne's first ever win over a Top 25 team, and certainly an upset, it is nowhere near the most unlikely or surprising result of the young college basketball season. Using ESPN's College Basketball Power Index (BPI), one can calculate what the most unlikely win of the young season has been so far. There are two parts of the approach to this, due to the constant updating of BPI that occurs when we learn more about each team.  The first calculation is based on what results were most unlikely, given the information we had leading up to the game. This is based on what each team's perceived strength (BPI) was going into the game. The second tenet of the approach is to use the most current estimate of a team's strength, now that we know more about each team. This approach is helpful since we know more about teams as the season progresses, but isn't perfect because we are using the result of the game to inform BPI, which is then used to calculate a Win Probability (WP). By either standard, Fort Wayne's upset of Indiana doesn't even sniff the top 5. Why? Fort Wayne may not be a big-budget basketball school, but there are a lot of worse teams. According to BPI, the Mastodons were the 124th-ranked team heading into Tuesday's game, playing the 17th ranked team. While that figure might seem low, it is still above average in a Division I that includes 351 teams. Also, it is important to remember that it was a home game for Fort Wayne. Add it all up, and going into the game last night Fort Wayne still had a 29 percent chance to win. While it may have been historic for those hometown fans who stormed the court, more stunning upsets have already happened -- and there are certainly more to come.
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