Keeping Score: Which Team Has the Stats of a Champion? Carlton J. Chin, a portfolio strategist and fund manager, and Jay P. Granat, psychotherapist, are authors of "Who Will Win the Big Game? A Psychological & Mathematical Method. They have previously written about the B.C.S.national title game, this year's Super Bowl and last year's N.C.A.A. tournament. After analyzing the championship games or series of the N.F.L., N.B.A., N.H.L. and Major League Baseball, and the major finals in golf and tennis, we identified championship characteristics in our book, "Who Will Win the Big Game? A Psychological and Mathematical Method. Based on this research, we focused on factors that might help predict the winner of the N.C.A.A. tournament championship game between Louisville and Michigan. Last year's article correctly selected Kentucky to win the national title. With an eye toward key concepts of sport psychology, we looked at factors like big-game experience, leadership behind the bench, leadership on the court, error control and consistency. These championship characteristics have proven to be common themes across all sports we have studied. Experience: Over the past 28 tournaments, 16 of 28 champions have had Final Four experience from the previous three years. Teams with more Final Four appearances in the past three years have gone 12-5 in championship games. Louisville has more big game experience, also reaching the Final Four last year. Michigan advanced to the Final Four for the first time in 20 years. Coaching: The coach with more victories in semifinal and championship games has compiled a 14-8 record in N.C.A.A. tournament finals. This year marks the seventh time that Louisville Coach Rick Pitino has reached the Final Four. Pitino won the championship in 1996 with Kentucky and had compiled a 3-5 record at the Final Four, entering this year's tournament. This is the first trip to the Final Four for Michigan Coach John Beilein. All-Americans: Over the past 28 years, teams with more first- or second-team Associated Press all-Americans have gone 13-7 in championship games. This year, only one such all-American is playing in the Final Four: Trey Burke of Michigan. Consistency: The team with the higher 3-point shooting percentage has won 11 of the last 14 title games. Free-throw shooting percentage is also a measure of consistency, and teams with the higher free-throw percentage have gone 10-4 over the past 14 championship games. In the table below, we list the performance of the Final Four teams in consistency categories like 3-point shooting and free-throw percentage. We also included turnovers and a defensive measure because these are also championship traits. Who Will Win the Big Game? Louisville has more championship factors in its favor, by a narrow 4-3 margin. Based on our championship factors and season statistics, we developed a Monte Carlo simulator for college basketball, similar to the methodology we used for our football analyses. The most frequently-occurring score was Louisville 70, Michigan 69. Correction: April 8, 2013 Because of an editing error, an earlier version of the chart with this article misidentified the statistical measure in which Louisville holds the advantage over Michigan, 39.2% to 42.3%. It is field-goal percentage defense, not 3-point shooting defense.