The data jockeys at FiveThirtyEight have taken an analytical eye to the legend of Tournament Tom Izzo, and they've validated what many of us casual observers have long assumed: the Spartans' front man really is the best coach in the business, and according to their figures, it isn't even close.

We can track where Izzo ranks among all tournament coaches in the 64-team bracket era1 by comparing his actual wins to the number we’d expect of a team with the same seedings and pre-tournamentSimple Rating System (SRS) ratings. And — spoiler alert — he’s No. 1 by a wide margin.

To illustrate the method, a typical No. 7 seed would expect to win about 0.9 games per tournament, on average, while a No. 7 seed with an SRS 2.9 points better than the seed average — like Michigan State this season — would expect to win about 1.0 games per tournament. (This accounts for teams that may be over- or under-seeded according to their power rating.)

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When we factor 2015 in (according to the FiveThirtyEight model, Michigan State is expected to win 3.1 games this year, 2 more than you’d normally expect), Izzo’s Spartans have won 14.6 more tournament games than would be expected from their seedings and pre-tournament SRS ratings.

Izzo tops the list, followed by Rick Pitino, John Calipari, Jim Calhoun, Billy Donovan and Brad Stevens. Other Big Ten coaches in the list of "overachievers" include John Beilein (#8), and former friend of the program Gary Williams (#26), late of Maryland, though Williams' Terps were not in the B1G during his tenure.

Despite their relative equilibrium on the court since Thad Matta's arrival here, Izzo does in fact do more - statistically speaking - with less. Coach Matta, even considering his deep tournament runs early in his tenure, did not even crack the Top 30 on FiveThirtyEight's list, perhaps validating (warning, confirmation bias possible) what many have said about Matta - that he does no better than expected with the talent he recruits, and perhaps even does worse than expected, though without the full dataset we can't make that assumption (even #30 on the list - Roy Williams - was +2.7 on their index).

Please note, I'm not sharing this to re-stoke any flames or provoke any sort of #FireFickell enmity toward our coach - just sharing this in the context of a good discussion earlier in the week.