Charlie Creme says no team is guaranteed a #1 seed

[CTBballfan243]

Whether UConn is a 1 seed or a 4 seed, nobody, will want UConn in their bracket. You can take that to the bank.

 

[bballnut90]

Syracuse has an outside shot at grabbing a 2 seed, if they do really well in the ACC (beating NC State, for example). Charlie has them as a 3 right now.

True...but I cant see them finishing ahead of UCONN if UCONN finishes with 2 losses. Syracuse would have to beat Louisville/Notre Dame twice out of 3 or 4 tries (including ACC tourney) and finish ACC play with just 1-2 losses to have a chance.

Whether it is fair or not, the committee likely also
recognizes that Albany will get a strong draw with UCONN but stands will be empty if Huskies are shipped elsewhere. I just dont see a realistic scenario where UCONN doesnt end up in Albany, but obviously a lot can happen.

 

[SportsPageMike]

By end of regular season your No. 1's will be. Notre Dame; UConn; Stanford and Baylor.

 

[MSUFan2003]

There are a lot of scenarios. I am very interested to see how the PAC 12 shakes out. I don't see any SEC team being a 1 seed. I think ND has the clearest path if they beat Louisville, which I expect. Baylor will probably be there too. I'm most interested in seeing who emerges from the PAC 12.

 

[southofnorth]

So: what's really going on here? Is everyone excited because UConn may have drifted down to the quality of other contendas or because the contendas have better teams than usual? It doesn't seem encouraging that the Huskies have to come back to the pack to make things fun again. Should we be enthused about a parity that comes from mediocrity? I'd be wary before I did a jig about UConn's purported demise being (gasp) GOOD for wccb.

I have been thinking about this nonstop. I try to stay positive because I know the first mention of “UConn isn’t doing this well” gets you labeled as negative, harsh, and unrealistic around here. I don’t care if UConn loses every game they play, as long as it’s because they lose to teams that are astoundingly great; not just “better” than UConn. If UConn plays fantastically and the other team outplays them anyway then I will be happy to accept it, but if they lose because they’ve returned to the land of mediocrity then I will be upset.

 

[WNBA 09]

Im picking stanford to take the PAC 12 ive learned to not bet against Tara. The recent injuries will hurt them though. No way oregon goes undefeated they cant defend anyone.

 

[IrishTiger]

Im picking stanford to take the PAC 12 ive learned to not bet against Tara. The recent injuries will hurt them though. No way oregon goes undefeated they cant defend anyone.

Oregon kind of reminds me of how Oklahoma is in football. Very good offense but very bad defense. Oregon is like the Oklahoma of College Women’s Basketball.

 

[j66kicker]

Oregon kind of reminds me of how Oklahoma is in football. Very good offense but very bad defense. Oregon is like the Oklahoma of College Women’s Basketball.

Ouch! (Sooner alum here)

So who is the "Notre Dame of College Women's Basketball"?

 

[Plebe]

Oregon kind of reminds me of how Oklahoma is in football. Very good offense but very bad defense. Oregon is like the Oklahoma of College Women’s Basketball.

Oregon is currently allowing fewer points per game than Stanford.

 

[IrishTiger]

Ouch! (Sooner alum here)

So who is the "Notre Dame of College Women's Basketball"?

Whoops read the question wrong had to delete my first response haha. I’d say the ND of College Women’s Basketball. Recently I’d probably say Baylor. I would say Tennessee but I feel ND Football is better coached and has done a little more I’d say. So I think Baylor is a good comparison.

 

[IrishTiger]

Oregon is currently allowing fewer points per game than Stanford.

I saw that when I looked it up was kind of surprised though they gave up more. Maybe we have a perception because when they play a good team they usually give up a lot of points.

 

[LoTrader]

I don't want anyone to feel ________ for not picking Oregon State to win the PAC-12 this year. I promise not to forward your posts to Coach Rueck.

 

[j66kicker]

I don't want anyone to feel ________ for not picking Oregon State to win the PAC-12 this year. I promise not to forward your posts to Coach Rueck.

I don't feel a bit ________. You can forward this directly to Rueck:

"Yo Coach - You are NOT winning the PAC-12 this year!

Oh, and BTW, I saw you at that Phoenix tournament last April salivating over Hailey Van Lith. You just keep you hands off!!"

 

[WNBA 09]

Oregon kind of reminds me of how Oklahoma is in football. Very good offense but very bad defense. Oregon is like the Oklahoma of College Women’s Basketball.

This __________

 

[willtalk]

You may not agree with him, but Creme is definitely not an idiot. We're lucky to have someone who is dedicated to researching all of this and providing some solid analysis as the year unfolds vs sites like Sporting News where they come up with garbage preseason lists and polls.

I have to admit I was rather harsh in my description of him. However, I do not consider us lucky to have some one dedicated to creating those Brackets. Now if he were just some poster I would agree, but he is getting paid to do that. It's his job and so for multiple reasons that puts him into a higher expectation level. I explain in my following post the issues I had with his selections. It was not really the selections, but what I felt were his flawed methodology.

 

[willtalk]

I question a bunch of his choices, but I'm not sure that he's an idiot. Just understanding all the bracketing rules well enough to propose a plausible bracket takes at least a modicum of intelligence. I think right now he really lacks sufficient data to build a reasonable bracket. Teams that play a bunch of no-names in their OOC schedules make it difficult for analysts to assess their viability as NCAA at-large bids.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would basically agree with the substance of your entire post, not just the part I quoted. As I stated in my previous post, I was a rather harsh in my choice of terminology in describing him. It is not so much that I disagree with his choices but what appears to me the method or system he a seems to be using.

That method seem to want to lock the Pac 12 into 6 spots. I come to this conclusion based on who he had in those six spots prior to his latest offering. He had Utah and Arizona. Basically because Arizona beat their rival Arizona St along with having a good record. He also had Utah based on their record alone. But then
Arizona beats Utah and Utah beats Arizona while UCLA beats Cal. So then he puts Arizona St and UCLA because they beat a highly ranked Cal.

Now I can understand the box he found himself in with Arizona St, Arizona and Utah all beating each other in a round robin. But Arizona St trailed the entire game and only won on a last second shot. So in their round robin they should have held precedence. Now I also understand his problem in respect to UCLA beating a ranked Cal. Although anyone who follows the Pac 12 would realize that Call is overrated and many unranked teams will end up beating them much as Arizona did this last game.

Which sets the table for my point. It appears by his appearing to have to make decisions via the process of elimination among the lower Pac 12 teams as he did with Arizona and Utah that he had already decided on how many teams he would allot for the Pac 12.

Now you claim that those teams will have an opportunity to get back into the bracket as the season wear on. While true- the question remains the criteria for doing so. Will it come at the expense of another Pac 12 team? For one to get in does another have to be replaced? Are the teams under the 5 highly rated teams going to have to compete for two spaces? If the Pac 12 is as balanced as it appears it might be then teams will be knocking each other out of the bracket even though they might be better than teams in weaker divisions who get in.

This leads me to my objection to the SEC at this time having 8 spots. They only had seven the week before. If the league in general is weaker than the Pac 12 and the remainder of the season involves only games withing the leagues it puts the teams in the stronger league with fewer spots at double disadvantage. Common sense tells us that earning a spot is harder than having to just maintain it. To add to that what have the teams in the SEC done just playing them selves to earn that extra spot in one week?

I am just glad that Creme doesn't pick the actual brackets.

h

 

[Fightin Choke]

@willtalk

As @vowelguy stated earlier in this thread, "Teams earn bids, not conferences. " I completely agree with you that the PAC12 is a superior conference than the SEC (and it's not even close). But that doesn't necessarily mean that the conference gets more bids, as it may translate into getting better seeds for the teams that get in the bracket. If the PAC12 feeds on itself (with top teams losing to middle and lower teams), that could mean MORE teams getting in, but crappier seeds for the teams at the top.

I'm sure Creme is using a lot of different sources of data, but one of them is the RPI. The RPI is weird at the beginning of the the season, but as more data become available, it becomes far more accurate. It still has some obvious weaknesses, which make the system pretty useless in determining the best team, as it places too much value to average schedule strength, ignoring that games against top teams are more instructive in determining the truly best team. But as I stated, it has some value. Right now here are RPI's of the teams from the Power 5 conferences that were included in the last version of Bracketology (Jan 8th).

It doesn't take more than a casual perusal of the chart to see that Charlie is probably relying on it very heavily in determining inclusion in his bracket. I only went down to teams ranked 82nd or higher, because the 82nd team was the lowest RPI to make Charlie Creme's Bracketology. The most egregious looking selections are teams that have have lost games recently since Charlie updated the bracket. Kansas (#69) just lost to #150 Texas Tech. VTech (#81) just lost #110 Virginia. Minnesota lost to #136 Illinois, but that was on Jan 6th, yet before they dropped their third straight.

Anyway, if you look at this chart, it's not so ridiculous that the PAC12 only got 6 teams in the bracket. If anything, one could argue that the ACC should have #34 (Duke) and #37 (GTech) included.

Charlie (and the committee) will also consider good wins and bad losses, and of course those will come into better focus as more games are played.

 

[chuck.r]

Ouch! (Sooner alum here)

So who is the "Notre Dame of College Women's Basketball"?

Gotta be Tennessee. WBB press comes running anytime they look to be stirring as a contender, and the polls consistently over-rank them.

IrishTiger makes the case for Baylor, but to my eye they are hardly ever over-rated or over-publicized. If anything, Baylor has under-performed in the Tournament, and that is not a trait I would associate with ND football program.