End of Year Forecast

[Cuango]

If UConn gets edged out from the overall #1 seed it will be because they stumbled in the BET or UCLA or South Carolina edges them out in terms of overall resume which is very possible.

Difficult to see them discounting an undefeated, defending National Champion who’s on a 50? (Knock wood) game winning streak!

 

[hoopsfan22]

Difficult to see them discounting an undefeated, defending National Champion who’s on a 50? (Knock wood) game winning streak!

It's actually not that difficult. UConn hasn't looked great for stretches of this month for whatever reason, and has played what one ranked team since Christmas in Tennessee (maybe two if ND counts depending on the poll)? South Carolina for example has looked really good recently beating four ranked teams in just the last couple of weeks, with the SEC tournament to come where they can further pad their resume with more wins over ranked teams. If there's any sort of recency bias in the selection process, it's not unreasonable to think UConn could get bumped.

 

[my2cents]

Umm... the committee hates UConn?? Do tell?

After we beat South Carolina last year in SC, we were a 2 seed and SC was a 1. QED.

 

[my2cents]

First, (I just learned this from someone here on the Boneyard) apparently, they no longer do #1 vs weakest #2. Instead, they are required to avoid conference matchups. So, SC cannot have an SEC team as their #2 etc. This is infuriating to me as it makes it possible/likely that we will have to play the strongest #2! Two, Geno is not likely to make big changes to the lineup at this point. Three, I’d love to see Crooks, the ones to worry about are Betts, Okot, and Heiden! KK is not going anywhere! She is and will remain, our primary pg until she graduates!

The overall point is that seeding makes no sense. If overall #1 plays the true 5 and not eight, then there is no seeding at all.

 

[my2cents]

UConn handled UCLA last year in the Final Four 85-51, despite Betts getting 26 points. The refs allowed Betts to get away with so many fouls that it was laughable. Yana out rebounded her 8-5 while playing 13 minutes less.

Jana Al Alfy started that game as I recall.

 

[Skeets]

If conference doesn't matter when teams are selected for the NCAA tournament, why do they matter when the seeding and placement is determined?

I'll take that a step further. If an alien popped out of a flying saucer this is what he would see:

Very good teams willingly forming a super conference.
Said conference holds a tournament where teams willingly and enthusiastically try to beat each other's heads in.
Then comes the NCAA tournament where contortions are made so that teams from the super conference don't meet each other for as long as possible. Why? when a week earlier meeting each other was the whole point.

The alien would get back in his saucer, fly off, and continue his search for intelligent life in the universe.

 

[Conndog]

To me, UCLA and South Carolina are the only teams that are capable of beating UConn- UCLA for their shooting, and South Carolina for their size. Azzi could have a bad shooting night and the rest of the team can’t compensate, or maybe their recent flirtation with double teaming and ball trapping will lead to too many open baskets for the other team if they break the press. The odds of this happening are probably low but it could happen. I think instead the rest of the country will see again how UConn just puts it all together & gets a chance to see how good a freshman UConn has in Blanca

 

[NycUcWbbFan]

It's actually not that difficult. UConn hasn't looked great for stretches of this month for whatever reason, and has played what one ranked team since Christmas in Tennessee (maybe two if ND counts depending on the poll)? South Carolina for example has looked really good recently beating four ranked teams in just the last couple of weeks, with the SEC tournament to come where they can further pad their resume with more wins over ranked teams. If there's any sort of recency bias in the selection process, it's not unreasonable to think UConn could get bumped.

Just like the novel Quad 1 quota theory of yours that didn’t pan out when the Committee reveal came out?

The 12 Selection Committee members are named with reputations on the line.

• I don’t think a NET (or other prior ranking system) #1 team that is also undefeated that is winning games by a margin of around 38 points with a very respectable OOC schedule, with an intact team, has ever not been voted as the overall #1 seed.
• That hot take will forever tarnish the NCAAT, a slap in the face of the #1 program (by far), the #1 coaching staff (by far), the most ardent and innumerable fans, and a double-take by at-large casual fans; and a slap in the face of smaller conferences everywhere.

 

[sun]

I'll take that a step further. If an alien popped out of a flying saucer this is what he would see:

Very good teams willingly forming a super conference.
Said conference holds a tournament where teams willingly and enthusiastically try to beat each other's heads in.
Then comes the NCAA tournament where contortions are made so that teams from the super conference don't meet each other for as long as possible. Why? when a week earlier meeting each other was the whole point.

The alien would get back in his saucer, fly off, and continue his search for intelligent life in the universe.

What if the top 2, 3 or 4 teams in the country were all from the same conference?
They should each have the best chance to advance to the highest stage possible without meeting & being eliminated too early in the tourney.
If Villanova were the 2nd best team in the country, why should they play UConn before the finals (or later rounds)?
IMO the NCAA tries to acknowledge how teams can improve over the course of the entire season and especially during crunch time in March.
And maybe that's why most pro sports have playoffs with a multiple game series being played between the same teams in order to advance in the playoffs or to win a championship.
Because the NCAAT is single elimination, they especially want to seed teams in a way to maximize what's best & most fair for each team and to help promote the popularity of each team & fan base as well as the sport in general.
This is just food for thought in answer to your question about "why."

 

[Phil]

I'll take that a step further. If an alien popped out of a flying saucer this is what he would see:

Very good teams willingly forming a super conference.
Said conference holds a tournament where teams willingly and enthusiastically try to beat each other's heads in.
Then comes the NCAA tournament where contortions are made so that teams from the super conference don't meet each other for as long as possible. Why? when a week earlier meeting each other was the whole point.

The alien would get back in his saucer, fly off, and continue his search for intelligent life in the universe.

Well done!

I would add to that:
Fans of said conference are giddy and looking down on fans of other teams exclaiming how great their conference is. That persists until conference play starts, then those fan start moaning and whining about how difficult their schedule is, and how unfair it is that they have to play so many strong teams while some other teams don't have to.

 

[Phil]

It's actually not that difficult. UConn hasn't looked great for stretches of this month for whatever reason, and has played what one ranked team since Christmas in Tennessee (maybe two if ND counts depending on the poll)? South Carolina for example has looked really good recently beating four ranked teams in just the last couple of weeks, with the SEC tournament to come where they can further pad their resume with more wins over ranked teams. If there's any sort of recency bias in the selection process, it's not unreasonable to think UConn could get bumped.

Being ranked is not a part of the selection committee criteria, so it's irrelevant whether Notre Dame is ranked or not. What is relevant is their Net rating, And they are up to number 24, which means they qualify as a quad one win for UConn. (Notre Dame has one game left against Louisville. I don't think even a loss to Louisville dropped their Net ranking, but I don't know enough about the mathematics of the neck formula to say that with certainty.)

 

[Vowelguy]

After we beat South Carolina last year in SC, we were a 2 seed and SC was a 1. QED

By this logic Tennessee should’ve been a 1 seed because it beat UConn

 

[OldSchooler]

In 2013, Stewie's freshman year and UConn's last season in the old Big East, the Huskies lost at home to Notre Dame by one point, then lost the regular season finale at Notre Dame in triple overtime, then lost to Notre Dame by 2 in the Big East final. They met for a FOURTH time in the national semi-finals at New Orleans, with UConn crushing the Irish by 18. (And then destroyed Louisville for the championship two days later.)

 

[hoopsfan22]

In 2013, Stewie's freshman year and UConn's last season in the old Big East, the Huskies lost at home to Notre Dame by one point, then lost the regular season finale at Notre Dame in triple overtime, then lost to Notre Dame by 2 in the Big East final. They met for a FOURTH time in the national semi-finals at New Orleans, with UConn crushing the Irish by 18. (And then destroyed Louisville for the championship two days later.)

That was the year three of the final four teams were from the Big East. I don't think we've seen one conference get three teams into the final four since, but could be wrong about that.

 

[trisailin]

[td]
743,726.98

[/td]​

Being ranked is not a part of the selection committee criteria, so it's irrelevant whether Notre Dame is ranked or not. What is relevant is their Net rating, And they are up to number 24, which means they qualify as a quad one win for UConn. (Notre Dame has one game left against Louisville. I don't think even a loss to Louisville dropped their Net ranking, but I don't know enough about the mathematics of the neck formula to say that with certainty.)

To some degree, this again shows how silly the quad idea is. Does it really make any difference between if a team is 29th or 31st? Are they really that different? Treating a win against #5 as the same as #29 (especially on the women's side) doesn't make lots of sense.

 

[my2cents]

Difficult to see them discounting an undefeated, defending National Champion who’s on a 50? (Knock wood) game winning streak!

By this logic Tennessee should’ve been a 1 seed because it beat UConn

My logic was UConn was a better team than South Carolina and should have been seeded ahead of them.

 

[fomalhaut]

This is infuriating to me as it makes it possible/likely that we will have to play the strongest #2!

Unless UCLA gets pushed off the top line and three SEC teams get #1 seeds, there will be two SEC teams on the second line and Connecticut will get the weaker one.

If UCLA finishes with just one loss, a case could be made for them being the overall #1 seed. If South Carolina finishes with just two losses, a case could be made for them being the #2 one seed. Is all this speculation just a case of much ado about something we can’t control anyway? We won it all as a 2 last year, let’s just do it again! Committee decisions be damned.

No chance of being anything other than the top #1 seed as long as they go into the NCAA tournament undefeated. Your second point is right, though: you could put Connecticut into a First Four game and they'd be favored to win the tournament anyway.

 

[The CDR-Ret]

This is a good point, although I'm not quite sure what to do with it.

Before the idiotic conference realignment, there was a regular season, the second half of which in conference games, and the NCAA tournament was a way to find out the best overall teams among all the conferences. It would be very discouraging to be the second or third best team in a conference, go through an entire season, get invited to the tournament, and then find yourself replaying a conference opponent you've already played and lost to during the regular season.

The selection committee understandably decided to keep theseunfortunate meet ups to a minimum, resulting in the current rules. However, those rules will put together when it was not likely that nine or 11, or 12 members of the same conference would be in the season-ending tournament.

While you still might have the same desire to play somebody other than a conference team, it becomes much tougher to slot all those teams and avoid meet ups without creating the potential of unfair slotting of one of the teams without so many conference members in the tournament. The unfairness of having to meet a conference following an early round needs to be balanced against the possibility that a team is moved away from the natural spot, either seed or region or both simply because there are so many members of a single conference.

The ideal situation would be to rethink the stupidity of the conference makeups but I recognize the folly of tilting at that windmill, so maybe the conference meet up rules need to be relaxed.

Which ever is done, it's one more black black mark on the conference realignment debacle

The "best" example was when UConn lost to Notre Dame 3 times (+ a loss to Baylor with Kim as coach), UConn knocked off Notre Dame as Louisville knocked off Baylor. Then UConn whipped Louisville. Yes, it was the FF for the fourth meeting that year.

(Edit: I had not read Oldschooler's post #43, or hoopsfan22"s post #44 before writing this, but brilliant minds come to similar conclusions (they usually don't think alike in my experience))

Nothing like winning when it counts!!

Go Huskies!!!

 

[BBallF]

I doubt Geno cares much about the seedings. More about the logistics of the locations and the timing. But us fans can feel a bit miffed if the #1 over all seed doesn’t have the easiest path to the NC game.

And you can bet the ranch we will not.

 

[Geew1992]

After we beat South Carolina last year in SC, we were a 2 seed and SC was a 1. QED.

So who would you have uconn replace?

 

[Skeets]

What if the top 2, 3 or 4 teams in the country were all from the same conference?
They should each have the best chance to advance to the highest stage possible without meeting & being eliminated too early in the tourney.
If Villanova were the 2nd best team in the country, why should they play UConn before the finals (or later rounds)?
IMO the NCAA tries to acknowledge how teams can improve over the course of the entire season and especially during crunch time in March.
And maybe that's why most pro sports have playoffs with a multiple game series being played between the same teams in order to advance in the playoffs or to win a championship.
Because the NCAAT is single elimination, they especially want to seed teams in a way to maximize what's best & most fair for each team and to help promote the popularity of each team & fan base as well as the sport in general.
This is just food for thought in answer to your question about "why."

The problem I have when exceptions are made to a pure "S curve" seeding in order to be "fair" because of a conference affiliation, it almost always unfair to some other team. How is that "fair"?

 

[Husky fanatic]

UConn handled UCLA last year in the Final Four 85-51, despite Betts getting 26 points. The refs allowed Betts to get away with so many fouls that it was laughable. Yana out rebounded her 8-5 while playing 13 minutes less.

Jana!

 

[NycUcWbbFan]

Being ranked is not a part of the selection committee criteria, so it's irrelevant whether Notre Dame is ranked or not. What is relevant is their Net rating, And they are up to number 24, which means they qualify as a quad one win for UConn. (Notre Dame has one game left against Louisville. I don't think even a loss to Louisville dropped their Net ranking, but I don't know enough about the mathematics of the neck formula to say that with certainty.)

NET and T-Rank (Torvik) are similar. The T-Rank algorithm is below and the NET &2 will be similar.

• Both are (functions &1 of) an algorithm average, currently from 30 games (on offense and defense);
• So unless there’s a blowout particularly with a close competitor, I think the NET is sticky &2 at this point.

While NET/ T-Rank are built from team’s resumes (retrodictive), it can be used in a predictive sense of “what a team’s chances of winning against the average D1 team”.

&1 The algorithmic average is raised by the Pythagorean exponent (Torvik uses 11.5) to come up with NET/ T-Rank.

&2 Note that NET as is used most commonly is the Team Value Index (I.e. a rank). There is a number attached to that TVI, called Adjusted Net Efficiency, which is the analogue to T-Rank.

 

[sun]

The problem I have when exceptions are made to a pure "S curve" seeding in order to be "fair" because of a conference affiliation, it almost always unfair to some other team. How is that "fair"?

As a layperson, I don't really know how to answer your question other than to say that nothing is perfect, and what's just is what is fair to the most teams while taking into consideration what is best for the game.
One can't always expect the minority to rule over the majority when rules and judgements are applied by imperfect humans.
Is there an NCAA rule that stipulates that a pure S curve must be applied to how teams are seeded?
I'm so sure that's even possible even if there were such a rule.
i'm not even sure what a pure S curve is. If an S incorporates the characteristics of a circle, and PI is an infinate without an absolute number value, then IMO you're barking up the wrong tree.
Perhaps if you gave an expample then I could better understand the complaint that you're insisting needs to be rectified (or a rule that's not being properly followd.)
In the end, perfection is too elusive when it's needs to be applied to reality.
How the NCAA rules are implemented seems to generate common recurrring complaints that never ends.
I happen to believe that seedings and imperfections even out over time and if one team is discriminated against one year then the committee will come back and reward them in the future whether intentional or not like good & bad Karma usually naturally happens often enough.

 

[Bigboote]

Saying that the perturbations to the S curve are wrong implies that the committee’s initial seedings are right. Just sayin’. 😜

 

[Vowelguy]

People on this board used to go nutz over USF being in the same bracket as UConn.
Of course the likelihood of a 7 seed facing a 1 is pretty low and they never did meet in the tourney, and yet everyone here went krazy.

 

[my2cents]

After todays NCAA reveal, UConn is the overall #1 seed. Which means if "seeding" was real, we would play the worse. 2, 3,and 4 seeds.
Otherwise, team 8, 12 and 16 in their top 16.
They have us playing 7 ( LSU as I stated), 9 and 13.
Don't call it seeding because it's not.

 

[fomalhaut]

After todays NCAA reveal, UConn is the overall #1 seed. Which means if "seeding" was real, we would play the worse. 2, 3,and 4 seeds.
Otherwise, team 8, 12 and 16 in their top 16.
They have us playing 7 ( LSU as I stated), 9 and 13.
Don't call it seeding because it's not.

A perfect S-curve without any adjustments for conferences or geography would look like this:
1 2 3 4
8 7 6 5
9 10 11 12
16 15 14 13
17 18 19 20 etc.
The #1 overall seed would get 8, the worst #4 (or 9, the best #5) in the Elite 8.
Getting 7 instead of 8 is because of the SEC adjustment.
9 is perfectly normal with the S curve.
Anything below that I'm not worried about.

 

[ConnMotors]

How would you feel if you were UCLA and have the #5 team in the country in your bracket? I would be pissed as the overall second #1 seed.

 

[The CDR-Ret]

A perfect S-curve without any adjustments for conferences or geography would look like this:
1 2 3 4
8 7 6 5
9 10 11 12
16 15 14 13
17 18 19 20 etc.
The #1 overall seed would get 8, the worst #4 (or 9, the best #5) in the Elite 8.
Getting 7 instead of 8 is because of the SEC adjustment.
9 is perfectly normal with the S curve.
Anything below that I'm not worried about.

Exactly!

The #1 seed gets the worst #2 (8) and the best #3 (9) who meet each other on the opposite side of the bracket, and the worst #4 (16), and the best #5 (17) on the same side of the Region Bracket for the sweet sixteen. Therefore, as the #1, one would desire that the "S" curve be applied by the numbers instead of the "cannot meet before..." rules which should be changed based on the size of some conferences (those larger than 12 members) these days.

Go Huskies!!!