End of Year Forecast

[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!!!

 

[tomcat]

Getting away from the technical discussion, which I have a very hard time following, I almost hope that UConn is given the second 12 seed., much like last year. It's the kind of motivator that your can't have enough of.