2 seed lines is aggressive, but it did drop us a full seedline. Bart Torvik has a tourney simulator, right now our expected seed is the 2nd 8 seed (W over Seton Hall, wins over Nova and Creighton, and then a loss to St John's in the BET final). With all of that staying the same and the Seton Hall result changing we move up to the 3rd 7 seed
Add in recency bias and our back to back titles is probably worth 1 seed line. I highly doubt w our resume they will have a 1 seed play us in the second round.
So current last 4 seed on BracketMatrix is Michigan.
I think it at least knocks us down 1.5 notches. So if we were the first 9 seed right now, we'd be the 3rd 7 seed without the loss.
McNeeley played 39 minutes in their loss at Seton Hall and 35 in the 14 point loss at St. John's. All arguments for his absence were erased with those 2 results. By Torvik filtering we're the 52nd team since his return.
I don’t know about Torvik but I smell some momentum and things seem to be clicking better (mostly). We will be the low seed nobody wants to play early.
A lot of it is schedule-induced. 4 of the last 5 games were very winnable, and we won 4. We really only beat the spread by any significant margin in the Providence game, and they've lost 8 of 9 and just lost at home to DePaul.
If we win out to the BE finals we’re probably a 5
How’s 31 ?
That’s like saying the committee would give us a 1 or 2 seed in 2023 because the committee knows at our best we’re one of the best. That’s objectivity true, but they’re not evaluating a teams‘s ceiling, they‘re evaluating the totality of a team‘s season. So we got a 4.
We have zero chance of getting a 5 seed with a BET win. We are sitting firmly on the 8 line, and 90-95% of the season is over. Winning the BET tourney would mean beating a Nova, a similarly metricked Creighton & maybe StJ. This isn't a metric gauntlet. We aren't getting awarded for our name, or some cosmic power, etc. Teams in front of us have to lose. The committee doesn't just sit back and arbitrarily open a spots up multiple seed lines up for a team. Lose Nova & 9 seed, beat Nova & 8 seed, beat Creighton a chance to bump to a 7, beat St J chance a chance bump to 6. Our resume just isn't all that impressive. Texas isn't making the Tourney at this rate, Baylor is barely getting in.. So what, we have the Zags to talk about? That Seton Hall win did little to nothing for our resume. By the end of the regular season, we will not have one win against a top 25 team (Marquette will be falling out).
KenPom is further off than any year I can ever remember…definitely a strange year. I think the SEC dominating everyone early in the year really screwed up the metrics as a whole. They are clearly the best conference, but it has thrown off everyone else.
And UConn was massively underseeded there.
Looking at some of these resumes…I really hope I’m wrong but I think we’ll need to win the BET to get a 7. Thursdays game likely won’t be an opportunity to get a Q1 win so that leaves just Friday and Saturday.
I have watched them a fair amount. I do not believe that they will be able to stop our sets. Key will be limiting dumb turnovers. And Aidan giving us 10 productive minutes. We will score enough points. Watch what we do to St.John’s on Saturday. And our defense is looking lively and energetic. I am not buying the hype for the #1 seeds this year. What we do well they cannot stop.
