No Question We’re In Now…Is a 7 or 6 Seed In Reach?

[Hi-Low]

That last 7 spot could come down to Marquette & UConn... so if Marquette loses to Xavier & UConn makes the BE Tourney Final I think UConn gets a 7 seed and Marquette may drop to the 8 line.

Good ole Jerry Palm still has Marquette as a 5 seed....which is bizarre. The Bracket Matrix average has Marquette tied for the last 7 spot with Kansas. I can see the committee using the BE Tourney results to see who gets that 7 between UConn & Marquette.

 

[Inyatkin]

You guys are putting way, way more thought into this than committee members, who I guarantee you are not moving any teams up or down based on individual game results this late in the season.

 

[Hi-Low]

You guys are putting way, way more thought into this than committee members, who I guarantee you are not moving any teams up or down based on individual game results this late in the season.

Sure they do...if it's a close call on seeding they absolutely look at Conf Tourney's to move teams up or down a line on the bracket.

 

[auror]

You guys are putting way, way more thought into this than committee members, who I guarantee you are not moving any teams up or down based on individual game results this late in the season.

They're not moving teams up and down because they're not running a horse race. But what their final product looks like will absolutely have changed by the results of individual (or more likely a group of 3 or so games, ie Marquette losing and UConn winning 2).

 

[JustbrewitMan]

Really good analysis and for what it’s worth, have seen a few brackets kicked out today that had exactly what you are showing with us playing Georgia in front of Houston.

With you that it will likely take 3 wins to get to the 7, minimum of 2 along with good fortune ahead. Unlikely there is any chance we get to 6.

Memphis is a weird team. They are 48 in KP meanwhile somehow Gonzaga is 9. Memphis has wins @ Clemson and Mich St neutral, Ole Miss and Mizzou, they beat us. Their OOC is WAY better than Zags. And while neither league is great at least Memphis crushed theirs and won it. Someone help me make sense of this. Memphis has what looks like 5 OOC wins better than Zags best yet are almost 40 spots lower. Torvik discrepancy even worse. I really need an explanation of this one, how one so over valued and the other so under.

I've said it before. It's pretty simple. The biggest driver of both KenPom and Torvik rankings is the difference between AdjO and AdjD. They both do some proprietary behind-the-scenes adjustments to account for pace, strength of opponent, etc., etc. But the fact they are so similar in their rankings tells you their ranking are mainly driven by AdjO/AdjD.

Gonzaga's losses against bad conference teams and OOC were generally close. Then, they kicked the absolute crap out of the rest of the bad WCC teams. Their AdjO/AdjD has held steady in conference play, whereas many teams in tough conferences play closer games with more variance and may not sustain or may actually have decreased AdjEff over the course of conference play. Duke has benefitted from a historically weak ACC to rise to the top of the KP/Torvik charts.

People with basic critical thinking skills (heck, even Lunardi!) can see thru the ruse and have adjusted their tourney seeding accodingly.

 

[JustbrewitMan]

By the way, the WCC has the absolute WORST tournament bracket structure (though I'm no dummy I know why they do it).

Talk about sheltering your Top 2 teams from possible upsets...They get Byes through the FIRST FOUR ROUNDS and only have to win one game to make it to the championship game. Such weak sauce!

 

[RuffRuff]

By the way, the WCC has the absolute WORST tournament bracket structure (though I'm no dummy I know why they do it).

Talk about sheltering your Top 2 teams from possible upsets...They get Byes through the FIRST FOUR ROUNDS and only have to win one game to make it to the championship game. Such weak sauce!

It almost feels designed for Zags/StM. I swear I think those two programs hire analytics consultants to understand how they could game the metrics & have the WCC onboard.

 

[ctbro1999]

Colorado and Zags winning moves us up to 30 in the NET. Colorado guaranteed to stay Q2 so only “one” bad loss on the resume

Colorado is 1-14 in Q1 games.....we are the one win.

 

[gsmooth]

Colorado and Zags winning moves us up to 30 in the NET. Colorado guaranteed to stay Q2 so only “one” bad loss on the resume

every time I think about the loss at Seton Hall

 

[gsmooth]

Colorado is 1-14 in Q1 games.....we are the one win.

The loss felt even worse in person at the Lahaina Civic Center. As that game ended on Hass' missed 3 pointer all I thought for the next 5 minutes was "how the hell did they lose to that s. h. i. t. t. team?"

 

[ctbro1999]

every time I think about the loss at Seton Hall

 

[RuffRuff]

The loss felt even worse in person at the Lahaina Civic Center. As that game ended on Hass' missed 3 pointer all I thought for the next 5 minutes was "how the hell did they lose to that s. h. i. t. t. team?"

Try being at the Seton Hall game, like this guy. At least Colorado wasn't established awful yet, Seton Hall was concretely horrendous.

 

[Inyatkin]

Sure they do...if it's a close call on seeding they absolutely look at Conf Tourney's to move teams up or down a line on the bracket.

They're not moving teams up and down because they're not running a horse race. But what their final product looks like will absolutely have changed by the results of individual (or more likely a group of 3 or so games, ie Marquette losing and UConn winning 2).

After Selection Sunday there will be interviews saying the field was pretty well set before the major conference tournaments started. Moving someone up or down a line can have wide ripple effects, so they tend not to do it. They'll have to make adjustments for this year's NC State or whatever, but our fate is more than likely set already.

 

[ctbro1999]

After Selection Sunday there will be interviews saying the field was pretty well set before the major conference tournaments started. Moving someone up or down a line can have wide ripple effects, so they tend not to do it. They'll have to make adjustments for this year's NC State or whatever, but our fate is more than likely set already.

How much do you think our BET run during Kemba-mania in 2011 helped our seed? IIRC, we won 5 games in 5 days....what if we had been bounced in game 1? I think we landed a 3 seed in the NCAAT, but if we had gone 1 and done in the BET, I have a feeling we would have ended up as a 6 or even 7 seed.

 

[Inyatkin]

How much do you think our BET run during Kemba-mania in 2011 helped our seed? IIRC, we won 5 games in 5 days....what if we had been bounced in game 1? I think we landed a 3 seed in the NCAAT, but if we had gone 1 and done in the BET, I have a feeling we would have ended up as a 6 or even 7 seed.

Sure, there are exceptions. Us in 2011, NC State last year. They don't do wholesale changes minus something big like that.

 

[JohnFSilver]

Did an additional bracket projection last night... landed us at number 31 on the s-curve (third 8). Will do one more Sunday afternoon right before the actual reveal. The five teams I have immediately in front of us are:

26. Ole Miss (7)
27. Oregon (7)
28. Memphis (7)
29. Kansas (8)
30. Gonzaga (8)

Those teams all have at least one more Q1 win than us. And outside of Memphis (which oddly has 3 Q3 losses), no losses outside the top two quadrants. Memphis is a damn weird team to evaluate and I'll be intrigued to see what the committee does with them. Very strong resume metrics but quite pedestrian predictives.

All that is to say I'm not sure there's much of a path, short of perhaps going 3-0 this week, to even getting off the 8 line. It's tough to say our resume as of now would warrant placement over any of those four (and then Memphis). Seton Hall, Colorado, and to a lesser extent Dayton are albatrosses around our necks.

For the record, this was the quadrant I had us in:

Wichita, KS
1. Houston (3)
16. Omaha (63)
8. Connecticut (31)
9. Georgia (33)

Here were my top sixteen teams and regionals:

South - Atlanta
1. Auburn (1) - Lexington, KY
4. Purdue (15) - Seattle, WA
3. Kentucky (11) - Milwaukee, WI
2. Texas Tech (8) - Wichita, KS

East - Newark
1. Duke (2) - Raleigh, NC
4. Wisconsin (14) - Denver, CO
3. St. John's (9) - Providence, RI
2. Alabama (7) - Cleveland, OH

Midwest - Indianapolis
1. Houston (3) - Wichita, KS
4. Texas A&M (13) - Denver, CO
3. Maryland (12) - Providence, RI
2. Tennessee (5) - Lexington, KY

West - San Francisco
1. Florida (4) - Raleigh, NC
4. Clemson (16) - Seattle, WA
3. Iowa State (10) - Milwaukee, WI
2. Michigan State (6) - Cleveland, OH

Won't go through the clutter of listing my whole s-curve, but here's UConn's neighborhood:

23. BYU (6), 24. Louisville (6), 25. Marquette (7), 26. Ole Miss (7), 27. Oregon (7), 28. Memphis (7), 29. Kansas (8), 30. Gonzaga (8), 31. UConn (8), 32. Mississippi State (8), 33. Georgia (9), 34. UC-San Diego (9 - gave them some love that probably won't be there in real life), 35. Oklahoma (9), 36. Creighton (9).

So weird. It seems it isn’t how many games you win. Or who you beat, it is….who you lose to that matters?

 

[FfldCntyFan]

Try being at the Seton Hall game, like this guy. At least Colorado wasn't established awful yet, Seton Hall was concretely horrendous.

You win (for worst spot).

Not because of who we lost to, but because he got to go to Hawaii while you got to go to Newark.

 

[huskyjawz]

By the way, the WCC has the absolute WORST tournament bracket structure (though I'm no dummy I know why they do it).

Talk about sheltering your Top 2 teams from possible upsets...They get Byes through the FIRST FOUR ROUNDS and only have to win one game to make it to the championship game. Such weak sauce!

That is the craziest set up I've ever seen.

 

[7774]

How much do you think our BET run during Kemba-mania in 2011 helped our seed? IIRC, we won 5 games in 5 days....what if we had been bounced in game 1? I think we landed a 3 seed in the NCAAT, but if we had gone 1 and done in the BET, I have a feeling we would have ended up as a 6 or even 7 seed.

I would guess we moved up 2 seed lines. Maybe 3 if we went from the top 6 to the last 3 or something. Our schedule that year was insane. We had 9 losses, but all 9 were to teams that made the NCAA tournament, and 8 of the 9 were to teams that were a 6 seed or better in the tournament. We were going to get seeded like the SEC teams will get seeded this year.

 

[auror]

After Selection Sunday there will be interviews saying the field was pretty well set before the major conference tournaments started. Moving someone up or down a line can have wide ripple effects, so they tend not to do it. They'll have to make adjustments for this year's NC State or whatever, but our fate is more than likely set already.

It's generally the weekend games and especially Sunday that don't affect much. The committee starts today, but is moving through the field slowly over the next few days. Wins on Thurs/Fri and perhaps even Sat night should still have time to be recognized. But have to also realize that there is only so much that 2 or 3 wins can even do compared to the established 30 game resume.

You only have to look to last year. We were not the overall #1 entering championship week. We won our tourny and the other 2 contenders lost in theirs (at least one of them by big margin), and we jumped them. Though to your point they didn't have to juggle a seedline.

 

[auror]

If we're looking for a direct example of UConn being able to move up, last year on 3/13 Florida was an 8 seed on BracketMatrix. They won 3 games in the SEC tournament (before losing in the final on Sunday) including beating eventual 4 seed Alabama on Friday and on the NCAA seedlist they ended up as the top 7 seed.

 

[RuffRuff]

If we're looking for a direct example of UConn being able to move up, last year on 3/13 Florida was an 8 seed on BracketMatrix. They won 3 games in the SEC tournament (before losing in the final on Sunday) including beating eventual 4 seed Alabama on Friday and on the NCAA seedlist they ended up as the top 7 seed.

Wow what a snag of an example - I’m not even going to ask how you found that one.

Sounds like about a seed line and a half, about right if we could win 3. Would be scraping top of 7 and bottom of 6.

 

[gsmooth]

Try being at the Seton Hall game, like this guy. At least Colorado wasn't established awful yet, Seton Hall was concretely horrendous.

LOL, well it looks like me and you have the BoneYard covered for witnessing losses in person to s. h. i. i. t teams. Being at the Seton Hall game is worse, not just for the aforementioned reasons in your post, but also because UConn had a 90%+ chance to win that game twice, once in regulation being up 7 with 36 seconds left and then in OT being up 5 with 25 seconds or whatever it was.

At least with me and the Colorado loss, I was able to stick around and watch the Memphis-Michigan State game and somewhat forget about the Colorado loss and I was able to enjoy the beautiful island of Maui and do all the fun activities there. But make no mistake, GIFs in my #259 post and ctbro 1999's #261 post encapsulate how I felt at the moment when UConn lost at Seton Hall and even now how I feel about that loss.

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

You guys are putting way, way more thought into this than committee members, who I guarantee you are not moving any teams up or down based on individual game results this late in the season.

Lunardi just moved Gonzaga off the 8 line after they beat St. Mary's.

 

[RuffRuff]

LOL, well it looks like me and you have the BoneYard covered for witnessing losses in person to s. h. i. i. t teams. Being at the Seton Hall game is worse, not just for the aforementioned reasons in your post, but also because UConn had a 90%+ chance to win that game twice, once in regulation being up 7 with 36 seconds left and then in OT being up 5 with 25 seconds or whatever it was.

At least with me and the Colorado loss, I was able to stick around and watch the Memphis-Michigan State game and somewhat forget about the Colorado loss and I was able to enjoy the beautiful island of Maui and do all the fun activities there. But make no mistake, GIFs in my #259 post and ctbro 1999's #261 post encapsulate how I felt at the moment when UConn lost at Seton Hall and even now how I feel about that loss.

The best thing that came out of that day was being at the sports bar across the street watching the Bama/Auburn game, and realizing I needed distance glasses. Got them and now I can watch UConn win crystal clear!