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WAB (Wins Above Bubble)

Why UConn is a No. 1 seed​

If you woke up this morning, searched "college basketball NET rankings" and saw UConn at No. 10, you might think the Huskies deserve a No. 3 seed. If the NET was the selection committee's top seeding tool, then perhaps you'd be right.

But it's not. When it comes to deciding who belongs on the No. 1 seed line, the committee is more likely to use a "resume" metric such as Wins Above Bubble (WAB) as a guide than it is to lean on a "predictive" metric like NET, which incorporates victory margin and efficiency metrics.

UConn's resume makes it deserving of a No. 1 seed. The Huskies own wins over Illinois, Kansas and Florida and are holding steady at No. 3 in WAB amid a 14-1 start to Big East play. The Huskies rank behind only Michigan and Duke in WAB, and they are also highly regarded in KPI (5th) and Strength of Record (3rd), which are the other resume-based metrics on official NCAA team sheets.

This creates a clear distinction between the Huskies and a strong group of teams on their heels that is headlined by Houston, Purdue and Iowa State.

www.cbssports.com

Bracketology: Houston squanders chance to validate itself as fourth No. 1 seed as UConn elevates

Monday night's blockbuster Big 12 battle altered the race for the fourth No. 1 seed as we inch closer toward March
www.cbssports.com www.cbssports.com
 
Good article on WAB. There's a discussion about UConn in here. They explain why UConn's WAB is much more important than their NET and why the NET is 10 for a team they're projecting as a 1 seed.

If you only have the bandwidth to master one (metric) before Selection Sunday, consider learning Wins Above Bubble. Introduced officially last season to the NCAA Tournament selection process, WAB is a resume-based metric rapidly becoming a staple of the college hoops lexicon.

"I think fans would be probably pretty surprised that the selection of the at-large teams was probably more highly correlated to a team's WAB ranking than it was their NET ranking," NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt told CBS Sports, referring back to last year's selection decisions.

www.cbssports.com

Why college basketball fans should master Wins Above Bubble: WAB is new factor in NCAA Tournament selection

If you only have the bandwidth to master one metric before Selection Sunday, consider learning WAB
www.cbssports.com www.cbssports.com
 
Last edited:
BFieldHusky said:
Updated (2/17)

1. Michigan 9.5
2. Duke 8.9
3. UConn 8.3
4. Arizona 7.9
5. Houston 7.1
6. Pursue 7.0
7. Nebraska 6.7
8. Iowa St. 6.5
9. Illinois 6.2
10. Gonzaga 5.9
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Playing the "What if" game. We beat Creighton/Nova this week. Duke loses to Michigan at home on Sat. Could we jump Duke in WAB going into next week?
 
Umami Zen said:
Playing the "What if" game. We beat Creighton/Nova this week. Duke loses to Michigan at home on Sat. Could we jump Duke in WAB going into next week?
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I would say yes. As of right now Duke has a 0.52 WAB lead, 8.82 to UConn's 8.29. Duke losing to Michigan is not going to cost them a lot of WAB points. For example, the Duke's neutral site loss to Texas Tech was -0.25 so let's say the loss to Michigan is only -0.15.

UConn beating Creighton is not going to gain many WAB points. My guess is about 0.20. But beating Villanova on the road will give UConn a decent amount of WAB points. The prior win over Villanova at home was worth 0.45. The road wins over middling and bad BE teams such as Georgetown, Butler, Xavier, PC, etc. were all worth around 0.50 WAB. So I'd say the win at Villanova would be worth about 0.65.

So 0.65 plus 0.20 is 0.85, which would put UConn at 9.14. Duke would go from 8.82 to 8.67.

Does all this make sense?
 
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navery12 said:
Duke would be at 8.73 and UConn at 9.22 so yes we'd jump them
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O.K. that was easier than my explanation. Lol. Is there a place you can see potential WAB for future games? I'm assuming that's where you got that.
 
HooperScooper said:
O.K. that was easier than my explanation. Lol. Is there a place you can see potential WAB for future games? I'm assuming that's where you got that.
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What are we angling for here? To jump Duke in the seeding line and take the 1 in the East? I doubt a loss to UM is going to hurt them all that much if they sweep otherwise.
 
Chief00 said:
This year the committee will use whatever metrics they can use to get the teams in that they want.
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As opposed to prior years when the committee got teams that they didn't want in.
 
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businesslawyer said:
Of course you do.
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Do you think Duke losing to the number one team in the country, leader in every metric there is, is going to hurt Duke, on a neutral floor? They're expected to lose. What is up with this place - should vanilla frosting be put on every post?

If they win, I could see some saying they're the overall one.
 
So if we win out, and Duke loses to Michigan and otherwise wins out, at the end of the regular season their WAB would be slightly higher than ours. Meaning they would make up the deficit they would have to us on Sunday morning over the last two weeks of the regular season.
HooperScooper said:
Winning at Nova. Would be worth 0.74. Beating St. John's at home would be worth 0.54.
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But what makes WAB feel right is if we go 1-1 in those 2 games (or any 2 games), it doesn’t matter which opponent you beat and which you lose to. Like — I don’t know — any other sport. If we win at Nova and lose to St Johns, we get .74 and lose .46, for a net of .28. If we lose at Nova and beat St Johns at home, we lose .26 and get .54, for a net of .28. Showing that a bubble team would be doing better than expected to split those two games. Isn’t math amazing?
 
businesslawyer said:
So if we win out, and Duke loses to Michigan and otherwise wins out, at the end of the regular season their WAB would be slightly higher than ours. Meaning they would make up the deficit they would have to us on Sunday morning over the last two weeks of the regular season.

But what makes WAB feel right is if we go 1-1 in those 2 games (or any 2 games), it doesn’t matter which opponent you beat and which you lose to. Like — I don’t know — any other sport. If we win at Nova and lose to St Johns, we get .74 and lose .46, for a net of .28. If we lose at Nova and beat St Johns at home, we lose .26 and get .54, for a net of .28. Showing that a bubble team would be doing better than expected to split those two games. Isn’t math amazing?
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Is the WAB the driver of seeding? Why are we so concerned? Is it not just one variable?
 
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HooperScooper said:
I would say yes. As of right now Duke has a 0.52 WAB lead, 8.82 to UConn's 8.29. Duke losing to Michigan is not going to cost them a lot of WAB points. For example, the Duke's neutral site loss to Texas Tech was -0.25 so let's say the loss to Michigan is only -0.15.

UConn beating Creighton is not going to gain many WAB points. My guess is about 0.20. But beating Villanova on the road will give UConn a decent amount of WAB points. The prior win over Villanova at home was worth 0.45. The road wins over middling and bad BE teams such as Georgetown, Butler, Xavier, PC, etc. were all worth around 0.50 WAB. So I'd say the win at Villanova would be worth about 0.65.

So 0.65 plus 0.20 is 0.85, which would put UConn at 9.14. Duke would go from 8.82 to 8.67.

Does all this make sense?
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Yes-Becoming clearer -Thank you for the clarification. WABABILITY of wins and losses appears to be a metric we've got to embrace as we head to Selection Sunday.
 
RuffRuff said:
Do you think Duke losing to the number one team in the country, leader in every metric there is, is going to hurt Duke, on a neutral floor? They're expected to lose. What is up with this place - should vanilla frosting be put on every post?

If they win, I could see some saying they're the overall one.
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No one is saying that. Duke losing to Michigan wouldn’t devalue them at all. But it certainly doesn’t add to their value. Losing a game never adds to your value. While us winning at Nova would add to our value. And if you think us being ahead of Duke is crazy, please share the 3 Duke wins that compare to our win at Kansas and neutral wins against Florida and Illinois. (I’ll give you a hint — those three Duke wins don’t exist.)

The real question is having just had posted an article by a real sportswriter saying the resume metrics are more important than predictive metrics, why are you on a thread about resume metrics if they’re not important to you? (The question is rhetorical for those who have given up on your sincerity by the way.)
 
businesslawyer said:
No one is saying that. Duke losing to Michigan wouldn’t devalue them at all. But it certainly doesn’t add to their value. Losing a game never adds to your value. While us winning at Nova would add to our value. And if you think us being ahead of Duke is crazy, please share the 3 Duke wins that compare to our win at Kansas and neutral wins against Florida and Illinois. (I’ll give you a hint — those three Duke wins don’t exist.)

The real question is having just had posted an article by a real sportswriter saying the resume metrics are more important than predictive metrics, why are you on a thread about resume metrics if they’re not important to you? (The question is rhetorical for those who have given up on your sincerity by the way.)
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They're obviously important. Have you seen the NET? They're 2 and we are 10. The gap there is pretty sizeable. They'll also have some chippy games left against the ACC that would probably have equivalent or better value than the remaining BE for us.
 
RuffRuff said:
Is the WAB the driver of seeding? Why are we so concerned? Is it not just one variable?
Expand ...
Here, read the article I posted above in this post.

HooperScooper

Post in thread 'WAB (Wins Above Bubble)'

Good article on WAB. There's a discussion about UConn in here. They explain why UConn's WAB is much more important than their NET and why the NET is 10 for a team they're projecting as a 1 seed.

If you only have the bandwidth to master one (metric) before Selection Sunday, consider learning Wins Above Bubble. Introduced officially last season to the NCAA Tournament selection process, WAB is a resume-based metric rapidly becoming a staple of the college hoops lexicon.

"I think fans would be probably pretty surprised that the selection of the at-large teams was probably more highly...
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RuffRuff said:
They're obviously important. Have you seen the NET? They're 2 and we are 10. The gap there is pretty sizeable. They'll also have some chippy games left against the ACC that would probably have equivalent or better value than the remaining BE for us.
Expand ...
The NET is not intended to be used this way. It is not used for ranking/seeding teams, it was created as a way to organize the teams into quadrants on the team sheet and then the resume/predictive metrics and records in quadrants are what is used to seed the teams
 
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