This has to be one of the worst moments as an avid college basketball enjoyer: seeing people who have no clue about anything college basketball with better brackets than you. With more than half of all teams having been eliminated, including my two SEC Final Four picks (Kentucky and Tennessee), I'm going to take a look back on the bracket before all of the chaos started.
Selection Committee Mindset Change?
The teams on the top four seed lines aren't surprising at all; in fact, their top 16 teams are exact same as mine and many bracketologists. The order, however, is a bit surprising when comparing it to the top 16 reveal about a month ago. Take a look at Tennessee, for example. I was somewhat surprised that they were a 3-seed considering their lack of solid wins away from home, but the metrics definitely made their profile look better. Fast forward to Selection Sunday, and the Vols pick up some really high quality wins, including over Kentucky in the SEC tournament, and it was really surprising to see them remain on the 3-line over teams like Duke and Villanova, though Duke on the 2-line makes sense when we consider their pair of neutral court wins over Gonzaga and Kentucky are arguably the best pair of wins that any team in the country possesses.
Moving over to the Big Ten, there was a consensus top three teams in Purdue, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Of those three, the Badgers had the best looking team sheet, but did not fare well in the NET/predictive metrics, likely contributing to why they were placed behind Illinois at the Selection Sunday Preview. It wasn't surprising that Wisconsin jumped the Illini over the past month, but the fact that they were also ranked over Purdue despite suffering a home loss to Nebraska and going one and done in the Big Ten tourney. It makes you think that the committee really started looking more at the resumes and less at the numbers.
Continues Further Down the Bracket
If we look at the bubble, one of the most polarizing teams was the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. The committee ended up putting them in Dayton, which I did not expect to happen, though I would have also put Rutgers in the tournament were I the committee. I thought that Rutgers' performance in the metrics (especially KenPom and BPI) would be too cumbersome for the committee to place them in the bracket, but their inclusion as a team outside the top 75 of the NET sets a precedent for teams with terrible metrics but many quality wins to warrant serious consideration for a spot in the Big Dance.
With the Scarlet Knights making the tournament, Dayton being the first team out honestly didn't surprise me much at all. I had the Flyers among my first four out, and felt that there was a reasonable chance they squeaked into the tournament when Rutgers heard their name called, considering the resume similarities between the two; both teams have a handful of bad losses but have an extremely solid Quad 1 record for the bubble (Dayton 3-2, Rutgers 6-6). The metrics don't particularly like either team, but seem to view Dayton slightly more favorably.
Do Conference Tournaments Matter?
Almost all results indicate that the conference tournaments barely affected seeding. Let's start with the SEC again. Most of us, myself included, thought that Tennessee would make its way up to the 2-line with how they rolled through the conference tournament, but they remained a 3-seed. The Texas A&M Aggies came roaring back into the bubble scene with a Quad 1/2 record and a trio of quality wins away from home (Auburn, Arkansas, Alabama) that should've gotten them on the right side of the bubble, but they were still the fourth team out at the end of the day.
Moving over to the ACC, Virginia Tech appeared to be right on the cut-line heading into the championship game against Duke. We thought that one of the most burning questions would be whether the Hokies needed to beat the Blue Devils to reach the Big Dance, but the answer turned out to be a pretty resounding yes. Of all the at-large teams, VA Tech only ranked above Notre Dame in the overall 1-68 seedings, so it's reasonable to assume that the Hokies at least remain behind Notre Dame and Dayton without the marquee victory over Duke.
While not as impactful, there are a couple other examples of conference tournament results having little impact on the final bracket: namely TCU still being a 9-seed despite picking up another good win over Texas, and Indiana being in the first four, behind Michigan and Rutgers even though the latter two went one and done when they were right on the cut-line, and consensus was that Indiana was barely out before they ripped off a pair of victories against Michigan and Illinois in the Big Ten tourney.
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