Bracket Challenge

[MikeJackets1967]

I have Georgia St beating Cincinnati and C of C winning the first day as well.

I think Alabama will smoke Virginia Tech on the first day, there's no way VT will stop Collin Sexton. I still think 19-15 Alabama didn't deserve to be in the NCAA Tournament.

 

[Peacone36]

I have Georgia St beating Cincinnati and C of C winning the first day as well.

I like GaSt but I hate that matchup. One thing to keep an eye on is Jacob Evans ankle injury. He played 40 mins yesterday but was 5-17 from the field. Cincinatti just held Rob Gray, a good scorer, to 6-22 from the field. I imagine D'Marcus Simonds is going to get similar treatment.

 

[ESPNjacket]

Well, in the committee's defense, USC was #50 in KenPom. #30 in RPI. So there is something there, but its not a shoe-in. They lost to Texas A&M, SMU, Oklahoma, Princeton, Washington, and Stanford. I mean, I would have put them in because the average ranking is around #40, and they finished SECOND in a P5 conference. And I would have definitely put them in over someone like Oklahoma or Syracuse. I think the Pac-12 was terrible this year, but I'd always put a #2 from the Pac-12 into the tournament over a #10 team from the ACC. I can't imagine finishing 2nd in the regular season in the Pac-12, losing in the finals of the conference tournament, sporting a 23-11 record...and not getting in. LOL.

USC was #40 in kenpom. St. Mary's was the highest not included in the field at #28. (Others left out in the top 40: Penn St, ND, Louisville, Baylor).

USC's problem is that it didn't beat any top teams. 0-7 vs. the kenpom top 50.

 

[Peacone36]

The only truly bad loss there is Princeton. The lost to A&M when the Aggies were blistering everyone. That SMU loss came when Shake Milton was playing out of his damn mind IIRC and then the Stangs really fell off the map when he was injured.

 

[MikeJackets1967]

9 teams made it but I dont like many of the matchups.

I have Miami, FSU, Clemson, VT and Syracuse all one and done.

I think Clemson beats Auburn and loses to Kansas. Auburn is all beat up and down to 8 players all they can do now is chuck three pointers.

 

[lauraee]

I think Clemson beats Auburn and loses to Kansas. Auburn is all beat up and down to 8 players all they can do now is chuck three pointers.

Clemson has to get by New Mexico St first....... not feeling so confident about that game.

 

[GTbball2016]

I was surprised they got left out too. the reasoning that's being thrown around is that they only beat 2 tourney teams this season (NMSU and CS Fullerton) being why. I mean the PAC was pretty weak this year but I don't see how you can leave out the team that finished 2nd in the reg season and 2nd in the tournament and take multiple teams behind them, especially with how bad ASU was in conference play

I don't really feel bad for ND missing though. Sure it sucks they had 2 really important players miss most of the year but that's just sports. If we want to seed people into playoffs based on what could have been why play the season?

Agreed on ND. Let's say Bonzie was out for IU and Ball St. I'm sure people would have assumed they would have won those games with him playing then. Also it's not like only ND had injuries.

 

[MikeJackets1967]

Clemson has to get by New Mexico St first....... not feeling so confident about that game.

Yeah I could be making a mistake overlooking NMSU

 

[CharlotteJacket]

Ok and ASU were beneficiaries of the fact the committee no longer looks at last 10 games

I've heard this thrown around a lot, but is this speculation or has the committee actually come out and said they don't look at the last 10 games? If so, what's the logic?

 

[Connell62]

I've heard this thrown around a lot, but is this speculation or has the committee actually come out and said they don't look at the last 10 games? If so, what's the logic?

They repeatedly talked about the full body of work. It doesn't matter when you picked up the Quadrant 1 wins, only that you got them.

Also, I heard a lot mentioned about the importance of road victories. Bruce Pearl said that he was told a road victory equates to 3 neutral court wins!

All a bunch of BS.. No way that OU should have made the tournament. They're 4-11 in the last 15 games..

Mark my words, they will beat Rhode Island in the first round and make the committee look like geniuses!!

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Well I decided to let you all win. My Elite 8 is not #1s and #2s. Its a #1, #2, #3, #5, and two #6s. LOL. My Final 4 is obviously not all #1s then. Its a #1, #2, #3, and #5, with a #2 versus #5 in the Final. LOL. But in honor of CJP I named it Modern Miracle, since it would take such a thing for me to score many points.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

I think Alabama will smoke Virginia Tech on the first day, there's no way VT will stop Collin Sexton. I still think 19-15 Alabama didn't deserve to be in the NCAA Tournament.

Yea, but Trae Young. Oh woops, wrong biased team to get entry. But Collin Sexton.

 

[ESPNjacket]

I've heard this thrown around a lot, but is this speculation or has the committee actually come out and said they don't look at the last 10 games? If so, what's the logic?

They stopped looking at the last 10 games about 5 years ago. The logic is that the early games count also.

They don't look at a lot of things, like conference standings, that people mention all of the time in these discussions.

They should stop looking at RPI. It is a lousy metric. It is a slide rule tool in a computer age.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

They repeatedly talked about the full body of work. It doesn't matter when you picked up the Quadrant 1 wins, only that you got them.

Also, I heard a lot mentioned about the importance of road victories. Bruce Pearl said that he was told a road victory equates to 3 neutral court wins!

All a bunch of BS.. No way that OU should have made the tournament. They're 4-11 in the last 15 games..

Mark my words, they will beat Rhode Island in the first round and make the committee look like geniuses!!

I totally agree - they don't deserve to be in, and will win in round 1. Kind of like the Syracuse/Arizona State game - someone will win that game to get into the tournament and say "SEE!"

 

[MikeJackets1967]

Yea, but Trae Young. Oh woops, wrong biased team to get entry. But Collin Sexton.

If it were up to me Louisville would have made the NCAA Tournament over Alabama I'm going to do a Women's Bracket on ESPN later today hopefully I will do well on that one also

 

[Peacone36]

They repeatedly talked about the full body of work. It doesn't matter when you picked up the Quadrant 1 wins, only that you got them.

Also, I heard a lot mentioned about the importance of road victories. Bruce Pearl said that he was told a road victory equates to 3 neutral court wins!

All a bunch of BS.. No way that OU should have made the tournament. They're 4-11 in the last 15 games..

Mark my words, they will beat Rhode Island in the first round and make the committee look like geniuses!!

Correct me if I am wrong but Q1 wins dont necessarily remain Q1 wins correct? That "quadrant" is always moving IIUC.

 

[Connell62]

Correct me if I am wrong but Q1 wins dont necessarily remain Q1 wins correct? That "quadrant" is always moving IIUC.

Pea..honestly, I have no idea. Since we weren't really part of the conversation this season, I tuned a lot of the "noise" out.

I'll probably do much better in my brackets by not listening to all of the experts and debate about who got in that shouldn't have and who is gonna win.

 

[CuseJacket]

Correct, quadrant can change e.g., Buffalo was a Q1 win, then not, then they were again at the end.

Said this somewhere else, but if you don't like RPI, then the Quadrant will really irritate you. The quadrant system is arbitrary banding of RPI where they value a home win vs. RPI 1-30 the same as a road win vs. RPI 1-75. The committee's decision to "lessen the importance of RPI" this year and go with the quadrant system is an oxymoron.

 

[RamblinRed]

They took away the last 10 games metrics at least 5 yrs ago. They wanted to emphasize the teams whole resume, full year performance, not how you did in the most recent month. Basically, a win in December is worth as much as a win in March. That is also designed to try to get teams to play better opponents early in the season.

Understand what is not on the data sheets they get on all 351 teams.
First, there are no dates on the sheets and they are not arranged by when games were played. They were arranged based on RPI breaks, they are now organized by the 4 quadrants. The only record on the sheet is the teams overall record against Div 1 opponents. It is very easy for the committee based on the sheets to see who has played alot of games against better competition and how many of those games they won and lost.
Second, there is no conference information provided - that is also something that at least officially is not part of what they look at. You aren't competing against other members of your conference for a spot, you are competing against all teams with similar profiles. On the sheets they do not say what conference the team plays in or what the record or placement is in conference.

Since only the Big 12 plays round robin using conference records is not really useful as the schedules are not the same.

It's also very clear that this committee put alot of weight on playing games against strong competition and winning at least a few of them.
USC is a good example of this. It only won 2 games against teams in the RPI Top 50 - MTSU and NM ST and the only team they beat that made the Tourney was NM ST.
They didn't have any really bad losses, but they had 0 wins to hang their hat on.
Similar situation for St. Mary's who had the win at Gonzaga, but nothing else.
L'ville was probably somewhat similar - they had sweeps of VT and FSU - 2 lower end NCAA Tourney teams and nothing else. No bad losses, but I think Committee wanted to see them beat a higher quality team at least once = that UVA game likely cost them a bid.

I suspect Syracuse got the last spot because their collection of wins is a little better than L'ville and they beat them head to head.
Clemson, Miami and likely in the committee's eyes Buffalo were stronger wins at the top.

 

[RamblinRed]

Keep in mind conference performance is not considered - or even shown, to the committee.
There are no dates on the documents they get, there are no conference records or placement on the records they look at.
All they see are the overall records and how they performed against each quadrant.

The more I look at ND's resume the more i would not have put them in. They really don't have much in the way of strong wins and the losses to Ball St, Indiana and GT hurt.
They pass the eye test to me when you watch them play, but based on their resume sheet - it isn't strong.