Bracketology 2024

lauraee

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jeffgt14 said:
Every year there's one team that has tons of talent and gets ranked high but just isn't very good so every team that beats them all of sudden gets a boost in their ranking and it continues to cascade down like a pyramid. This year's overrated team managed to also put Clemson into the tournament.

If you're a betting man, drop a mortgage on +10.5 and ML for a certain 13 seed Friday.
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Bama?
30. Since 2016, none of the 17 SEC teams to earn a top-4 seed have reached the Final Four.

  • The only two SEC teams to advance to the Final Four since 2016 were seeded No. 5 (Auburn in 2019) and No. 7 (South Carolina in 2017)
  • The last SEC team to reach the title game was 8-seed Kentucky in 2014
  • Tennessee (2), Kentucky (3), Auburn (4) and Alabama (4) are top-4 seeds this year
 

RamblinRed

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In terms of the SEC - both Miss St and TX A&M making runs in the conference Tourney helped.
ACC was very fortunate to get UVA in the Tourney. They haven't looked good (except against GT) for weeks. Their offense is painful.
Very surprising that Big East only got 3 in - though they were 3 of the Top 10 bids.
The Committee clearly didn't think much of the Mountain West. Alot of low seeds there.
There was grumbling by coaches about the B12 gaming the system - playing really weak NC SoS and beating teams up by 40 pts to get high metric numbers and then playing each other to get alot of Q1 and Q2 wins. I believe only Kansas had a NC SoS of better than 100 for the B12.
 
Peacone36

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In the past it seemed apparent that the committee didn't put a ton of stock into the conference tournament results then all of a sudden this season it matters for two schools hailing from the conference in which the commissioner is challenging the NCAA. Load of crap.
 

MtnWasp

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RamblinRed said:
There was grumbling by coaches about the B12 gaming the system - playing really weak NC SoS and beating teams up by 40 pts to get high metric numbers and then playing each other to get alot of Q1 and Q2 wins. I believe only Kansas had a NC SoS of better than 100 for the B12.
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They can formalize the selection criteria all they want, but they have not implemented a scheduling technique to eliminate the bias of initial rankings. Gaming the system is clever. Until you devise a systematic non-conference scheduling procedure to eliminate the bias, clever coaches will continue to game the system. And I don't fault them at all.

The catch is that you have to be ranked highly going in to be able to game the system in that fashion.

It is probably not practical, but you could open the season with a pre-season tournament, like a mirror of post-season NCAAT, but with some key differences:

1. Initial Seedings are random (picked from a hat) and adjustable and includes all 352 eligible teams.
2. It is not single elimination: Winners go on to play winners, losers move on to play losers, then by similar records alternating home and away or do it between Semesters at Vegas or some neutral site. This means scheduling as adjusted "as we go," to systematically match teams of similar records to progressively sort teams by performance. Do that for 7 to 8 games for every team.
3. Establish pre-conference team and conference rankings based on their record in the pre-season tournament.

Otherwise we have to embrace the post-season selection and seeding messiness. As we always have.
 
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orientalnc

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Things I noticed when looking at the brackets:

UVA finished 3rd in the ACC. Colorado State finished 7th in the Mountain West. The Rams are favored by 2.5 in a play-in game. Let that sink in.
Michigan St is playing Mississippi St in Charlotte on Thursday. ESPN says MSU is a 1.5 point favorite.
 

MtnWasp

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orientalnc said:
Things I noticed when looking at the brackets:

UVA finished 3rd in the ACC. Colorado State finished 7th in the Mountain West. The Rams are favored by 2.5 in a play-in game. Let that sink in.
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Well the NCAA decided that seedings would be based on the "total body of work" and not recent play. But that doesn't mean Vegas can't take into account trends.

Interesting that the NCAA Football Playoff committee could take into account late season injuries in their selections but that isn't true for basketball?
 
slugboy

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orientalnc said:
Things I noticed when looking at the brackets:

UVA finished 3rd in the ACC. Colorado State finished 7th in the Mountain West. The Rams are favored by 2.5 in a play-in game. Let that sink in.
Michigan St is playing Mississippi St in Charlotte on Thursday. ESPN says MSU is a 1.5 point favorite.
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MSU is favored over MSU? That’s a confusing line
 
orientalnc

orientalnc

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orientalnc said:
Things I noticed when looking at the brackets:

UVA finished 3rd in the ACC. Colorado State finished 7th in the Mountain West. The Rams are favored by 2.5 in a play-in game. Let that sink in.
Michigan St is playing Mississippi St in Charlotte on Thursday. ESPN says MSU is a 1.5 point favorite.
Click to expand...
II guess my humor is too subtle for some. ESPN did not indicate which MSU was the favorite.
 
stinger78

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lauraee said:
Bama?
30. Since 2016, none of the 17 SEC teams to earn a top-4 seed have reached the Final Four.

  • The only two SEC teams to advance to the Final Four since 2016 were seeded No. 5 (Auburn in 2019) and No. 7 (South Carolina in 2017)
  • The last SEC team to reach the title game was 8-seed Kentucky in 2014
  • Tennessee (2), Kentucky (3), Auburn (4) and Alabama (4) are top-4 seeds this year
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So, here are the standings.
ACC: UNC (27-7/17-3), Duke (24-8/15-5), UVA (23-10/13-7), Pitt (22-8/12-8), Clemson (21-11/11-9), Syracuse (20-12/11-9), Wake (20-13/11-9), and NCSU (22-14/9-11)
SEC: UT (24-8/14-4), Auburn (27-7/13-5), USCe (26-7/13-5), UK (23-9/13-5), Bama (21-11/13-5), UF 24-11/11-7), TAMU (20-14/9-9), MSU (21-13/8-10), Miss (20-12/7-11)

And here is the bracket.
ACC: UNC (1), Duke (4), Clemson (6), UVA (10)
SEC: UT (2), UK (3), Auburn (4), Bama (4), UF (7), MSU (8), TAMU (8), USCe (8),

Previous 15 years' performance (Champs, FF, E8, and S16) since 2009:
ACC: Champs (5), FF (4), E8 (12), S16 (19)
SEC: Champs (1), FF (6), E8 (11), S16 (10)

Now we see The Narrative being applied to SECheat MBB. When the SECheat gets 2x the teams in, despite their lower performance over the last several years.

I don't know what to make of this.
 
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apatriot1776

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stinger78 said:
So, here are the standings.
ACC: UNC (27-7/17-3), Duke (24-8/15-5), UVA (23-10/13-7), Pitt (22-8/12-8), Clemson (21-11/11-9), Syracuse (20-12/11-9), Wake (20-13/11-9), and NCSU (22-14/9-11)
SEC: UT (24-8/14-4), Auburn (27-7/13-5), USCe (26-7/13-5), UK (23-9/13-5), Bama (21-11/13-5), UF 24-11/11-7), TAMU (20-14/9-9), MSU (21-13/8-10), Miss (20-12/7-11)

And here is the bracket.
ACC: UNC (1), Duke (4), Clemson (6), UVA (10)
SEC: UT (2), UK (3), Auburn (4), Bama (4), UF (7), MSU (8), TAMU (8), USCe (8),

Previous 15 years' performance (Camps, FF, E8, and S16) since 2009:
ACC: Champs (5), FF (4), E8 (12), S16 (19)
SEC: Champs (1), FF (6), E8 (11), S16 (10)

Now we see The Narrative being applied to SECheat MBB. When the SECheat gets 2x the teams in, despite their lack of performance over the last several years.

I don't know what to make of this.
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Pitt also has a better quad 1 record (4-6 vs 4-9) and quad 2 record (5-3 vs 4-3) than Miss St. All about those quality losses
 

Root4GT

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MtnWasp said:
Well the NCAA decided that seedings would be based on the "total body of work" and not recent play. But that doesn't mean Vegas can't take into account trends.

Interesting that the NCAA Football Playoff committee could take into account late season injuries in their selections but that isn't true for basketball?
Click to expand...
The NCAAT Committee can consider player availability as well as Coaches availability in seedlings. That was a topic last year when Bill Self’s availability was in question. The answer the NCAA put out was yes it could be considered the same as if a player was not available.
 
ESPNjacket

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I Dont Get It Over My Head GIF by Lil Jon
 
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