Bracketology

Bracketology 02.09.21

DREAMS DASHED
We witnessed some high drama over the weekend. Drake got two stiff tests at sub-200 (NET) Valparaiso and fell way short on Sunday en route to their first loss. The pressure was mounting for Drake, who has been playing with unprecedented attention this season, maybe now the Bulldogs can get things rolling again. Boise State was swept at sub-100 Nevada, and suddenly are in danger. Indiana completed a sweep of percieved powerhouse Iowa. What did this do to each of these teams’ tourney hopes? We will address these topics and more in today’s Bracketogy forecast.

FINAL WEEK OF COMMITTEE MYSTERY
A tradition that Bracketologists are embracing more each year is the CBS Bracket Preview Show. This week the NCAA Selection Committee will meet for a couple of days, presumably over Zoom this year, to disccus who the top 16 teams on the Seed List should be. They select the teams, then seed them and bracket them in the same manner as the group will do next month. It is a sneak peak for the College Basketball community for what to expect in March. I mostly appreciate how this exercise will reveal how the committee is comparing teams and what they value most. Last season, they had Dayton fifth overall, when I had them ninth. It immediately told me they were rewarding a strong NET and other predictive metrics. The KPI, POM, SAG, BPI, SOR are all listed on the team sheet as well, which favored the Flyers. Perhaps that team this year is the Houston Cougars. UH has two road losses in conference to non-tourney teams (Tulsa and ECU). Outside of that, UH has beaten everyone including Texas Tech, Boise State, and SMU twice. Where the committee places the Cougars could go a long way in revealing what things look like further down the bracket. Until Saturday, I will continue beating down my preferred evaluation path based on more foundational history with many of the same sitting committee members.

BRACKET NOTES - Teams are selected, seeded, and bracketed as if today is Selection Sunday.

- We have another flip/flop in the top overall spot and it is closer than ever. Gonzaga’s win last night over BYU combined with Baylor’s recent program pause has allowed the Zags to narrowly pass the Bears at this moment. Baylor’s schedule is much tougher down the stretch, and they continue to control their number-one overall seed destiny. Today however, Gonzaga has two more wins (11-0) away/neutral, and has more wins in each of the quadrants, and a narrow KenPom lead (if that means something to the committee).

- Oklahoma continues to surge up the pecking order, landing this morning in the 12th position - good for the final third-seeded team. Sooners compare favorably to the teams below them with the strength of their top end wins. In the Big 12, life is rough and OU keeps treading well above water. Iowa took a fall down to the four-seed line after being swept by Indiana. Hawkeyes continued to slip in throughout this exercise, there just is not a ton to like about the resume. Fortunately, the NET remains strong at nine and Iowa has more chances to prove everyone wrong.

- Purdue continues to live large as long as Ohio State stays a high end seed. The Boilers sweep of the Buckeyes plus a road win over Indiana is carrying a lot of weight today. But is not guranteed forever. Purdue fans need to continue rooting for the Buckeyes, strangely.

- Two peculiar resumes really stand out: Creighton and Clemson. The Jays have three Q3 home losses to go along with a stellar 9-2 record vs. the top two quadrants. And Clemson simply cannot get much done away from Littlejohn Coliseum lately. The Tigers have been dismantled in each of their past three road contests. With all of that said, these two find themselves on the seven-seed line today.

- Seton Hall and Indiana made important moves over the weekend to solidify themselves into today’s bracket. Both the Pirates and Hoosiers are playing with an age-old Selection Committee unspoken rule: no team less than two games over .500 have been selected as an at-large bid. Will the committee make any exceptions this year? It remains to be determined. For now, all projections are based on that still being the case. SHU and IU can breathe easy for a moment. The good news for each program is if they are both selected, they will likely be seeded well above the bubble, as they each have excellent wins thus far.

- With Utah State in first place, a bid was stolen. A bid that would have gone to VCU. The first five teams out of the field today are on the cusp of making it happen: VCU, Loyola-Chicago, Richmond, UConn and Saint Louis. A few teams included in the field today have substantial remaining work to do to feel safe. LSU and Arkansas are two that stand out with a real lack of tourney caliber wins, and are really just hanging on with their metrics for now.

New Conference leaders today represented below as Automatic Bids:
Big Sky - Eastern Washington
MWC - Utah State
NEC - Fairleigh Dickinson
SoCon - Wofford
Summit - South Dakota
Sun Belt - Texas State

Bracket projections are based on 2020-21 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.

Projected At-Large Bids Stolen: 2 (Conference USA and MWC, UAB & Utah State)

FIRST FOUR TEAMS OUT: VCU, Loyola-Chicago, Richmond, UConn
NEXT FOUR TEAMS OUT: Saint Louis, Maryland, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @roccomiller8

Bracket 02.01.21 - Welcome to February

FEBRUARY THOUGHTS
Sure, we all know how fun college basketball can be. But February is a month where the dial gets cranked up. Quality teams are fine tuning for March. Separation between teams who are capable of making a run and the more inconsistent will further continue to unfold in front of us. Welcome to an intense month where the stakes become large. Defensive minded coaches are more than willing to muck things up to win games. Several schedules are backloaded into this month due to a plethora of cancellations. So buckle up, and get ready for a wild month.

BRACKET NOTES - Teams are selected, seeded, and bracketed as if today is Selection Sunday.

- The top seven remain unchanged. Houston holds a slim edge over Texas. We welcome Ohio State to the Two-seed line for the first time. The Three-seed line is headlined by Iowa and Illinois, but they were unable to stay in a perfect s-curve on the bracket due to Michigan and Ohio State already being bracketed. That sent Iowa to the Baylor/Alabama loaded region, and sent Illinois to the Villanova/Houston region.

- Oklahoma had a major resume improvement and metrics improvement over the past week. The Sooners also got some help by way of a FSU loss at G-Tech and West Virginia’s loss. The body of work for OU is in better shape at the moment than the Noles or Mountaineers, giving Oklahoma the final fourth-seed.

- Another squad making a big push is the Florida Gators. These same Gators were on the brink of not being in just two weeks ago. Now they’ve won four straight, including impact victories over Tennessee and at West Virginia. Florida is currently a six-seed today.

- Trying to compare Loyola-Chicago (a team with a shaky resume, but unbelievable metrics) to Western Kentucky (a team with strong wins and nice resume, yet shaky metrics) is not easy. But luckily for both programs, teams like Providence, Seton Hall, Marquette, Michigan State and others got out of the way with more losing. So there is enough room to include both teams in this moment of time. Arkansas nabs the final spot in the field. Hogs have good metrics, but no wins yet against anyone in the field. This could become a big problem if the Razorbacks strike-out this month against Mizzou, Florida, Bama, and LSU. The nice thing for Arkansas is that destiny is completely in their hands. Unlike WKU, for example.

- The first four teams out are Utah State, Georgia Tech, VCU, Richmond. Besides the Yellow Jackets, you’ll notice that more non-power league teams as the next to get in. This is occuring mainly because teams like Maryland, Providence, Seton Hall and Penn State are just to close to .500 or under the line. Until the committee says otherwise, I will be forecasting based on needing to be at least two games over .500 against Division I opposition, as history has taught me. Squads like Syracuse and Duke simply need to get more impactful wins away from home to pass the batch of non-power teams.

- Projected Automatic Bid anomalies are gone from the bracket this week. New Mexico State finally got on the court, which was great to see. However, NMSU was thrown into the fire immediately and lost twice at rival Grand Canyon. With Howard continuing to get more postponements, I decided to finally pull the plug and insert 4-0 North Carolina A&T as the MEAC representative.

New Conference leaders today represented below as Automatic Bids:
America East - Vermont
MEAC - North Carolina A&T
NEC - LIU
SoCon - East Tennessee State
Sun Belt - Louisiana
WAC - Grand Canyon

Bracket projections are based on 2020-21 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.

At-Large Bids Stolen: 1 (Conference USA, UAB)

FIRST FOUR TEAMS OUT: Utah State, Georgia Tech, VCU, Richmond
NEXT FOUR TEAMS OUT: Syracuse, Duke, Seton Hall, Maryland
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @roccomiller8

Bracketology 01.26.20 - Projecting the NCAA Tournament

BRACKET NOTES
- As always, teams are selected, seeded, and bracketed as if today was Selection Sunday.

- There is not a ton separating West Virginia, Tennessee and the teams in-between. With West Virginia coming in as the final 3-seed and Tennessee as the top 5-seed, that’s a tough gap if you’re a Vols supporter. In general, with less games on the schedule this season - each individual result against quality competition will cause more ripple effect on resumes than ever before. I believe it will cause a surplus of chaotic scenarios by March. Let’s beg to the heavens that we get a full Championship Week played.

- The final 5-seed choice was excruciatingly difficult for me. Oklahoma State held on to it, mainly because of their high-leverage win in Lubbock. But if the committee decided to not treat road wins as heavily this year, the Cowboys could slide considerably. If you check out our Inside The Bracket page, you’ll see an accurate visual of the “In Safely” teams. Not much is separating 20th thru 31st on the Seed List.

- Oregon is a team dealing with major Covid isssues. Both LJ Figueroa and Chris Duarte were absent for the loss against rival Oregon State. How much will the committee look at that? For today, we treat this at face value and the Ducks slipped to a 10-seed.

- Three of the last four bids were not as difficult as I thought they would be. LSU, St. Bonaventure and Arkansas had clean enough profiles to stand out above the remaining bubble. However, that final selection was fairly brutal. I made the tough decision to exclude Maryland because they are not two games over .500 yet in D1 competition. That will be the biggest obstacle the rest of the way for the Terps. If Maryland is able to get above the two games above .500 threshold, they will be in and probably seeded much higher than a first four particpant. For today, Colorado State gets in.

- Projected Automatic Bid anomalies: New Mexico State and Howard were my preseason picks to win their conference. Sadly, neither team has been able to get back on the court yet for a conference game. Stubbornly, they remain in the bracket as projected WAC and MEAC tournament champions respectively, until they lose at least once in conference.

New Conference leaders today represented below as Automatic Bids:
ASUN - Liberty
SoCon - Wofford

West Virginia came back from a 14-day break recently to win twice in three days. Critical win over Texas Tech last night.

Bracket projections are based on 2020-21 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.

At-Large Bids Stolen: 0 (Highly Unlikely)

FIRST FOUR TEAMS OUT: Pittsburgh, Maryland, Loyola-Chicago, Marquette
NEXT FOUR TEAMS OUT: Western Kentucky, Providence, Georgia Tech, Utah State
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @roccomiller8

Bracketology 01.19.21

The time has come for the first mid-season bracket update. To provide some additional thoughts for both the seeding and bracketing process for this exercise, I put together a list.

SEEDING

Battle for the fourth #1 seed. - You can make an argument for Villanova, Texas, and Iowa in this spot. I envision it being heavily debated in the committee room, if it had to be decided today. Fortunately we still have seven weeks left of runway ahead. The real dilemma is Villanova missing so much time, the pressure will be on the Wildcats to win games on shorter rest going forward, if they plan on remaining in the top seed discussion. For today, I am sticking with Nova - despite Iowa having more Quad 1 wins. Iowa still lacks the big-time win. Nova has it at Texas. Texas has it at Kansas. Make no mistake, these three are neck and neck with each other.

The Minnesota issue - Going purely off the quadrant tables, the Gophers have a top 15 resume. When you take a close look and understand that all the big wins are at home and they have been a different team on the road, one has to believe that is a red flag to the committee. For today, the Gophers have a 5-seed with the ingredients to shoot up the board, or continue to suffer from a lack of any wins outside of Minneapolis.

Louisville Sinking - The Cardinals took two tough losses at Miami and home to Florida State last week. The Cards have slipped to #37 in NET. A 4-3 record now against the top two quads is unfavorable compared to teams on the 5 or 6-seed lines. Cards hold my last 7-seed today.

Unclear Bubble - As with any January, the bubble is a massive mess right now. We may only have 28 teams that undeniably belong in the field. Our last nine spots belong to Indiana, Florida, San Diego State, North Carolina, Stanford, Utah State, Wichita State and Pittsburgh. These decisions were not simple. You can argue that Pitt and Wichita State have not beat a team yet inside the bubble. I decided to finally take Duke out of the field, they get Pitt later this week. And Utah State’s overall body of work completley depends on San Diego State right now. Since the Aztecs are still in our field, thats enough to include an Aggies team who just swept them. We have another 10-12 teams on the outside looking in that are simply one or two big wins away from replacing the bottom nine that are in. That’s how tight it is currently.

Welcome newcomers - A warm welcome to the Montana State Bobcats, UMBC Retrievers and the Jacksonville Dolphins - who enter the bracket today as fresh conference leaders.

Unbalanced Conference races - Bryant remains in the field. We normally would go with the leader in the loss column, which today is Fairleigh Dickinson for the NEC. FDU is just 1-1 however, so Bryant’s 6-2 win pct. is superior to the Knights at this point. Should FDU rip off a few wins in a row, they would likely become our NEC representative.

BRACKETING
In principle, I followed the stright-forward 1-68 s-curve seeding process. This of course was done while following the conference affiliation rules for the top 4-seed lines and the early round rematch policies. Some of the intriguing matchups that came out of this:

Deep tradition: UCLA vs. Indiana
Battle for Alabama: UAB vs. Alabama
Omoruyi Family Feud: Cliff vs. Eugene (Oregon vs. Rutgers)
Nick Musczynski Special: Belmont vs. Ohio State. Belmont’s star big man grew up in the suburbs of Columbus.
Villanova vs. New Mexico State - if the Aggies can get enough games in I’d imagine they won’t be a #16 seed anymore. This would clearly be a rough 16-seed draw for Nova.

FIRST FOUR TEAMS OUT: Maryland, Marquette, Colorado State, Western Kentucky
NEXT FOUR TEAMS OUT: Duke, Arkansas, VCU, St. Bonaventure
FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: @roccomiller8

Preseason Bracketology 11.25.20

Bracket Summary

Welcome to the first of hopefully several Bracketology exercises for the 2020-21 season! This bracket build was like no other, as you may have suspected. All we know thus far is 68 teams are heading to the NCAA Tournament in the State of Indiana. We presume the sites are mostly going to be in Indianapolis, so that is represented in the bracket today. As the NCAA Selection Committee rolls out more information, we will adjust the bracketing forecasts accordingly.

How was the Preseason Bracket Built?

Several factors go into selecting the 68 teams. This season the Ivy League decided not to participate. So we are now looking at 31 Conferences with each tournament champion receiving an automitic bid to the tournament, instead of 32. That means 37 at-large bids are available for the most deserving teams as selected by the NCAA Selection Committee.
Removing the geography from the bracket projections during this exercise, felt bizarre - like something was completely off. I’ve been at this for a long time and so was especially different. What I found was, we don’t know which games get actually played and which ones get cancelled, and that is likely going to be the case all year. Like Texas and Stanford are both going to play in Asheville’s Maui Invitational, but no guarantee they play there. We will also see ad-hoc non-conference games in the next month, and perhaps all season long. It could create a new set of variables and opportunities for bubble teams that had their non-conference games lost.
Several hours of zoom interviews, reading, podcasts, texting, calls, and more have gone into the past offseason. Based on every piece of info gathered, this bracket represents my best for what the season could bring us.
I put a special emphasis on coaching pedigree and teams who play good defense. You can probably tell by Virginia being a projected 1-seed. But there are several other factors going into the projections including: percieved talent, how the pieces of a roster fit, efficiency analytics, historical research on like-teams, and others. What we do here is consistently think about all factors that can and will impact a season and/or a tournament resume.
The projected bubble means several tough decisions for who’s in and who’s out. Northern Iowa was a late removal from the projected field, due to a COVID-19 issue that hurt their roster this week. There are a handful of teams like Marquette and Syracuse that are real difficult to make determinations on. Should be a wild ride as always, but even more so in this unparalelled campaign.
In Part 2 of our preview, we projected Bradley to win Arch Madness again this season. Which means we are starting the Bracketology season with one bid theif.

Bracket projections are based on 2019-20 NCAA Committee Principles and Selection Process. Projected Conference Champions are based on projected Auto-Bid winners.

At-Large Bids Stolen: 1 (Bradley)