- Joined
- May 8, 2002
- Posts
- 1,149,299
- Reaction score
- 59
Sometime before 6 p.m. EST on Sunday evening, the NCAA men’s basketball selection committee will provide a completed bracket to CBS to unveil on the selection show. Here’s our annual look at some of the most difficult decisions that the committee must make between now and then:
The big question after Florida’s SEC semifinal flop against Vanderbilt on Saturday afternoon was whether the Gators had cost themselves the final No. 1 seed.
Did they open the door for UConn or Houston to leapfrog them and join Duke, Michigan and Arizona on the NCAA tournament’s top seed line?
Only a few hours later, Florida could breathe a little easier. Neither UConn nor Houston were able to seize their opportunity, St. John’s avenged a recent blowout loss to the Huskies in the Big East title game at the same time as foul-plagued Arizona outlasted the Cougars to halt their impressive Big 12 tournament run.
What that means is that Florida should be mailing thank you cards to the Johnnies and Wildcats. The Gators appear to have maintained a narrow edge over both UConn and Houston despite exiting the SEC tournament with just a single win.
[Enter Yahoo Fantasy Bracket Mayhem now for your shot at $50K]
FLORIDA (26-7, 16-2 SEC)
NET: 4 | SOR: 5 | KenPom 4 | Q1A: 3-4 | Q1B: 9-2 | Q2: 6-1 | Q3, Q4 losses: 0
Marquee wins: at Vanderbilt, Kentucky (3), Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee
Losses: at Duke, Arizona, UConn, Vanderbilt, TCU, at Missouri, Auburn
UCONN (29-5, 17-3 Big East)
NET: 10 | SOR: 4 | KenPom 9 | Q1A: 5-3 | Q1B: 2-0 | Q2: 11-1 | Q3, Q4 losses: 1 (Creighton)
Marquee wins: Florida, Illinois, at Kansas, St. John’s, BYU
Losses: Arizona, St. John’s (2), at Marquette, Creighton
HOUSTON (28-6, 14-4 Big 12)
NET: 7 | SOR: 7 | KenPom 6 | Q1A: 5-6 | Q1B: 5-0 | Q2: 9-0 | Q3, Q4 losses: 0
Marquee wins: Texas Tech, Arkansas, Kansas, BYU (2), at TCU
Losses: Arizona (2), at Iowa State, at Texas Tech, at Kansas, Tennessee
Will Todd Golden and the Florida Gators get a No. 1 seed after their loss to Vanderbilt on Saturday? (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Labeled an early-season disappointment after suffering four losses in its opening nine games, including a puzzling one against unheralded TCU, Florida unleashed its full potential in SEC play. A deep, physical frontcourt bludgeoned opponents on the glass and surrendered nothing easy at the rim, helping the Gators close the regular season on an 11-game win streak to secure the SEC title by three games.
Florida’s 12 Quadrant 1 victories are the fourth most in the nation, behind only Arizona, Duke and Michigan. Their seven losses are the most of any No. 1 seed contender, but three have come against fellow contenders for the top seed line.
How can Florida be ahead of UConn in the pecking order when the Huskies have two fewer overall losses and a head-to-head victory over the Gators at Madison Square Garden in December? Because loss volume and head-to-head results aren’t the only criteria that the committee will consider.
Florida has 12 Quadrant 1 victories; UConn has just 7. Florida is perfect against Quadrant 3 and 4; UConn suffered a Quadrant 3 home loss to Creighton last month. Florida is no worse than No. 5 in any of the predictive metrics used by the selection committee; UConn checks in at ninth or 10th in all of them.
Had Houston completed a second-half comeback against Arizona to win the Big 12 tournament, the Cougars would have absolutely entered the No. 1 seed conversation. That scenario would have given the Cougars 11 Quadrant 1 wins and only top-tier losses, a résumé that undoubtedly would have forced the committee to do a side-by-side comparison with Florida’s.
Instead, Houston will likely settle for a No. 2 seed but could net an enticing consolation prize. There’s a good chance the Cougars join Florida in the South region with the chance to play a regional semifinal and title game 2.5 miles from campus at the Toyota Center.
How can Miami’s NCAA tournament worthiness even be a debate after the RedHawks became just the sixth team since 1985 to enter conference tournament play with an undefeated record?
It’s because they racked up wins against a tissue-soft schedule ranked 340th nationally, one featuring 19 games against Mid-American Conference teams, three against NAIA opponents and a handful of other non-league matchups against the dregs of Division I.
Twenty-eight of Miami’s 31 victories were against Quadrant 3 or below. Eight either went to overtime or were decided by three or fewer points. The Redhawks’ lone top-100 win came at home against Akron in January. Their next-most impressive result is an early-season road win at a Wright State team ranked 127th in the NET rankings.
Will Miami (Ohio) make the NCAA tournament or be a controversial snub on Selection Sunday? (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Most predictive metrics echo what Bruce Pearl famously screamed earlier this month — that Miami is not the quality of other contenders for at-large bids. The RedHawks fell to 87th in Bart Torvik’s rankings and 93rd in KenPom on Thursday after UMass spoiled their unbeaten season in the MAC quarterfinals. No team with a KenPom rating as low as that has ever earned an at-large NCAA tournament bid.
What may save Miami is that its résumé-based metrics tell a different story. Miami is 38th in Wins Above Bubble, which measures a team’s total number of victories compared to how many wins the average bubble team would be expected to pile up against the same schedule. This metric has quickly become the selection committee’s favorite tool to objectively compare the achievements of bubble teams that played vastly different strengths of schedules.
When asked by reporters last month which of the seven metrics on the team sheets used by the selection committee are most important, NCAA men’s basketball coordinator Dan Gavitt went out of his way to highlight WAB, “especially when it comes to selecting teams.” Gavitt said that the selection of last year’s final at-large teams was more highly correlated to WAB than it was to any other metric.
At No. 38 in WAB, Miami is nestled among teams who are projected to make the NCAA tournament, right ahead of Iowa (39), Texas A&M (40), Missouri (41) and NC State (43). Bubble teams Auburn (44), SMU (46), Texas (47) and Oklahoma (49) are a little further back.
That could be the justification the selection committee needs to put Miami in the field as a No. 11 seed, whether in the main draw or with the chance to prove itself in the First Four.
Committee members know that leaving out Miami would result in backlash dominating the buildup to this NCAA tournament. That’s surely not an outcome they want.
Never before has the selection committee awarded an at-large NCAA tournament bid to a team that has 16 total losses or to a team that is just a single game over .500.
Don’t expect this year’s committee to break with that precedent to make room for 17-16 Auburn, especially with upsets in the MAC and Atlantic 10 tournaments likely shrinking the bubble.
The case for Auburn, as Steven Pearl laid out to reporters in Nashville on Thursday night, is that the Tigers have played the nation’s second-toughest schedule and have shown the ability to defeat elite teams. They are the only team to beat Florida in Gainesville this season. They also boast marquee wins over St. John’s, Arkansas and Kentucky, as well as victories over fellow bubble teams NC State and Texas.
"Our guys have some of the best wins in college basketball," Pearl said, adding that Auburn is a “team that can win games in the tournament.”
Steven Pearl and the Auburn Tigers will be sweating it out until Sunday night's selection show. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Auburn’s team-sheets metrics also compare favorably with those of other bubble teams. Its résumé-based metrics are in the low-to-mid 40s. The predictive ones are even better.
Of course, the counterpoint to all that is Auburn simply didn’t win enough games. The Tigers went 4-13 in Quadrant 1 games and 11-16 against the top three Quadrants. Yes, they played a lot of good teams close, but loss volume has to matter.
Ultimately, not winning one or two more games will likely be what costs Auburn. This is the type of middling power-conference team that will make a 76-team tournament – heck, maybe even a 72-team tournament – but not a field of 68.
When unveiling the selection committee’s in-season mock bracket four weeks ago, Keith Gill acknowledged that Texas Tech’s seed didn’t match its accomplishments. The committee chair said that he and his colleagues dropped the Red Raiders from a No. 3 seed to a No. 4 based on the torn ACL that All-American candidate JT Toppin suffered three days earlier.
How to evaluate Texas Tech without Toppin is far from the only injury-related decision that the selection committee must make. North Carolina lost freshman phenom and future top-five pick Caleb Wilson to a broken thumb last week. BYU lost all-conference guard Richie Saunders to a torn ACL in mid-February. Gonzaga standout forward Braden Huff has been sidelined by a left knee injury since mid-January. Louisville’s projected lottery pick Mikel Brown Jr. has missed the past few weeks with a lingering back injury. Duke and UCLA also both recently had two key starters go down with injuries.
When asked how the selection committee will handle that flurry of late-season injuries, Gavitt told NCAA.com’s Andy Katz that he and his colleagues will “work with the conferences and the schools to get the most up-to-date and accurate information about player availability.” The toughest decisions for the committee, according to Gavitt, are ones where an injured player’s status is in doubt or where there hasn’t been sufficient time to assess how the absence of a key player will affect his team.
Whose seeding might suffer as a result of ill-timed injuries? Texas Tech and North Carolina are in the most jeopardy.
The Red Raiders played with something to prove after Toppin’s injury, ripping off three straight wins including a rare road victory at Iowa State. Cracks have shown since then as Texas Tech has dropped three in a row and has struggled to replace Toppin’s defensive rebounding and rim protection as a small-ball center.
With top-tier wins against Duke, Arizona, Houston and Iowa State, only one loss outside the top quadrant and résumé-based and predictive metrics all between 10th and 20th nationally, Texas Tech (22-11) projects as a potential No. 4 seed and no worse than a No. 5. The committee could opt for the low end of that range because of the Toppin injury, but anything worse than a No. 5 seed would be harsh.
The discrepancy between North Carolina with and without Wilson is even clearer. The Tar Heels outscore opponents by 9.7 points fewer per 100 possessions this season when their star freshman isn’t on the floor drawing extra defenders to the paint, creating extra possessions on the offensive glass and altering opposing shots at the rim.
Credit North Carolina (24-8) for going 5-3 in Wilson’s absence late in the season, but the Tar Heels’ ceiling simply isn’t as high. With Wilson, North Carolina would have been a dark horse Final Four threat. Without him, this is a likely No. 6 seed that will need some breaks to advance beyond the tournament’s opening week.
Continue reading...
1. Who will secure the final No. 1 seed?
The big question after Florida’s SEC semifinal flop against Vanderbilt on Saturday afternoon was whether the Gators had cost themselves the final No. 1 seed.
Did they open the door for UConn or Houston to leapfrog them and join Duke, Michigan and Arizona on the NCAA tournament’s top seed line?
Only a few hours later, Florida could breathe a little easier. Neither UConn nor Houston were able to seize their opportunity, St. John’s avenged a recent blowout loss to the Huskies in the Big East title game at the same time as foul-plagued Arizona outlasted the Cougars to halt their impressive Big 12 tournament run.
What that means is that Florida should be mailing thank you cards to the Johnnies and Wildcats. The Gators appear to have maintained a narrow edge over both UConn and Houston despite exiting the SEC tournament with just a single win.
[Enter Yahoo Fantasy Bracket Mayhem now for your shot at $50K]
FLORIDA (26-7, 16-2 SEC)
NET: 4 | SOR: 5 | KenPom 4 | Q1A: 3-4 | Q1B: 9-2 | Q2: 6-1 | Q3, Q4 losses: 0
Marquee wins: at Vanderbilt, Kentucky (3), Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee
Losses: at Duke, Arizona, UConn, Vanderbilt, TCU, at Missouri, Auburn
UCONN (29-5, 17-3 Big East)
NET: 10 | SOR: 4 | KenPom 9 | Q1A: 5-3 | Q1B: 2-0 | Q2: 11-1 | Q3, Q4 losses: 1 (Creighton)
Marquee wins: Florida, Illinois, at Kansas, St. John’s, BYU
Losses: Arizona, St. John’s (2), at Marquette, Creighton
HOUSTON (28-6, 14-4 Big 12)
NET: 7 | SOR: 7 | KenPom 6 | Q1A: 5-6 | Q1B: 5-0 | Q2: 9-0 | Q3, Q4 losses: 0
Marquee wins: Texas Tech, Arkansas, Kansas, BYU (2), at TCU
Losses: Arizona (2), at Iowa State, at Texas Tech, at Kansas, Tennessee
You must be registered for see images
Will Todd Golden and the Florida Gators get a No. 1 seed after their loss to Vanderbilt on Saturday? (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Labeled an early-season disappointment after suffering four losses in its opening nine games, including a puzzling one against unheralded TCU, Florida unleashed its full potential in SEC play. A deep, physical frontcourt bludgeoned opponents on the glass and surrendered nothing easy at the rim, helping the Gators close the regular season on an 11-game win streak to secure the SEC title by three games.
Florida’s 12 Quadrant 1 victories are the fourth most in the nation, behind only Arizona, Duke and Michigan. Their seven losses are the most of any No. 1 seed contender, but three have come against fellow contenders for the top seed line.
How can Florida be ahead of UConn in the pecking order when the Huskies have two fewer overall losses and a head-to-head victory over the Gators at Madison Square Garden in December? Because loss volume and head-to-head results aren’t the only criteria that the committee will consider.
Florida has 12 Quadrant 1 victories; UConn has just 7. Florida is perfect against Quadrant 3 and 4; UConn suffered a Quadrant 3 home loss to Creighton last month. Florida is no worse than No. 5 in any of the predictive metrics used by the selection committee; UConn checks in at ninth or 10th in all of them.
Had Houston completed a second-half comeback against Arizona to win the Big 12 tournament, the Cougars would have absolutely entered the No. 1 seed conversation. That scenario would have given the Cougars 11 Quadrant 1 wins and only top-tier losses, a résumé that undoubtedly would have forced the committee to do a side-by-side comparison with Florida’s.
Instead, Houston will likely settle for a No. 2 seed but could net an enticing consolation prize. There’s a good chance the Cougars join Florida in the South region with the chance to play a regional semifinal and title game 2.5 miles from campus at the Toyota Center.
2. Is Miami (Ohio) in? And, if so, where should the RedHawks be seeded?
How can Miami’s NCAA tournament worthiness even be a debate after the RedHawks became just the sixth team since 1985 to enter conference tournament play with an undefeated record?
It’s because they racked up wins against a tissue-soft schedule ranked 340th nationally, one featuring 19 games against Mid-American Conference teams, three against NAIA opponents and a handful of other non-league matchups against the dregs of Division I.
Twenty-eight of Miami’s 31 victories were against Quadrant 3 or below. Eight either went to overtime or were decided by three or fewer points. The Redhawks’ lone top-100 win came at home against Akron in January. Their next-most impressive result is an early-season road win at a Wright State team ranked 127th in the NET rankings.
You must be registered for see images attach
Will Miami (Ohio) make the NCAA tournament or be a controversial snub on Selection Sunday? (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Most predictive metrics echo what Bruce Pearl famously screamed earlier this month — that Miami is not the quality of other contenders for at-large bids. The RedHawks fell to 87th in Bart Torvik’s rankings and 93rd in KenPom on Thursday after UMass spoiled their unbeaten season in the MAC quarterfinals. No team with a KenPom rating as low as that has ever earned an at-large NCAA tournament bid.
What may save Miami is that its résumé-based metrics tell a different story. Miami is 38th in Wins Above Bubble, which measures a team’s total number of victories compared to how many wins the average bubble team would be expected to pile up against the same schedule. This metric has quickly become the selection committee’s favorite tool to objectively compare the achievements of bubble teams that played vastly different strengths of schedules.
When asked by reporters last month which of the seven metrics on the team sheets used by the selection committee are most important, NCAA men’s basketball coordinator Dan Gavitt went out of his way to highlight WAB, “especially when it comes to selecting teams.” Gavitt said that the selection of last year’s final at-large teams was more highly correlated to WAB than it was to any other metric.
At No. 38 in WAB, Miami is nestled among teams who are projected to make the NCAA tournament, right ahead of Iowa (39), Texas A&M (40), Missouri (41) and NC State (43). Bubble teams Auburn (44), SMU (46), Texas (47) and Oklahoma (49) are a little further back.
That could be the justification the selection committee needs to put Miami in the field as a No. 11 seed, whether in the main draw or with the chance to prove itself in the First Four.
Committee members know that leaving out Miami would result in backlash dominating the buildup to this NCAA tournament. That’s surely not an outcome they want.
3. What about Auburn?
Never before has the selection committee awarded an at-large NCAA tournament bid to a team that has 16 total losses or to a team that is just a single game over .500.
Don’t expect this year’s committee to break with that precedent to make room for 17-16 Auburn, especially with upsets in the MAC and Atlantic 10 tournaments likely shrinking the bubble.
The case for Auburn, as Steven Pearl laid out to reporters in Nashville on Thursday night, is that the Tigers have played the nation’s second-toughest schedule and have shown the ability to defeat elite teams. They are the only team to beat Florida in Gainesville this season. They also boast marquee wins over St. John’s, Arkansas and Kentucky, as well as victories over fellow bubble teams NC State and Texas.
"Our guys have some of the best wins in college basketball," Pearl said, adding that Auburn is a “team that can win games in the tournament.”
You must be registered for see images
Steven Pearl and the Auburn Tigers will be sweating it out until Sunday night's selection show. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Auburn’s team-sheets metrics also compare favorably with those of other bubble teams. Its résumé-based metrics are in the low-to-mid 40s. The predictive ones are even better.
Of course, the counterpoint to all that is Auburn simply didn’t win enough games. The Tigers went 4-13 in Quadrant 1 games and 11-16 against the top three Quadrants. Yes, they played a lot of good teams close, but loss volume has to matter.
Ultimately, not winning one or two more games will likely be what costs Auburn. This is the type of middling power-conference team that will make a 76-team tournament – heck, maybe even a 72-team tournament – but not a field of 68.
4. Which teams that lost key players to injuries will be penalized in their seedings?
When unveiling the selection committee’s in-season mock bracket four weeks ago, Keith Gill acknowledged that Texas Tech’s seed didn’t match its accomplishments. The committee chair said that he and his colleagues dropped the Red Raiders from a No. 3 seed to a No. 4 based on the torn ACL that All-American candidate JT Toppin suffered three days earlier.
How to evaluate Texas Tech without Toppin is far from the only injury-related decision that the selection committee must make. North Carolina lost freshman phenom and future top-five pick Caleb Wilson to a broken thumb last week. BYU lost all-conference guard Richie Saunders to a torn ACL in mid-February. Gonzaga standout forward Braden Huff has been sidelined by a left knee injury since mid-January. Louisville’s projected lottery pick Mikel Brown Jr. has missed the past few weeks with a lingering back injury. Duke and UCLA also both recently had two key starters go down with injuries.
When asked how the selection committee will handle that flurry of late-season injuries, Gavitt told NCAA.com’s Andy Katz that he and his colleagues will “work with the conferences and the schools to get the most up-to-date and accurate information about player availability.” The toughest decisions for the committee, according to Gavitt, are ones where an injured player’s status is in doubt or where there hasn’t been sufficient time to assess how the absence of a key player will affect his team.
Whose seeding might suffer as a result of ill-timed injuries? Texas Tech and North Carolina are in the most jeopardy.
The Red Raiders played with something to prove after Toppin’s injury, ripping off three straight wins including a rare road victory at Iowa State. Cracks have shown since then as Texas Tech has dropped three in a row and has struggled to replace Toppin’s defensive rebounding and rim protection as a small-ball center.
With top-tier wins against Duke, Arizona, Houston and Iowa State, only one loss outside the top quadrant and résumé-based and predictive metrics all between 10th and 20th nationally, Texas Tech (22-11) projects as a potential No. 4 seed and no worse than a No. 5. The committee could opt for the low end of that range because of the Toppin injury, but anything worse than a No. 5 seed would be harsh.
The discrepancy between North Carolina with and without Wilson is even clearer. The Tar Heels outscore opponents by 9.7 points fewer per 100 possessions this season when their star freshman isn’t on the floor drawing extra defenders to the paint, creating extra possessions on the offensive glass and altering opposing shots at the rim.
Credit North Carolina (24-8) for going 5-3 in Wilson’s absence late in the season, but the Tar Heels’ ceiling simply isn’t as high. With Wilson, North Carolina would have been a dark horse Final Four threat. Without him, this is a likely No. 6 seed that will need some breaks to advance beyond the tournament’s opening week.
Continue reading...
