NCAA Mock Tourney Selection 2014

[bukie]

It's March, so it's madness time. Time for the 11th (..?!) annual mock tournament selection committee, during which we'll do a mock version of the tournament selection process. Anyone is free to participate if they are able, but please make sure you'll be able to participate regularly between Wednesday and Sunday of selection week (during the actual selection process), or at the very least be able to submit 1-3 lists of teams per day during that period. The actual committee consists of 10 members, so if we can get close to that number, the process will more closely resemble reality (rather than the combined feelings of a couple folks).

 

To participate, by midnight (CST) Tuesday, March 11, send (PM) me 4 things:

1) Your favorite team (the team you'll "represent"). During the selection process, you will not be allowed to include this team in any lists, to maintain as much of a sense of fairness as possible. This mirrors the real committee, as a committee member may not be involved in any discussion for a team in his conference (we'd do that here, but 95% of the populace is Big Ten, so nobody would ever be able to discuss them)

2) A list of cold, hard locks for the tournament, no further discussion needed, no matter what they do in the remainder of their games. This can be any number of teams up to a max of 36 (there are 36 at-large bids this year, no more than that can be locks, right?)

3) A list of teams that deserve consideration for the tournament, besides the locks.

4) A list of your top 16 teams, in order (not including the team you represent, obv)

 

Some good resources:

Pomeroy ratings

Sagarin ratings

RPI

Basketball State (costs money after a few page views, but tons of info)

John Gasaway's Efficiency Margin

Team Rankings (occasionally a bit full of their numbers, but they do have a lot of numbers)

Edited March 9, 2014 by bukie

[bukie]

And as usual, I'll do it and rep Illinois, who has to win about 4 games to even get on the bubble.

[bukie]

First auto bid earned tonight as Harvard wins the Ivy.

[bukie]

Eastern Kentucky beat both Murray State and then Belmont to win the OVC title. Neither Murray State nor Belmont is likely at-large worthy, but Belmont isn't terrible.

[bukie]

Due to an overall lack of interest, maybe I'll do things a little differently this year.

[UMFan83]

Due to an overall lack of interest, maybe I'll do things a little differently this year.

 

I thought people were PMing you and you had plenty of interest. I'll give it a go if there's enough interest. Obviously my team would be DePaul.

 

OK fine Michigan

[bukie]

I just figure if people can't commit the time this year we could just do everything out in the thread in public during the day, and I'd just gather a list of at-large potential candidates myself that people could separate into "in, maybe, and out" categories.

[bukie]

Coastal Carolina wins the Big South.

[bukie]

Wichita State wins the MVC, as bubble teams everywhere rejoice and exhale.

[bukie]

Mercer wins the Atlantic Sun.

[bukie]

Davidson, 15-1 in the SoCon, lost in the semis today to Western Carolina. Wofford vs Western Carolina in the SoCon final.

 

Vermont, 15-1 in the America East, lost in the semis today at Albany (tournament host). Albany vs Stony Brook in the AE final.

[bukie]

Got my script working. Here's the current top 16 in KenPom, broken down by records vs. each "tier" of opponent.

 

Tier 1: Home games vs top 25, neutral games vs top 50, road games vs top 75 (i.e. tournament level games)

Tier 2: Home games vs 26-60, neutral games vs 51-100, road games vs 76-175 (i.e. losable games)

Tier 3: All other games (i.e. embarrassing to lose, otherwise meaningless to win)

 

What the rest means (taken from JohnGasaway.com):

PPP - Points per possession, a way to normalize offensive efficiency on a per-possession basis. Average is around 1, generally.

OPP - Opponents points per possession, normalize defensive efficiency on a per-possession basis. Average is around 1, generally.

EM - Average efficiency margin (basically PPP - OPP), showing essentially how effective a team is against each tier of opponent.

 

http://i.imgur.com/nbCrfd4.png

 

That is a lot of data...not much of a better way to display it on the forum.

 

EDIT: Screw code, I just quick uploaded a screenshot of the excel formatted a bit better, should make things easier to read.

[SouthSideRyan]

Great stuff bukie.

 

Florida, Nova, and AZ seem like a clear top 3

[CubColtPacer]

Great stuff bukie.

 

Florida, Nova, and AZ seem like a clear top 3

 

Just based off of those numbers, I would debate the Wichita St./Florida comparison. Florida's advantage in that scenario is of course four more wins against tier 1 opponents. That is significant, but is that worth two losses, one less win against tier 2, and slightly better efficiency by Wichita St. against both Tier 1 and Tier 2?

 

Maybe a further breakdown gives the Florida wins more impressive status than that chart implies, but based off that I would say those two teams are dead even.

[bukie]

Yeah, I think the exercise had Wichita State come out better than I expected. Their T1 sample size is small (as expected, since this year there are no other top 100 teams in the MVC), but they beat all 3 tournament teams, one at home (Tennessee), one on the road (St. Louis), and one in a neutral location (BYU).

 

If I had to pick the 1 seeds right now, I'd have to go with Florida-Wichita State-Arizona-Nova.

 

Also, Louisville looks really good at KP, but they really did most of their damage against the crap of their schedule.

[Exile on Waveland]

Thanks.

[bukie]

SWAC is being odd this year, and letting the 4 teams that are ineligible for the NCAA tournament play in the SWAC tourney. Thus, if an ineligible team wins it, the team that got the next farthest will go to the NCAA tourney. Ineligible seeds are 1/4/9/10.

[Andy]

SWAC is being odd this year, and letting the 4 teams that are ineligible for the NCAA tournament play in the SWAC tourney. Thus, if an ineligible team wins it, the team that got the next farthest will go to the NCAA tourney. Ineligible seeds are 1/4/9/10.

I've found it really strange the NCAA is allowing that. If APR is really supposed to be as important as the NCAA says, they should tell the SWAC "tough [expletive], you're having a six-team tournament if you don't get your teams to at least not completely suck in the classroom".

[UMFan83]

SWAC is being odd this year, and letting the 4 teams that are ineligible for the NCAA tournament play in the SWAC tourney. Thus, if an ineligible team wins it, the team that got the next farthest will go to the NCAA tourney. Ineligible seeds are 1/4/9/10.

I've found it really strange the NCAA is allowing that. If APR is really supposed to be as important as the NCAA says, they should tell the SWAC "tough [expletive], you're having a six-team tournament if you don't get your teams to at least not completely suck in the classroom".

 

Don't you have to have a tournament with at least 8 (presumably eligible) teams to even be granted an automatic bid? I'm guessing they got an exception for a temporary situation like this.

[bukie]

SWAC is being odd this year, and letting the 4 teams that are ineligible for the NCAA tournament play in the SWAC tourney. Thus, if an ineligible team wins it, the team that got the next farthest will go to the NCAA tourney. Ineligible seeds are 1/4/9/10.

I've found it really strange the NCAA is allowing that. If APR is really supposed to be as important as the NCAA says, they should tell the SWAC "tough [expletive], you're having a six-team tournament if you don't get your teams to at least not completely suck in the classroom".

 

Don't you have to have a tournament with at least 8 (presumably eligible) teams to even be granted an automatic bid? I'm guessing they got an exception for a temporary situation like this.

Conference must have at least 8 teams to get an auto bid. There's one extra auto bid this year (AAC), so one fewer at large spot (so "only" 36)

Edited March 10, 2014 by bukie

[mul21]

The thing that really stands out to me there is how many games each of the B1G teams played against the top 100. 11, 14, 14, and 16 vs. no more than 12 for any other team besides Kansas. I think the toughness of the overall schedule (i.e. getting no "easy" conference wins) should have an influence on the way seeding goes.

 

Question since I haven't paid much attention: Is Sparty going to be healthy by the time the tourney starts?

 

Edit: Changed Duke to Kansas because my memory ain't so good.

Edited March 10, 2014 by mul21

[bukie]

The thing that really stands out to me there is how many games each of the B1G teams played against the top 100. 11, 14, 14, and 16 vs. no more than 12 for any other team besides Duke. I think the toughness of the overall schedule (i.e. getting no "easy" conference wins) should have an influence on the way seeding goes.

 

Question since I haven't paid much attention: Is Sparty going to be healthy by the time the tourney starts?

MSU has had all their players back since the Illinois game, just in time for what is their only "bad" loss of the year. Question is can they get it into gear by the start of the tournament.

 

Biggest injury question going into the tourney, IMO, is Kansas' Joel Embiid.

[bukie]

When compiling the data for the auto bid champions thus far, I feel like there needs to be a Tier 4 somewhere.

[bukie]

Southland is another weird conference this year. 12 of the 14 teams played 18 conference games, while the other two played 14 conference games.

 

Incarnate Word, which finished 21-6 and 9-5 in conference, played 12 OOC games against D2 and D3 teams, possibly the weakest OOC scheduling in D1 history. And are inelgible for the conference tourney.

 

Southland is so weird, in fact, that Oral Roberts, who just joined last year, is going back to their previous conference, since the Southland is so bad that Incarnate Word could finish 3rd despite playing the above mentioned non-con schedule.

[snoodmonger]

The thing that really stands out to me there is how many games each of the B1G teams played against the top 100. 11, 14, 14, and 16 vs. no more than 12 for any other team besides Duke. I think the toughness of the overall schedule (i.e. getting no "easy" conference wins) should have an influence on the way seeding goes.

 

Question since I haven't paid much attention: Is Sparty going to be healthy by the time the tourney starts?

MSU has had all their players back since the Illinois game, just in time for what is their only "bad" loss of the year. Question is can they get it into gear by the start of the tournament.

 

Biggest injury question going into the tourney, IMO, is Kansas' Joel Embiid.

 

 

Embiid out for the first weekend of the tourney, maybe longer. There's a very real chance we might not make it past the round 32 without him.

 

I like your tier approach, but I do think there are some problems. A road game vs a Top 75 game is valued the same as a road game vs. 25. So when you look at that chart and see a team with multiple losses in Tier one, you still aren't getting a clear picture of the types of losses they have.

 

However, that chart represents KU much more accurately than I think general perception does. KU gets a lot of credit for playing a very difficult schedule, and they should. But they also have lost a lot of games against their top opposition. And they're an average road team, at best.