bukie

I actually kinda like Xavier's resume more than St. Louis'. I don't get how St. Louis is being considered a lock or for a 9 seed. St. Louis is an interesting case. Look at their schedule: their non-con SOS is made up entirely of either terrible teams from major conferences (which boosts the opponents-opponents winning % component of RPI) or good teams from terrible conferences (which boosts the opponent winning % of RPI). Add in that the Atlantic 10 was made up of about 10 decent teams, with one good and one terrible team, and their overall numbers look fantastic. And then of course they do say the committee looks at metrics like the Pomeroy ratings, and it loves St. Louis (has them 12th in the country actually). Pomeroy's system likes them because their average margin of victory for the season is 18 points.

I actually kinda like Xavier's resume more than St. Louis'. I don't get how St. Louis is being considered a lock or for a 9 seed. I like St. Louis's resume quite a bit, and did before I knew where they were seeded by the wiseguys (my main resource for this stuff is Glockner's Bubble Watch on SI.com, which doesn't give seeds but is a good place to find any bubble team's RPI/SOS/good wins/bad losses all in one link). I can't really explain why I like it, but they only have 2 losses to teams outside of our NCAA discussion, which is fewer than just about any of the other teams they're being compared with. Their resume is a lot like Northwestern's, except their non-con schedule exploits the RPI system better.

I actually kinda like Xavier's resume more than St. Louis'. I don't get how St. Louis is being considered a lock or for a 9 seed. St. Louis is an interesting case. Look at their schedule: their non-con SOS is made up entirely of either terrible teams from major conferences (which boosts the opponents-opponents winning % component of RPI) or good teams from terrible conferences (which boosts the opponent winning % of RPI). Add in that the Atlantic 10 was made up of about 10 decent teams, with one good and one terrible team, and their overall numbers look fantastic.

Xavier in my opinion is pretty safe, if we take into account that their worst stretch of the year was when half their team was suspended. At full strength, their resume is significantly better.

And half their roster was suspended during the middle of the year. Does that count like injuries, or do we not give them the benefit of the doubt for causing fights in a game?

One last thing to keep in mind also is that we're not doing this as an exercise to see how we can bring our bracket more in line with Lunardi/Bracket Project/whatever. Screw em. We can compare our bracket to theirs when it's done. There have been many instances over the past 8 years where our bracket has done significantly better than average (almost every year, I think), so if anything, they should be looking at our progress to see where they screwed up.

I don't think either's getting in as an at-large. On the bright side, among nearly identical resumes for UMass/St Bonnie/St Louis/Xavier/Dayton/La Salle, one of those teams is getting the auto bid, and doesn't need an at-large selection.

Just for information, here were the scores of the top 8 from last night's ranking (1.0 is a perfect score): Indiana 0.925 Marquette 0.838 Baylor 0.838 Michigan 0.813 Georgetown 0.800 Wisconsin 0.763 Wichita State 0.700 Temple (A-10) 0.488 Marquette was put higher than Baylor on the S-Curve because 3 of 5 voters preferred Marquette.

Indiana is 9 and Wisconsin is 14, which is a 5 spot drop. You don't think Wisconsin could jump 3 spots by beating a top 15 team or Indiana drop 2 spots? I guess the former is much more likely than the later, and at the end of the day its still just 1 game. I just imagined IU and Wisconsin pretty close together in terms of resumes so I figured if Wisconsin one they would be seeded higher, but of course I have to go by the established S-curve, not my own seedings. Plus Marquette lost, and Georgetown lost, and Michigan hasn't even played yet (and could end up with a worse loss by the end of the night). If Michigan wins, I have no problem swapping Michigan in the bracket with Indiana, and some minor shifting around on the S-Curve. I think the gap between #15 and #16 is big enough to where the top 15 as is in the bracket are safe as protected seeds. If Wisconsin keeps winning, then I think it's safe to discuss them getting bumped up a whole seed line (at the expense of either Indiana or Michigan, since the rules try to avoid conference opponents playing earlier than the elite 8 when there are fewer than 8 teams in the bracket). So, the way I see it, the top 8 are safe in the 1 and 2 seeds right now. The 9-15 teams are safe, but there's room for some jostling between the teams, mostly among the very similar Big Ten teams (as Marquette, Georgetown and Wichita State are done, and Baylor is going to be in their spot by default anyway no matter where they are on the S-Curve to preserve conference separation).

St. Joe's lost to St Bonnies. In the glut of bubble A-10 teams, I'd have to think this puts the Bonnies in a more favorable light than St Joe's.

I don't necessarily think a single game result should cause an 8-spot slide in the S-Curve, myself. I still like Indiana's overall resume more than Wisconsin, and Georgetown is safely in the top 15 regardless. EDIT: Ok, I'll swap Wisconsin and Georgetown on the S-Curve...bracket is the same. :P

Here's where I'm at for the current bracket, keeping as much of the conference separation rules intact as possible while attempting to maintain competitive balance among the brackets: http://i.imgur.com/cERiK.png Let me know if any of those are potential rematches in the first round, or if I'm giving any higher seed any inadvertent semi-away games.

I will say that where in the last top 8, the clear gap was between 8 and 9, in this next 8, the clear gap was between 7 (Wichita State) and 8 (Temple). For now, let's just slide Temple back into the pack of 16, and rank them with that for a total of 17, 9 of which will be placed. EDIT: St. Joes can go back into the discussion group if they win today. UMass I'm not sold on at all. Also, everyone should keep in mind that even though games are meaningful this week, it's just one game in 30ish, so keep the overall perspective in place.

Thomas said they'll accept an NIT bid if invited, but not CBI/CIT.

Crandall Head just tweeted that he's considering coming back to Illinois now.

I like it. It shows they're interested in keeping him around for the future.

Jerrance Howard is the interim coach.

Committee will generally protect the higher seeds in a first round matchup from playing a "near-away" game. So if, for example, Ohio was set to play Wisconsin in Columbus, Ohio should probably be switched out somewhere else.

Simple enough.

John Gasaway on the sporadic successes of Bruce Weber.

Yes, that's definitely the kind of thing that can affect a team's standing. Especially since they've now had so much time with the new players, and it's as if they're a different team with those players.

So now the interim Illinois coach is going to win the NIT, and the complete mirror of the football season will be complete. EDIT: John Gasaway (Basketball Prospectus, UI alum) said he's working on an article about the Weber era, which I'm looking forward to reading when it's done.

And Tennessee is really similar to the Illinois team a few years back that had a terrible couple non-con games. For that Illinois team it was enough to keep them out of the bracket, but this bracket has four extra spots. I actually like Northwestern better than both, still, though. Even though they have just the one top 50 win, all their losses have been to good teams (all top 40 teams except Illinois/Minnesota, and I count Illinois pre-Jan 15 to be a top-40 team)

I like Tennessee a lot better than Mississippi State, actually, now that I look closer at it. I don't get the Mississippi State love. They only have two sub-100 losses because they're fortunate most of the teams they've lost to were between 89 and 100 (100 Arkansas twice, 89 LSU, 99 Georgia twice). They might be the biggest benefitter in history to the "top 100" cutoff rule. One OT road win over Vandy can't possibly go that far.

Stage 4, for midnight CST Friday: 1) Place the teams in the S-Curve into the bracket and assign pods as per bracketing rules. This can be done in the thread over the next day. 2) Discuss any potential movement of teams already on the S-Curve. For example, Marquette lost badly today to Louisville, and UT-Arlington got blown out, so the best case scenario for the Southland bid is now Lamar. 3) Discuss whether any teams off the board need to be in the discussion anyway (Arizona/Oregon?), or if any of the 5 teams in limbo should be bumped above teams currently in the field. 4) Rank the next top 16, of which 8 will be placed in the S-Curve 5) Rank the remaining 20 (18 at-large, 2 auto-bids), the bottom 12 of which will be placed in the S-Curve