bukie

If you look at the nitty gritty sheet, it actually has the criteria for each quad tier in the header for the section.

Atlantic Sun final will be Lipscomb vs Liberty. Both have at least a fringe profile for consideration, but Lipscomb would be the team in better shape with a loss.

As for the resources, here's the same tools the committee will have: NET Ratings Team-by-Team Nitty Gritty analysis

Another year, another NCAA tournament. But this time it's different! Different selection criteria, different ratings, supposedly more transparency, so we'll see. For example, a month ago, the committee revealed their "top 16 seeds" to that point: East (Washington, D.C.): (1) Duke, (2) Michigan, (3) Marquette, (4) Iowa State South (Louisville): (1) Tennessee, (2) North Carolina, (3) Purdue, (4) Nevada Midwest (Kansas City): (1) Virginia, (2) Kentucky, (3) Houston, (4) Wisconsin West (Anaheim): (1) Gonzaga, (2) Michigan State, (3) Kansas, (4) Louisville What does it mean now? Very little, since each team has played like 10 games since then and teams have either jumped up into the top 16 easily (Texas Tech, LSU) or taken a nose dive out of the top 16 with some bad losses (Nevada, Louisville). But, at least there's new ratings and they aren't nearly as bad as the RPI. They reward how well a team actually plays (up to 10 points, so...still needs work), which is giving teams a chance this year at an at large bid where last year they'd have been dead in the water: - NC State (NET 35, RPI 117) - Indiana (NET 56, RPI 83) - Lipscomb (NET 45, RPI 72) ...and on the flip side, teams that may have been able to talk themselves into a bid solely on schedule strength last year are exposed for not being actually good: - Arizona State (NET 71, RPI 40) - St. John's (NET 62, RPI 43) - Temple (NET 57, RPI 35) And even Kansas has to actually play well instead of schedule well now (NET 18, RPI 1). Could you imagine Kansas somehow still being in the talk for a 1 seed this year? Normally, I try to organize a committee to select the field starting next Wednesday, and people would participate at the beginning and trail off during the week, because it's a lot of work for them, and double the work for me. So this year, I'm turning it into a kind of competition. For fun, because I got no prizes. Post your bracket, and I'll score it. Here's the scoring system: - 1 point - Select a team in the field correctly (I mean, there are 32 auto bids, so you should practically be guaranteed 32 points!) - 1 point - Place a team correctly within 2 seed lines (so if you put Illinois at a 7 seed and they end up a 9 seed, congrats, you get a bonus point!) - 1 point - Place a team correctly on the correct seed line (So if you put Illinois as a 9 seed and they are a 9 seed, boom, 3 points!) - 1 point - Place a team in the correct region (you know, West/Midwest/East/South). - 2 points (1 per team) - Set a matchup correctly (so if you have Michigan vs Loyola as a 3-14 and the committee does this matchup, but as a 2-15, you get a bonus point) So you could potentially get 5 points per team for a total of 340 points, at which point I'd ask which member of the committee you were. I'll post all the auto bids and my logic process during the next two weeks, just like I've done in the past. If you want to post a bracket, just make sure you do it before the selection show starts (and I hope the committee doesn't pull shenanigans like showing an early bracket during the week) and I'll tally the scores. It will take me a bit because I've got to enter the information into the spreadsheet, but I'll try to have the scores posted before the tournament games start. If it ends up just me, then fine, I'll post my own bracket and score myself, and everyone can criticize and deride my choices over the next two weeks, if that's how you want to play it.

If the best possible lottery odds would be stating in 4th, a game ahead of the Cavs, then the Bulls did nothing to hurt themselves last night. The Bulls have been in 4th for the last two months, they'll likely be 4th in a month, and there's no chance they fall out of the top 5. The only damage the Bulls do by playing well is making it less likely that a regime change will happen.

Conference tournament play starts tonight.

At some point, it has to be okay for the team to play well. They're basically locked into the 4 spot with 19 games left to play and 3 games clear of either 3rd or 5th, and 6 games clear of anything beyond that. They aren't hurting themselves by playing well.

Two of Dallas/Chicago/Colorado/Minnesota/LA/Vancouver/Edmonton/Arizona/Anaheim are going to make the playoffs, and at this point, who's to say who the best two teams of that lot are?

Illinois up to 64 in Pomeroy ratings, good enough for...12th in conference. B1G by KP ratings: Michigan State 4 Michigan 6 Purdue 9 Wisconsin 12 Maryland 15 Iowa 27 Nebraska 34 Ohio State 37 Indiana 45 Minnesota 50 Penn State 59 Illinois 64 Northwestern 69 Rutgers 84 The numbers are also fairly similar in the NET rankings, which leads to hilarious schedules, like Illinois having 17 of their 20 conference games as tier 1, including 13 of the 14 they've already played (only Rutgers at home wasn't, they still haven't played home games with NW and PSU).

The basketball world will not be prepared for the PSU/Illinois BTT championship game.

Meaningless what if game, but man if they had those FAU, ND and NW games have the last basket go the other way, there would be a reasonable path to postseason basketball for this team. As is it's a lost season without a BTT win.

First Illinois road win in a year. First blue jersey win in 2 years.

I think this broke me. From Chapman to Russell to Murphy to Joe to emails to this offseason being perfectly set up for the Cubs and destroyed by financial ignorance, to now their big TV plan being a partnership with Sinclair...I think I'm done with the Cubs for a while. I like the players for the most part, and the radio is still an option, and I like the baseball part of the front office, but I now hope this ownership falls hard and that makes me sad.

Nice to see Illinois finally break through with a big win Tuesday. Outside shot at getting to 9-11 in conference if they don't lay any eggs. Side note, Illinois' schedule this year ended up being hilariously difficult. As of today's KP ratings, they will end the year having played just 4 teams outside the top 100: FAU (yikes), UNLV, Evansville in the top 200, and MVSU, one of the worst teams in D1. Schedule second only to Kansas in strength.

Trying to argue that closer is not a position is just being willfully ignorant. If you want to argue that there's no difference between a closer and any other reliever, then fine, Rivera is no doubt the best reliever of all time. Arguing that anyone does or doesn't deserve every vote is just being stupidly cynical, but hey, apparently that's just the best anyone can expect around here these days. Getting 100% of the vote just removes one of the dumbest stigmas of hall of fame voting, and the efforts to make voting public probably contributes more than anything else to that. Next step would be to have the writers get over themselves and vote in two of the 10 best players of all time.

And is no contest the best closer in MLB history. There are discussions about who the best player was at each MLB position throughout history. Not so for closer. Sure I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to be in. Just think it’s funny that he was the first unanimous one and not one of the 100+ players who accumulated more value over their careers Yes, WAR is not a very good stat to show relative value of relievers. As for what WAR is good at showing value of... career WAR, 2019 HOF ballot: 1. 1st half of Bonds' career: 83.6 2. Mussina: 83.0 3. Schilling: 79.6 4. 2nd half of Bonds: 79.2 5. 1st half of Clemens: 73.3 6. Walker: 72.7 7. Rolen 70.2 8. Manny: 69.4 9. Edgar: 68.4 10. 2nd half of Clemens: 65.7 11. Halladay: 64.3

And is no contest the best closer in MLB history. There are discussions about who the best player was at each MLB position throughout history. Not so for closer.

I was sure no one was ever going to get 100% just because some jackass would turn in a blank ballot or something. No blank ballots, but Dan Shaughnessy submitted a one name ballot.

Oh they're definitely the worst team in the WC round by any metric you want to look at, by a significant margin. They're the only below average team in the playoffs by DVOA (Steelers, Vikings, Titans, Packers, Giants and Falcons rated better). They had a good win over the Rams and a comeback win over the Texans. That bumped them from a bad team to a slightly below average team. Be real, the team nobody wants to play in the first round is the Bears.

When do the bowl games start

AKA why the Bears never really had a chance here. 25 teams were never going to pass on him.

This was not a good week for quarterbacks.

Bears now 2nd in the league in point differential, tying the Chiefs.

No, Bears win tiebreakers with Rams and Saints. Lose tiebreaker to DAL.

Here's a good read about everything the Bears D did last week to completely shut down the Rams: https://www.footballoutsiders.com/film-room/2018/film-room-bears-defense