You're listening to the back home network, presented by home
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racket, folks, Galen caviar joining, you just solo this
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largely because they keep adding things to consider and also,
because of a big reason, which we'll talk about here shortly on
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All right. A'ight, let's jump in to sum
over all questions. First of all, I want to talk
through a little bit. What we saw yesterday as the
committee revealed, its top 16 overall teams in the NCAA
tournament. This is something the committee
added several years ago. And its really, I think been one
of the nice things that the committee has done.
I've had my complaints about the committee and the way that they
do business, but this was actually a really cool thing
that they added and Really helps us to get an insight into what
their overall thinking is because it used to be that we
had no clue what the committee was thinking until the day of
the tournament. And so a lot of guesswork went
into just trying to figure out as people tried to predict
brackets. Like what does the committee
think is important in a given year?
Because one of the things I think is important for people to
realize is that those criteria tend to change sometimes
incrementally and sometimes by big Leaps and Bounds between
years and and some of that. That there's actually a
question, we've got that came in from folks, this was actually
from Craig Davis, it's a great thing to start with.
Why does The Selection committee each year, seemingly change what
they prioritize when seating teams and it's a great question
by Craig because if you've paid attention, you'll note that it
is different every year and in some cases you'll see a
preference for how many games did teams win against tournament
bound. Sometimes it's how well did a
team play in Road and neutral environment so away from home
because that's important. Obviously since the tournament
is not played on a team's home court, sometimes it's their
resume, their overall strength of record or how they show up in
kpi, which is one of the metrics that's used to to measure
essentially, how well a team performed against the record
that they played against and how good that that schedule was in
the first place. Sometimes they'll put more
predictive. Two things.
And by that, we mean, the things like be Pi, which is ESPN's
proprietary metric can pom Sager in these are all what we call
predictive metrics, because they take what a team has done.
And they try to calculate a power score essentially that can
be applied to that team's games against other teams.
And so, there's all these different metrics and I used to
factor other things in as well. They would factor in how, well,
a team did in their last 10 games leading into the
tournament. They've officially stopped.
King at that. I have a sneaking suspicion.
They unofficially. Look at it a little bit.
But the reason why it changes year-to-year Craig to answer the
question, finally is a, the committee changes every year.
The committee is comprised of 10 individuals that are drawn from
the different areas of division. One college basketball.
It's almost always either conference Commissioners or
athletic directors at individual schools, but each of those
groups or each of those individuals, Represents a group.
So you normally have a plurality of people on the committee that
come from, what we would, you know, call power conferences.
And so they're of course, you're talking about like the Big Ten
or the ACC or the SEC and, you know, that is normally, you
know, an interesting thing to look at because the membership
changes every year people, Belen and cycle out.
And it's not always the same people like this year.
When you look at the committee, I'll kind of run through who
everybody is. You've got Action.
It's 12. Now, not 10, my mistake.
So from the power conferences, you've got Jamie Pollard who's
the Iowa State athletic director, and he will serve
until 2024. So until next year, you've got
Bubba Cunningham who's the North Carolina athletic director, he's
served for 20 25. Then you've got three new
members from the power conferences, Minnesota's
athletic director Mark coil Arizona's athletic director
Dave, he key and then Alabama's athletic director, Greg burn,
Then you've got representatives from the non power conferences
so you've got the Sun Belt, commissioner Keith Gil, you've
got Barry Collier who's the butler athletic director and,
you know, while Butler is technically in the Big East
which is of course, a power basketball conference.
Excuse me. Well, yes, they're not in
football. There's no football Big East.
So, they actually belong to kind of a different category of
division. One Elsewhere on the committee,
you've got the Samford athletic director, the Big Sky
commissioner The swac commissioner, who's the vice
chairman, the Atlantic 10 commissioner and then the
chairman this year is Chris Reynolds, who of course is an IU
Alum, but is also the athletic director for Bradley University,
which is in the Missouri Valley, which again is a non football
playing Division, 1 conference. So you put all those together,
And what you find is a mix of people and they rotate on and
off and new. Two, people will take their
place based upon their classification.
Now that's probably more back story than you needed, but
ultimately what that means is that perspectives change a
little bit every year because you're dealing with a different
group of people. And, you know, there's always
been some question about how much, how objective can those
those groups of people be really in terms of judging teams and,
you know, No, everybody claims that there's complete
objectivity but there's really no complete objectivity.
And anything related to sports you're going to be to some
degree influenced by the bias is related to what you're watching.
And in the case of someone like Chris Reynolds who obviously
knows basketball very well, what he would probably see as being
important, might be a little bit different from what somebody
else on the committee might see is important.
And what happens through this process is that there's a voting
process Everything. There's a voting process on
adding teams to the overall consideration field.
There's a voting process on which teams actually make it in
as at large has and it's a ballot system where a lot of
compromises end up being made. So, I give you all of that
because when you go back and you look at what happened yesterday
in the reveal, what we saw was and I've seen people criticizing
this online, there's not a tremendous amount of consistency
in terms of what the committee. He seems to be preferring, you
know, you've got a team like Indiana who was 13th out of the
16 teams that were listed, and many people didn't have them in
the top 16. And there were a lot of
questions, like, how did Indiana get ranked that high?
How are they higher than Connecticut?
How are they higher than Creighton?
And some of that is going to be due to committee balance and and
compromise, essentially where Indiana probably to some degree
represents. A bit of a platonic ideal
between Two primary areas that we generally try to judge teams
in and those two are how is their record against teams that
they played. And then how are their
predictive statistics in terms of what, how good we think they
are compared to everybody else. So what do you think about it
that way? It kind of makes sense.
And it's probably a good thing for Indiana because Indiana,
when you look at their overall resume, it's actually pretty
balanced. It's not so heavy, like Yukons
in. Addictive rankings and it's also
not so heavy on resume that they have to rely on that entirely.
So, you know, I think that that gives us a bit of a clue about
what the committee's going to be looking for this time around.
And and I think that that idea of teams that have some kind of
a balance between, how well they've performed thus far.
And how well they're projected to perform later on is going to
be something that really weighs on the committee pretty heavily
and that's Again, I think it's good for Indiana.
I think it's good for a few teams that have a nice balance
between those two. I think Kansas State a team
that's ahead of Indiana has kind of got the same sort of benefit
being given to them so that could shift a little bit and a
lot of this is really dependent on how the overall field looks
by the time you get ready to actually go in and start seeding
the field there and getting teams placed in the field and
that week leading into the selection show.
The other thing that I really noticed Oh, and this is
something I think that's going to be a key element.
Moving forward for this year is how did your team compete
against the other teams that are currently under consideration to
be in the field? And this is where Indiana
actually fares very well. Especially compared to a team
like Creighton. If you look at Indiana right now
with the teams that I've got in the field, they are 11 and 8
against that board of teams Creighton right now, despite
being projected to be better than Indiana in terms of power
numbers. Actually has a worst record
against teams that are going to be in the field.
You're talking about Creighton right now six and seven against
teams in the field and that is a really important thing to keep
in mind because it's not just about the quads.
The quads are important to a degree and I'm going to talk
about the quads in a little bit, but it's about who you actually
beat in the quads. So, you know, when you look at
Indiana, they've got sick squad, one wins right now, and five of
those wins are against Teams that are essentially locks to
make the NCAA tournament Purdue at Xavier at Illinois.
Illinois at home, Rutgers at home.
And then the one that isn't in that mix is at Michigan.
You look at Creighton who's had a great run there, you know,
there, I think one game out of first place in the Big East of
their wins against quad. One teams, only three of the
four that they've got are against teams that right now are
likely to be in the NCAA tournament home against
Connecticut. Neutral Court, win against
Arkansas and then a home win against Xavier.
So, again, it's not just about the, you know, the, the raw
numbers it's about who are the teams that you're beating and
how do they sit within the larger perspective of the NCAA
tournament draw. So Craig, I hope that answers
that question. It's again, it's a complicated
process and a lot of what a committee will decide to focus
on will be a little bit different from the previous
year, and then it'll be different again.
The next year, it's one of the Things that makes Bracketology
as much fun to do as it is because you're kind of trying to
aim at a moving, Target to some degree and it can be
frustrating. And a lot of people Express
frustration after the reveal yesterday because it doesn't
match either what the thing looked like last year or what,
their perception of what it should look like is, but that's
how the process goes. Let's dive in and talk.
Some other questions that we got here.
There were some good ones. We had a couple of questions
from one of the private chats that Time in.
So this is a really good question.
Overall, why do they have the first weekend games in random
places? Like, why are quote unquote East
rounds in Sacramento? So on and so forth.
That's an excellent question. And a lot of it really comes
down to a decision. The NCAA made, I want to say it
was probably somewhere between 10 and 15 years ago where they
decided that it would make sense to uncouple the first and second
round sites from the regional sites with the idea that It
would make it easier on teams to travel and for the top seeded
teams to have fans, be able to go see them and buy tickets.
And you know, this is a process that I think has probably gotten
more complicated than it needed to get.
If you go all the way back to the 80s and the 90s and the
early 2000s in the NCAA tournament, it used to be that
they would say, Hey you know Midwest Regional the regional
finals, going to be In Kansas City, and the first and second
round matchups are going to be in Des Moines and Indianapolis.
And so if you were a one seed, you were going to get placed in
the Indianapolis region. And so with the 16 8 and 9 that
would be kind of that sub-regional and then the other
sub Regional would probably be in Des Moines.
And so you would end up playing first and second round games
with the four seed in the 13 and the 5 in the 12 deciding to
uncouple that meant that You could be in the eat in the
Midwest region and play your first and second round games in
a non Midwest, City with the idea that that would be more
favorable to whoever the top seeds were.
So let's use this here as an example.
This year there are for regionals, the East Regional is
going to be held in New York City at Madison Square Garden.
The Midwest regionals going to be in Kansas City.
The south regional is going to be in Louisville, which I know
confuses. A lot of people because they
don't like Louisville, distant, scream, South, but according to
the way the NCAA Has the country the you know, because Kentucky's
in the SEC and because Louisville's in the ACC
Kentucky's considered part of the South, where is Indiana's
considered part of the Midwest. Go figure and in the west
regionals in Las Vegas. So those are your for regionals
and then the way that it works is there are eight first and
second round sites. And these were all chosen like
four or five years ago, stadiums.
And, and their hosts have to bid on them.
And so the eight regionals that you've got this year actually
They were still doing it the old way, would correspond very well
to the sites, you know, the Regionals that they would feed
into. So for instance you've got the
eight sites this year, our Albany Birmingham Columbus
Denver Des Moines, Greensboro Orlando and Sacramento so if we
were doing it in like the traditional style it's pretty
obvious like Sacramento would feed into the West Regional and
Denver would feed into the West Regional probably and then in
the South. It would almost certainly be
Birmingham and Orlando in the East.
It would be Greensboro and Albany, and then in the midwest,
it would be Columbus and Des Moines.
But the way that it works now is it actually allows, let's take a
team like Kansas Kansas right now is under strong
consideration to be a one seed and Kansas is probably not going
to get the number one seed in the Midwest region.
Unless Houston, loses a couple of games.
So Kansas right now in my most recent bracket, I have them in
the west region, they get placed there, but then after they get
placed in the west region because there were 1 seed, you
go through, and you look at, what would be the most
advantageous, Geographic spot to put Kansas in.
So right now, I have them third in my pecking order of Alabama
first Houston, second Kansas third, Purdue forth.
So let's take those four and do a little exercise with it
Alabama gets because they're the Over one overall seed, they get
the top geographical geographically, friendly, pick
of regional, which for them, would be the South Region, which
is going to be held in Louisville and then they would
get the top pick for friendliest first, and second round
geographical match up with. And these are almost always done
just exclusively by driving distance.
So Alabama would be in the south regional in Louisville and then
their first and second round would clearly be in Birmingham
because birmingham's only what an hour.
Way from from Tuscaloosa. So Alabama gets there first and
second round matchups in Birmingham and that means that
the 16 see the eighth seed in the nine seed will also feed
into that Birmingham, first, and second round matchup Houston.
As the second actually could gets kind of screwed this year
because they are is not a closed first and second round spot.
So we first start with Houston with the regional that they
would go in and because they get the second pick, they get Kansas
City, which is the Ed West Regional even though it would be
more convenient to put Kansas there, because Kansas is much
closer. Huston gets priority because
they're ahead of Kansas in the pecking order.
So Houston gets Kansas City in the Midwest region and then we
have to put them in a first and second round matchup and believe
it or not the closest from a driving distance perspective for
Houston is Birmingham. So we put Houston in the
Birmingham first and second round.
And that means that in the midwest, again, the 8 9 and 16 s
will be potted with them. That site under this scenario
then Kansas goes to the next most likely Geographic or next,
most friendly geographical spot from a driving distance.
And that is neither of these are friendly because you're picking
between Las Vegas and New York City.
Las Vegas is slightly closer than New York City and I think
at this point, it would be likely that Kansas would get
that west region their first and second round, they get third
pick, they would get the one, that's the closest to them
geographically. In this case that's Des Moines
and which is not that terribly far away from Lawrence.
And so they would play their first and second round matchups
in Des Moines, and then they would get their Regional
provided. They made it past the first and
second round in Las Vegas. And then Purdue is the fourth
would get the last Regional, which in this case is the East,
which is New York City, and then they would get the closest
geographical site for first and second round, which is Columbus
Ohio. So, that's how Purdue ends up in
Columbus. Routing into New York city.
So hopefully that answers. That question.
It is it is again, kind of a complicated process in terms of
trying to figure out how all of it works because you're dealing
with a bunch of different things and you really kind of have to
know the distances and what the home regions are and things like
that for each of these individual teams.
But once you get that down, it becomes a little bit easier to
figure out, you know. Would it be simpler if they just
said, hey first and second round in the East are going to be
played in these two cities? It would be easier to And but
wouldn't be as convenient for the fans of those teams that get
placed. Because like in this case, you
know, Kansas actually gets penalized for going out west
because that instead of being able to play in Des Moines,
which is only about three four hours away.
Instead they're having to play in either Denver which is
further away or Sacramento, which is much further away.
So there is a reason for it to happen.
A similar question that we got asked from JD Gabby.
What is Protected about seeds 1 through 4 and with IU basketball
specifically what's the best-case first weekend
location? Assuming they land somewhere, 3,
4 5 or 6 in terms of seating. So let me take the first
question first because you hear this term a lot and it's not
really well described ever. What is it?
Protected seed the idea behind the protected seeds is fairly
simple as that you want to place teams in a spot where they're
not going to be geographically disadvantaged when they play
another team. That first and second round.
And so, what that means is essentially you will accommodate
those teams by trying to put them in a spot where they're
going to, you know, not just, you know, if they can get a
benefit of playing close to their home, great.
But you also don't want to put them in a spot where for
instance like let's say, you know, this is kind of an off
example, but like let's say Kansas is, you know, playing in
Des Moines as the one seed. Let's say Iowa was an eight
seed. You wouldn't put that Them
there. Because that would be
disadvantageous to Kansas having to travel to Des Moines and
playing Iowa team, that's basically just driving an hour
and a half, and we'll have essentially a home crowd.
So, that's really where the protection works.
It's this idea that for the top four seeds in each region, we
want to give them as much of an advantage as we can, and not
give them a disadvantage in terms of who they have to play
in the second game, or sometimes, even in the first
game. So, when you work through, this
is where kind of the drafting system ends up helping I
mentioned like Alabama is the number one Houston is the number
two they get as close to a protected setup as they can and
for Alabama and Alabama has case.
They're getting essentially a game that's like right in their
backyard. You start going through and I'll
just let me just rattle through like, where I placed each of the
teams. In my most updated bracket, this
was based off the ncaa's reveal, and then also the games that
happened yesterday. So, Texas would be the fifth
overall team they'd be the First to seed.
So we would look at them and we and this is where bracketing
rule start to come in and it really does get complicated
here. The goal is to try to keep the
Region's balanced in terms of the overall rating of the top
four teams in the region. So the idea is you don't want
like all the best ones seeds, all the best to seeds, all the
best. Three seeds, all the best for
seeds in the same region. You would split those up as much
as you could. You're also trying to keep the
top. Three teams in each conference
away from each other. As much as you can as among the
top four seeds. So Texas is, this is an
interesting case, like with Texas, the best spot for them to
go actually ends up being in the Midwest region and it makes the
region a little bit unbalanced because it means that you've got
the second best one seed and the best to seat now in the same
region, according to the way that we've ranked things.
So we have to basically accommodate for that a little
bit later on Iran by placing some week or three and four
seeds if we can. But it works out perfectly
because you've got Houston, who's in the American and you've
got Texas in the Big 12, they're not in the same conference, so
we've managed to avoid any conflicts.
There are six, overall is Arizona.
Arizona gets popped into the West.
It's their natural geographical home.
There are Pac-12 school and they're not facing off against
another Pac-12 school. You know, we wouldn't want to
put Kansas and Texas in the same spot because they're in the
same. Region, you're trying to avoid
that as much as possible. In this case, you've got Kansas
able to face off against Arizona.
That's the third overall team in the sixth overall.
TEAM Arizona gets placed in Denver because that's the
closest geographical spot for them.
Our seventh team overall is Baylor and again we're putting
Baylor in a spot where they're not matching up against another
big 12 team as the one seat. So, in this case, they go to the
South to take on Alabama and then UCLA and Zip being kind of
the odd team out, they get moved to the East and they get to play
in Sacramento in the first and second round.
But now we've got the weakest one seat in the weakest two seed
in the East. So we need to compensate for
that a little bit. Fortunately, our ninth overall
team with the results that happened yesterday.
Is Virginia and Virginia would naturally get placed in the East
so they end up being the best three seed opposite.
The worst 2 seed in our rankings and UCLA Virginia goes to
Greensboro. That is Far, the best
geographical location that we could put them in of all of them
and it ends up working out because we haven't had a team go
to Greensboro yet, our 10th overall team is Tennessee who as
it turns out also goes to Greensboro for first and second
round and Tennessee. You don't want to put them in
the South because you want to keep them away from Alabama.
You want to try to get those top three teams in the SEC and
separate areas. So instead we put Tennessee in
the midwest where they fit really nicely and then then our
11th overall is Kansas state. Now this is where things start
to break down a little bit because there are so many Big 12
teams in key spots that we have to find a way to split them
apart a little bit. In this case, what we're going
to do is put Baylor in Kansas State in the same sub-region.
So unfortunately and we try to avoid this.
If we can, you're going to have a matchup between those two
teams, if they both make it in the sweet 16 but that works out
better than putting Big 12 team in Kansas has region.
Instead, that's where Indiana ends up going.
So, Indiana ends up being the three seed that goes to the
West. Now, we could have just put
Indiana in the South, but there was a choice made here to try to
balance things as best we could. There's so many Big 12 teams in
those top four seeds. It's hard to get everything to
fit together. Hopefully this isn't too
confusing but that's essentially how the process goes.
So hopefully that kind of explains it.
The goal is to try to keep as much protection as you can for
the top. Eads and also try to keep
conferences away from each other and least until they get to the
Sweet 16. The other question that JD had,
what is the best case first weekend location for IU?
I mean, I would argue that if Indiana could get into it.
You'd want to either go to Columbus or to Des Moines.
Those are the two that are the closest geographically.
But there's honestly, there aren't a whole lot of like
terrible options for Indiana. I've got them in Albany.
But you know, that's largely because Kansas State ended up
taking the slot in Columbus that was still on the board in the,
the the draw right before. So, you know, I think likely
Indiana's probably going to be in a position depending on,
who's in front of them, where they might get us shot at
Columbus, they might get a shot at Des Moines, but I would not
be shocked at all at this point and less Indiana, like really
goes on a run. I wouldn't be shocked to see
them actually ending up in either.
ER, Albany Orlando because there just aren't going to be a whole
lot of other spots that are geographically favorable for IU
that will pop up and be available.
Whenever they're part of the draw is whether they are a lower
level 3 seed or a higher level for seed, that's where you're
likely to see them. You know, ideally obviously
Indiana would love to be a top four seed, feeding into the
Louisville, Regional the south regional because ultimately at
that point, you're almost playing a home game like this
one. Those weird quirks where I you
even though there are natural geographical region is the
Midwest would actually benefit from being in the South and it
would almost be a little bit of a drawback for a team, like,
Alabama, having to play a team, like Indiana.
So, close to where Indiana's at, if you'll recall, that's how the
scenario played out in 2002, where Indiana ends up playing in
Lexington, against Duke in the sweet 16 and that ended up being
kind of a home game for Indiana because not only did you have a
bunch of Indians Deanna fans there and also because Duke
really doesn't have fans. But you also had a bunch of
Kentucky fans who wanted to root against Duke more than they
wanted to root against Indiana. So it all kind of worked out but
that's how that process goes you know ultimately Indiana will you
know that's why you want to work your way up the seed board a
little bit because you want to be in a more advantageous
position to get crowds not just for the first and second round.
But for the third and fourth rounds to the Sweet 16 Beyond
Let's answer some other questions here.
These are. We've had some good ones that
have come in. Question from Matt Roth.
Appreciator is there any way to identify a priority list for the
committee in terms of evaluating a team's resume?
Could you walk through a mock thought process of two teams
that have very different resumes but fighting for the same seat.
IE like st. Mary's in Kansas State.
I think it's a good idea. Let's let's go ahead and do
that. I gave a little bit of this
rationale earlier wrong. On, but I'll give you two teams
that sat right next to each other on my board.
And actually, I made a shift with one of them earlier on.
So let's do actually, St. Marys and Texas Christian.
These are two teams that are are pretty different overall, in
their profile. But they've both got some things
that you would have to try to consider in terms of where you
would place them. So st.
Mary's twenty four and five overall twenty three and five
against division. One, those are the only ones
that count. They have one win against a non
division. One opponent Kansas State or
excuse me, TCU 18 and 9 overall. Now one thing to keep in mind is
that conference records really don't matter.
They really just look at the overall accomplishments you've
had so like you could look at st.
Mary's, and say they're 13 and one, which they are in the West
Coast Conference. And TCU is only seven and seven
in the Big 12. But the reason that doesn't get
looked at is because the Big 12 is much stronger than the West
Coast Conference and it's really about the teams you've beaten or
lost too. Why not the quality of the
conference that you're in one is kind of an artifact of the
other, but like, as we've talked about with IU IU, could end up
with like the fifth sixth, seventh best record in the Big
Ten this year, even though they've played one of the
hardest schedules in the entire big tent, like, they'll only
play the bottom five teams in the Big Ten once each, whereas,
like, Purdue and a couple of other teams will play them much
more. So, when we look at these two
teams might try to go as much Apples to Apples, as I can.
So you can see the Conflict in the difference that sometimes
pops up here, st. Mary's, let's take their their
kind of high level numbers first.
And then we'll delve into the individual games st.
Mary's is six and one in Road games and three, and two and
neutral games. So that means that they are 9
and 3 in games away from home, TCU, is 2 and 6 in Road games
and for no and neutral games. So, they're six and six in those
such games. So advantage to st.
Mary's slightly strength of schedule, wise, overall strength
of schedule, st. Mary's His 97th TCU is 15.
Now, the flip side of that is st.
Mary's, non-conference strength of schedule.
The teams they chose to play is 99th tcu's is 263rd, but overall
strength of schedule very much tilts and favor of TCU their
overall resume, if you average up kpi strength of record and
the nitty-gritty report which is something that a friend of mine,
Joby Fortson puts out, that is very, very accurate and
calculating the field. St.
Mary's averages out to having the 22nd best resume in college
basketball, TCU averages out to having the 28th best resume in
college basketball. So they're pretty close to each
other. The predictive rankings very
much love st. Mary's St.
Mary's is kind of got that perfect profile that the power
numbers struggle with. They have a great defense and a
pretty good offense. And so they are coming out to an
average of about 14th in the country and they're Hooves TCU
comes out to about twenty fourth.
So pretty large Advantage there to st.
Mary's. So then what we'll do is we look
at the individual wins and losses that each team has had
over the course of the season and try to Divine, you know,
which one of those is really more impressive.
So if you look at quad one wins, we talked about quad one earlier
and how the quads, even though they are more accurate and a
better picture than what we used to have that, there's still some
problems with them. St.
Mary's has 2 quad one wins. They have a home win in overtime
against Gonzaga, and they have a neutral Court win against San
Diego State. They've also got sick Squad two
victories, so they have wins at home against Oral Roberts.
Who will almost certainly make the tournament.
They're going to win the regular season title in the summit
League, North Texas, who's not likely to win the tournament but
is it pretty good team or get into the tournament?
I mean they want at Santa Clara at BYU on a new Record against
Vanderbilt and at San Francisco. That's all of their quad.
One and two wins. Right there.
You look at their losses. They've got one quad one loss on
a neutral court, against Houston.
They've got to quad 2 losses against New Mexico and then at
Loyola Marymount, the Loyola Marymount, one kind of hurt and
then they've got winds or scuse me losses at home against
Colorado, State, that's bad and they have a neutral Court loss
against Washington, not great either.
Those are both tier 3 losses. So put that aside let's talk TCU
tcu's got for Quad one wins at Kansas which is a tremendous
win. One of only.
I think, two teams that's one at Kansas all year in Kansas one of
our one seats. Remember they've also won at
Baylor which is another tremendous win, because Baylor
is right on the edge of our 12 line, like, they're right there
in the mix and then they've won at home against Kansas State and
a neutral Court win against Iowa.
And then in their quad 2 wins, they've got West, Virginia,
Oklahoma, State Providence, all Those teams are likely to make
the field and are those were all home wins for them.
They be Texas Tech at home, who's right?
On the borderline, they beat Utah.
Who's not a bad team, in a neutral, Court game, and then
they beat Oklahoma at home. So they've got more combined
quad, 1 and quad 2 wins and their overall quality of those
wins is significantly better. You're just not going to find
two better wins overall than Kansas and Baylor on the road
right now in one a jewel teams profile, you know, their losses,
almost all of their losses are in Quad one.
They've got one stinker of a loss early on in the season to
Northwestern State who's not great but could make the field
as an automatic bid, you know, contender in the Southland.
So you can see. Like, I mean, if you think in
your head like, who am I going to pick?
Who would, you know, both of those teams are making the
tournament? No problem.
The question is, how do we rate them?
How do we rank them against each other?
I look at this from the tournament, you know committees
perspective and I say to myself. Well, st.
Mary's has more wins overall and that does matter the committee.
Like if you win a lot of games and you only lose two, three,
four, five games the committee's always preferred those types of
teams. And and that will come into play
down the list like teams like Florida, Atlantic or Charleston,
who win a huge number of games, even if they're not against
great competition. A lot of times will get the nod
over. Two teams that have only one, a
few more games. And they've lost the thing about
these two though is that I look at tcu's overall strength to
schedule and I look at the fact that they have 12 insanely
difficult games on the road, plus, they want a neutral Court
game against an Iowa team that's safely in the field.
And and the fact that they blew Kansas out one by 23 points in
Lawrence. I think the committee would look
at that and say, you know, both of these teams are relatively
equal, st. Mary's is got some things.
We like, but the reality is, the TCU has shown an ability to go
on the road and win big against the top teams in the country.
So, I would ever, so slightly put them above st.
Mary's in my rankings, and that's what I did in this.
I and again, they're right next to each other.
I had TCU 19th on my S curve. I had st.
Mary's 20th. So they ended up being the last
25 seats. So, if you looked at the field,
you wouldn't even necessarily know that one was ranked ahead
of the other, but that's how I would rank them.
Going back to Indiana. This is one of the things that
really helps Indiana out is that they want at Xavier.
They're the only team that's done that.
They want ad Illinois handily so they've demonstrated to the
committee that yes, we can go on the road and win those sorts of
games. That does travel really.
Well, when you think about how a team is figured, this is where
Yukon is such a difficult team to figure out because they've
got three really good neutral Court wins one of them's against
Alabama, who's the top team in the country?
The other two are Iowa state, whose before five seed somewhere
in that mix, and then Oregon who's Right On The Fringe of
getting into the field. So you look at that and you're
like, well, they've demonstrated quite a bit.
The one difference with Uconn and why I think they got knocked
down below. Indiana is that their record
against teams that are likely to be in the field is they've only
got an eight, and six record against those teams.
And so, I think the committee really weighed that heavily in
looking at where they would Place Yukon and I'm guessing
they have Them as probably a five seed.
So that's how you would look at all of that and I hope that that
Roth appreciator that gives you a sense of what the process is.
It gets much harder as you get further down the field and you
know, when you get down to trying to pick who you're at
large teams at the very bottom of the list, are going to be
there. You're picking between two very
different types of things. I mean, the big one I had today
was Wisconsin versus Charleston because, you know, Look at
Wisconsin, and you say to yourself.
Well, that's a team that they've got some really good wins away
from home. They want at Marquette.
They want at Iowa, they want, it Penn State, who's kind of On The
Fringe, they won, you know, on a neutral court, against USC
there, eight and ten overall. When you look at their, their
record against teams that are going to be in the field, which
is pretty good. And they really don't have any
bad losses, but they also don't look very good on paper.
They are one of the worst teams in terms of predictive
statistics that I've gotten the field or had in the field.
I don't have them in the field right now, whereas Charleston,
if you average out their resume and their predictive, they're
about the same as Wisconsin. They don't have a whole lot of
top level winds. In fact, their best Wayne is
probably Kent State who would not get in as an at large but
we're Charleston. Really I think has some benefit
is that they are 20 25 and 3 against Division 1 teams they're
26 and three overall. And I just get the sense, even
though their strength of schedules real bad, and I think
that that, you know, that's the one thing that gives me pause.
I think that number of wins Charleston would likely get a
chance ahead of Wisconsin, because the committee loves to
reward teams that go 25 and 3 27 and 3 somewhere in that range,
over a team from a power conference.
That's only three or four games above 500, but I could easily
see the committee saying no Charleston you didn't play
anybody. You didn't really beat anybody.
We're going to go with the team like Wisconsin that we feel like
could actually do something in the tournament and that is
really a factor that you'll find with a lot of these.
A lot of it really comes down to the committee looking at two
teams and saying, okay, we understand what this team's got
on paper or doesn't which of these teams do you really think
is going to be able to accomplish something in a
tournament environment and that's where I can't really
decide between these two teams and even you throw a team, like
North Carolina in, you know, one of the reasons, Is why they've
struggled and, and in terms of their bracketing, is they
really? If you look at it, like they've
got one win right now, against a team that would likely be
selected as an at-large maybe two, if you want to count
Charleston. That's one of their wins.
They have zero quad one wins and their quad to winds are North
Carolina State. Charleston, Ohio State and
Michigan on neutral floors, Wake Forest at home and at Syracuse,
it's like that's not great. So looking at North Carolina
it's like what they played a much tougher schedule.
But they haven't really beaten anybody on it.
These are the things that you end up, weighing as you try to
rank these teams against each other and try to figure out
who's going to be in the field versus who's not.
So hopefully that that answers your question some other ones
here from our friend Lieutenant Vincent Hanna, what are the
updated rules for how soon? You can play a conference Foe
and a repeat opponent from the non-conference schedule?
Are they the same? So it's one of those things
where there are rules and then there's exceptions that are to
some degree dependent on what's going on within total number of
teams from a conference. So ideally they're not going to
have any rematches of Conference teams until you get to the Sweet
16. They don't want to have the top
three teams from anyone conference in the same region.
And so we talked about that earlier where it's like, we
don't want, you know, the top three teams in the Big 12, we'd
really like to have those all three Different regions and then
you don't want to have any rematches.
If you can before the sweet 16. Sweet 16 is kind of The Sweet
Spot. The one exception here is if you
end up with more than eight teams from a conference, even
then ideally, you've got it so that the earliest you would see,
two teams play each other would be the sweet 16.
So that's essentially the rule. Now what the other thing that
complicates this is the play in games Because the playing games
for the at large has generally. There's one that feeds into a
611 matchup and there's one that feeds into a 512 matchup.
So sometimes you'll have situations where you have to
place a team as a five-seater is six seed.
And there's a slight possibility, unless you really
mess around with how things are being placed that you could have
a conference matchup, you know, really early, maybe even the
second round, you know. So if a team gets in the last
team in the The field and there are 12 seed in the play-in game,
you might have a situation where a conference team that they
might be playing against would be the four seed.
Generally they do a good job of avoiding that that's like the
one situation that's hard to to seed around or try to place
teams around. But generally speaking they're
going to try to keep teams from the same conference or teams
that are are doing a rematch away from each other until the
sweet 16. That's that rule.
Some other questions. This is from Thoughts by will.
If Joe lunardi is Big Bird, who is Oscar the Grouch and the
Bracketology universe is probably Jerry.
Palm palm has been doing it forever.
We actually had another question about Jerry Palm from Glen.
Why is Jerry Palm so bad? At this, it's kind of funny
because Jerry was the first one that really kind of popularized.
This in the early era the of the internet.
I mean Joe and Artie's been around doing it for a long time
longer than Palm, I think. But you know, Palm You got to go
back to like late 90s, early 2000s and Jerry Palm was the guy
who did a replication of the RPI that was available for everybody
because he used to be the RPI was just an internal metric that
was being controlled by the NCAA.
They weren't they would publish it occasionally and newspapers I
remember. I've got cutouts of the RPI and
newspapers in Bloomington and in Lafayette from like 1986 87
somewhere in that range. But Palm in addition to
Replicating, the RPI would do bracket projections.
And I was like, the only place you could reliably go on the
internet for a long time to see what somebody else was doing in
terms of projecting brackets. And then, you know, I think the
thing with Jerry with all due respect is that Jerry has
struggled to evolve and how he thinks about how the bracket is
put together. Because the bracket has changed
a lot in terms of how its put together, how the committee
approaches things, the RPI formula has changed a bunch over
time. I'm that you know, the net being
introduced to replace the RPI changed.
A lot about how things got done in terms of this process and
Jerry, you know, I think he admitted on his website for a
long time. He was, he's biased against
Indiana, he carries some other biases.
I think into the way that he picks things and, you know,
look, you'll sometimes you'll really know how stuff goes for a
while, and then eventually the process leaves and you don't
follow it. And I think that's to some
degree where Jerry is at and all of that.
But anyway, it's just kind of funny because you this is it's
kind of a silly thing like the whole Bracketology thing to
begin with. It's a little bit silly that we
spent This Much Time on it but it's interesting watching
somebody's been doing it for so long who you think would be an
ace at it. But a lot of that is because the
process has changed underneath his feet over the course of
time. And that's again you know I'm
not a top-level, Bracketology style be the first to admit that
there's other people in the eye, you universe that have done
better and he bottoms being a great example of that.
That. But, you know, I've tried to
change as much as I can with the times and that's like I place
better than lunardi and palm I think and bracket Matrix in
terms of measuring how these things do against the committee
at least the most of the last couple of years.
Some other questions that we wanted to answer Andrew
Montgomery with a good one? How much if at all does the
committee factor in injuries and to seating.
And if they do, is it for long absences like Xavier Johnson or
were they also can't Consider Trace Jackson Davis and Jalen
Hurd chafee, no playing hurt in December.
This is one that the committee does Factor it in.
But I'm not convinced that it's applied evenly and it's really
hard to get a good measure of how much of an impact.
The factoring of injuries has on the overall seating.
I mean, I've seen teams who the part of the let me back up a
little bit part of the issue is With a team like Indiana.
When you look at trying to see them.
Ultimately what you're trying to do is figure out okay, what
exactly is this team that we're going to put in the field?
The committee will certainly factor in injuries the other
direction I'm you know famously Cincinnati was the best team in
college basketball in. I want to say it was 2000 and
then they lose their best player right before the tournament and
they end up dropping to a 2 seed.
A lot of times, what will end up happening is the committee will
try to factor in injuries to some degree but ultimately,
they're just trying to figure out how strong is this.
Team going into the NCAA tournament and so for a team
like Indiana on the one hand, you'd think, well, they'll
factor in Xavier Johnson's injury.
But I don't know how much they will.
If they don't have Xavier Johnson back and playing like 20
to 25 minutes by the time, the tournament starts because in
their eyes, they'll look at it and say, well, you know,
whatever, Effects have been we're not going to oversee this
team simply because they were missing this player who starts
for them, because this is who they are now.
Now, I do Wonder a little bit, if you know factoring Indiana up
that high, if maybe they've slightly discounted some of the
losses that they had without Xavier Johnson.
But I think as we get closer to the actual selection, I don't
know how much that's going to run into the picture, unless we
see Xavier Johnson back, and we see the team playing at a higher
level, I don't think in the Anna's gonna suddenly jumped up
to like a two line or something like that.
I just think what you're going to see is kind of what you've
currently got the other team. That's really.
I think we're looking at with this as Creighton you know
because Creighton lost a bunch of games early when they didn't
have Ryan M hard on the roster due to injuries, but now that
they've got him back, I think you're starting to see, like,
okay, we know what Creighton is essentially and while you know,
they're not going to give them the benefit of the doubt
necessarily for the now. Ask a loss, the Arizona, State
lost the BYU loss. I don't think it's going to
matter, much with them. I think they're going to
probably end up being in that. 45 range with the idea that
that's essentially where their resume is going to land them.
Anyway, the injury thing is one of those things that's gotten
talked about so much and I just don't think it's that big of a
factor for a lot of the selection committee when they're
actually trying to get in there and figure out how strong are
these teams relative to each other.
So, that's with so many of these criteria.
When you actually line all All of them up.
It's almost like it's not just straight away.
Well, there were injuries so they're going to factor that in
or well. They've got a great road record.
So they going to factor that in it.
All be ends up being part of this larger Continuum about how
good the team is, and what they've accomplished.
Brian Hicks asks, does the committee warp expected seeds to
avoid Conference teams playing before the sweet 16 or is that a
myth? So they don't warp them but they
will move teams around. As much as they can, they will
generally not drop a team in the first four seeds to, you know,
to accommodate the lack of an intersection there.
You know, before the sweet 16, they'd rather move them to a
different geographical region. Now, what they will do sometimes
is they'll move a team up or down a seed, line to avoid a
conference rematch before the sweet 16.
But the lower seeded Umm is generally the one that gets
affected and it's almost always just one seed line.
So for instance, like if you've got Northwestern as an eight
seed, you know, that's a bit of an issue if they're only place
that they can go, is to go play against the against Purdue as a
one seat. So you might actually see
Northwestern get bumped up a seed.
And someone else swapped down into that eight seed spot to
avoid that second round matchup potentially that's going to be
the big question mark though. And this is where these things
generally. Like, you know, you'll fret
about them now. And then, by the time the
selection committee actually puts the selection together and
puts it out in front of everybody, it ends up not being
as big. The deal, you know, generally
every year if you will, one of the informative things to do the
committee when they release the bracket about an hour or two
later will release their full seedless there, one through 68
seedless and you'll actually be able to see, we're a team,
potentially got placed up or down a seed line.
Generally speaking with the four regions there's enough
flexibility that you can move a team from say it's natural
geographical region to a less likely or less positive one
because Was the benefit there is that you will avoid that sweet
16 or that pre sweet 16 matchup by doing that.
So that's essentially the way that process works a couple of
other questions. We had another question, is it
better to be top four seed than last three seed from original
placement? Standpoint, I kind of answered
this earlier. So what he's saying is is it
better to be the best for seed as opposed to being the worst
three seen? The answer is no, you always
want to be higher up on the list.
Last three seat is going to Get first crack at best first and
second round matchup spot where as the, you know, the being the
four seed, you're going to get one less option there so that
could be the difference for Indiana if they were the last
three. See, they might get Columbus as
a first and second round spot. Whereas if they're the first for
that might be off the board. Now, the flip side of that is
you might have a shot at a more positive.
Sweet 16, a regional location if you're the first four.
See, but again, as we've talked about earlier, so much of that
depends on what's happened in the first second and third
seeds, in that region and where you would be placed to avoid,
you know, unbalancing the region or you know, it like being in a
situation where you're one of the top three teams in your
conference and you can't be placed in one particular region
because there's already somebody from your conference above.
You, in that same. Same region again.
Lots of things to keep track of and it's very confusing but
that's essentially how it all works out.
Anyway, I think that was all the questions.
Let me see if there's any other questions that popped up.
Looks like okay some good questions here from the
Cornelius. Bumpus the late-season run in
the Big Ten tournament last year.
Didn't seem to help all you with regards to how the committee
seated them. If they received a double by in
this year's tournament and lost the first game, what did have an
impact on their final seed line? So I a lot of people have said
that they're like, well, the last year, even though I you
made a run in the in the Big Ten Tournament, it didn't help them
with how the committee seated them, and I actually that's the
wrong way. Look at it last year's IU team.
I think the more accurate way to look at it last year's, I you
team wasn't going to make the tournament if they hadn't beaten
Illinois. And you know, you can be like,
well how could that be the case? Because everybody, I think and
talk to themselves. Bracketology is included into
this idea that I, you was going to be in the field and that they
were in the Big Ten Tournament just to add to that overall
resume realistically, though, if you go back and look at what
Indiana did last year, they have a whole lot on their resume, you
know, their best wins last year going into the tournament away
from home were a neutral Court win against Notre Dame who you
know, was an 11 seed in the tournament.
So you're not talking about a top-level team and they won at
Maryland who didn't make the tournament soberly prior to the
Big Ten Tournament. Those were their best wins away
from home, winning against Michigan.
Who made the field, winning against Illinois, who made the
field, suddenly gave them Two wins away from home and allow
the tournament selection committee to look at them and
say, well, that's actually a team that has the capacity to do
something away from Assembly Hall and even though, you know,
Indiana had beaten Purdue at home.
They'd beaten St. John's at home, they'd beaten
Ohio State at home. There's plenty of teams that win
a lot of home games. There's a lot of teams that
that's all they do and they don't get into the NCAA
tournament because they don't show that they can win away from
home. So, I actually don't think it
was a situation where the committee didn't pay attention
to the Big Ten Tournament. I think they did.
I just think Indiana. Absolutely needed those games to
get in in the first place. And, you know, they'd beaten
Iowa, they might have gotten out of the play in, but
realistically speaking, they didn't.
So, as far as this year's team, it's different, this year's
team. We've already seen the committee
likes this team. They're, you know, they like
what they've done away from home.
They like their overall resume. I think for this tears team, if
they want to tread water, if they want to stay at the four
line or maybe have a chance to get to that last three.
Need to win the two games at home against Iowa and Michigan
because that's a win against the tournament team and a borderline
tournament team. And then they're going to want
to, you know, if they do, they don't have to win the two games
on the road, but it'd be nice if they did, if they could beat
Michigan State, that's a really nice Road win against the team
that's going to be in the field. And obviously, if you beat
Purdue on the road. Now, you're one of only two
teams that's beating Purdue at Mackey Arena.
That's huge because that, that, that is the type of when that
gets you solidly on the 03. And maybe as you peeking into
the, to line depending on what's Happening elsewhere, as far as
the tournament in the Big Ten Tournament is concerned to go
back to the question that was asked if they get a double by in
the tournament and lose their first game, it really kind of
depends on who they lost to if they let you know.
If there are, let's say, I you ends up as the four seed and
they play the five seed in the, you know, the the whatever.
That would be that Thursday, the Big Ten Tournament they lose
that game, probably. Not going to hurt them because
in that case, you're likely losing that game to Rutgers or
an Illinois or you know, somebody that's in that morass
of teams Iowa right now, it's like northwestern's the second
seed Indiana's, the third seed and then Maryland and Iowa are
tied for the fourth seed. Rutgers is tied with Michigan
like you're in that mix where any team except Michigan.
I think you could survive losing to and not have it affect your
seating you could win that game. Obviously you'd like to win that
game. That could potentially push you
a little bit higher in the seedless.
Because now again, you've demonstrated you can win away
from home on a neutral court against a tournament team again,
unless it's Michigan. And in that case, it doesn't
matter what happens in that next game, because if you lose to
Purdue because I'm assuming when Purdue is going to be the number
one overall seed, you haven't hurt yourself at all there.
So that would be how I would look at it is I you can reward
themselves by winning in the Big Ten tournament and get
themselves in a better overall position.
The only scenario I could see hurting them in terms of seating
is if they were the five seed and they end up losing to the 12
are whoever wins that 1213 game because the 1213 is probably
going to be Nebraska Ohio State you wouldn't want to lose to
either of those teams on a neutral floor.
So that's what the thing that Indiana would need to be
watching out for again, I don't think it's gonna hurt them
tremendously but it wouldn't help them at all if they were to
lose a game like that. So anyway, hopefully that
answers the questions that you've got.
We will do this again at some point soon and I'd be happy to
answer. Any other questions that you
folks have? I you know what?
I'll probably try to do at some point is put a video together.
We're actually go through the whole bracket show you how that
process works and if you have questions off of that, you can
certainly Feel free to chime in and ask as we go along, we might
even do that. Why?
That might be a good thing to do maybe next weekend or something
like that. So anyway let me know.
If you've got other questions, sending your tweets to Crimson
cast, you can also DMS happy to answer any questions that you've
got. But anyway, this has been our
latest edition of the bracket. Racket will be back with more
Bracketology throughout the course of this upcoming week and
Beyond will start to delve into the bottom of the field figure
out who's legit down. On there who we need to be
watching out for were also talk a little bit about some of the
better at large teams, coming out of some of the mid-level
conferences, who do we need to be watching out for Drake Oral
Roberts? Utah Valley, who else will talk
about all that and more coming up on the bracket racket.
I'm Gail McLeod. The oh, thanks for joining us.
Folks will catch you on the flip side.
So everybody,