None. You're listening to the Back
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Welcome back to. Crimson cast Galen Clavier
joining you. It is Sunday morning, March
16th. It is tournament reveal day as
we are about what, 8 hours or so?
Roughly 7 hours from finding out who's going to be in the field
who's. Not a lot of intrigue this year
if you're an Indiana fan, as in addition to the coaching search
that everybody's been following, you've got this big question
mark about whether Indiana's going to get into the tournament
or not. And we're going to dive right in
to talking about that. And what I want to do 'cause I
know a lot of you've got some questions, is talk through where
I think the conversation is at with all of this.
Talk through where everything has set up in terms of of the
decision making process the committee's going to have to go
through. And then figure out like, how do
they go through the process of actually getting all these teams
in the field? If you believe the messages that
come from the selection committee representatives like
Dan Gavitt yesterday was talking about this on CBS, They didn't
even have all the at large teams set as of yesterday morning.
So that means there's a lot of debate over a very small number
of teams, whether or not they're in the field.
And I think ultimately this is where we got to be a little bit
cautious because we don't know what exactly is going to happen
in terms of what the committee decides.
And I'm going to talk about some of the trends and things like
that, that we've seen at least over the course of the last 12
hours in terms of the discourse around the brackets.
But I want you all to understand first and foremost that the
discourse around the brackets is not the same as the actual
brackets. And what I mean by that is this.
It's kind of like the IU coaching surge in a way.
We have a lot of people talking about what they think is going
to happen or what they're hearing rumored is going to
happen with the coaching search. The people that we're not
hearing from, other people actually engaged in the coaching
search. Bracketology's not a lot
different. I'm going to give you my
opinions. You'll you've seen opinions from
other places as far as who they think's going to get into the
field and in what order. Ultimately, the biggest
challenge in this whole process is not looking at the rules and
based upon what the rules say and what the committee says that
they're going to do, saying well, here's the teams that are
going to be in the field. Based on that, it's trying to
guess what the committee is going to do, which always means
compromises. It always means that you might
value 1 stat over another, and that might be important to you,
and it might be important to a member of the committee, but it
might not actually matter that much in terms of what actually
happens. Because you're going to get 12
voices in there, all of whom have different ideas about
what's important in this process.
So just wanted to set that expectation ahead of time.
Most of you who have been along for the ride with us know all of
those things already. First of all, just a quick
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We're on YouTube, subscribe on YouTube, just search for back
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Subscribe it's free. We'd love to have you in the
community Anyway, let's dive in and let's let's just I'm going
to give you where my bracket is at right now and then I'm going
to walk you through the thought process that I had to get to
that level of things and. I'm going to say.
Right off the bat, it is very possible that what I come up
with here is not going to be the ultimate decision, but this is
how I'm analyzing it. I'm going to show you all the
metrics and everything that we're looking at that led me to
this point, and then we can talk about what the implications are.
There's a couple of bid thief possibilities today.
We'll talk through that as well. So let me go ahead and get this
called up for those of you that are watching along.
And again, if you're listening to this, you may want to
consider switching over to Spotify because you've got video
enabled there, whereas we don't have that with Apple Podcast,
unfortunately. All right.
So we had a bunch of changes in terms of who the auto bids were.
And obviously we've got some things squared away now in terms
of we know St. John's won the Big East, we know
Houston won the Big 12. I've got Michigan in right now
as the the prohibitive. Or the the.
The probable favorite for the Big 10, these things only matter
in terms of we have your auto bids and we have your at larges
and obviously those two things have to reconcile with each
other looking at the at large selections.
Don't worry too much about the order here.
And for those of you who who can't necessarily see, I'm going
to try to zoom in a little bit. Are at large selections right
now. My last four in the field are
Vanderbilt, San Diego State, Texas and North Carolina.
And I'm going to try to walk you through why I feel like those
are going to be the last four teams.
Hoping internally that I'm wrong and that the criteria that the
committee will use will be different and it'll actually
allow for IU to be in IU. Right now I have as the first
team out and I think that it's important to remember that, you
know, they've been kind of floating around this area for
the last week or so. So when you start off going back
to say a week ago after that Ohio State win, I think Indiana
was about the 15 in and then they've kind of fallen back
largely because other teams have won some games.
We had a, a couple of bid thieves, including the, the
Colorado State getting in. So now we find ourselves in a
spot where we've got kind of a last four.
So I want to walk through and look at some of the different
teams that we're looking at here.
So let me let me call up Vanderbilt 1st.
I'm going to go through Vanderbilt and San Diego State
really quickly because I, I do think that they have a better
argument to get in. Vanderbilt has gotten
progressively weaker. So if you look at Vanderbilt
right now, Vanderbilt with a net of 48.
I'm going to zoom in a little bit more so you guys can see
this. Vanderbilt right now, a net of
48, they're 37th and wins against bubble.
They've got a fairly decent resume overall.
Where they really shine at this point is they've got wins
against Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas A&M, Mizzou, Ole Miss.
That's five teams that are very solidly not just in the field,
but all of those teams are right now, at least for me at the five
seed line or above. You've got a win against Texas,
who you're directly competing for a bid with.
And then you've got a couple of other wins sprinkled in there
that that are quad 2 but aren't necessarily that great.
You look down the list, they've they have no losses below quad
2. Vanderbilt's less impressive
once you dig into their resume than I think everybody thought
at first glance. But they've got enough here, I
think and the, and the quality of wins is enough that I think
they're going to be in good shape.
I am a little bit interested to see if there's a big debate over
Vanderbilt because I do think when you look at their resume,
they've they've, it doesn't compare as quality wise as you
might hope if you're a Vanderbilt fan.
Let's go to the next team, San Diego State.
So San Diego State, of course, losing in the Mountain West
Conference tournament and there's actually a lot to not
like about San Diego State, but the things that I think stick
out for them are a their strength of schedule in the non
conference was one of the best in the country.
They'd go out and challenge themselves.
Their overall strength of schedule 64th.
They have one kind of unfortunate loss to UNLV that's
a Tier 3, but beating Houston at.
On a neutral floor, beating Creighton on a neutral floor.
And then, you know, they, they have a win over Boise State,
actually have two wins over Boise State, a team that they're
directly in competition with. They beat UC San Diego, one of
the very few teams to do that this year.
They beat New Mexico. And you know, I, I look at all
of that and I say, I don't think that they're going to be a team
that struggles to get in. I think of the committee will
look at them and say, we think you did enough overall with all
of this 9 wins away from home as well certainly helps.
So now we get into the the last few and this is where there's
really, in my opinion, A5 team race for two remaining spots.
So I'm going to start off with the the teams that are right now
in my field and I'm going to try to explain why they're there.
I'm going to start with the one that's going to be the most
controversial, which is North Carolina.
I am not advocating for North Carolina to get in.
And as Caleb points out, let me see if I can call up his comment
here. Bracket matrix right now has 26
brackets out of 102 with UNC in the field.
We got another comment here. Texas and UNC are non starters.
Texas pathetic conference record and UNC 1 and 12 and quad one.
All right, so I'm going to tackle both of those 'cause I
think that they're they're both valid arguments.
But this is where you can't just look at one or two pieces of
evidence. You also have to unfortunately,
I think consider some of the political ramifications.
And this is where when you just in my history, in my historical
opinion, when you look at the way that the brackets have been
laid out in the. Past you do see a bit of an
outsized influence whenever you've got an athletic director
on the committee. So North Carolina is a bit of a
tough case because as has been pointed out there one in 12 in
quad ones and you got UCLA, while still a quad one win out
of the top 25 in the NET. You the wins that North
Carolina's got are not impressive.
North Carolina has one win against the the perspective
field and that's against UCLA. They have a couple of wins
against teams that are right on the fringes, Dayton, Wake
Forest, SMU. They have, they have the one
kind of bad loss by one point to Stanford.
I don't think they're going to get punished too much for that.
Where I think North Carolina's argument largely lies is that
they have ten wins away from home.
They are their net is 36 and that is one of the primary
sorting mechanisms. Their their predictives are very
good. Their predictives Their BP is
top 25, Kemp Poms 33. I realize I'm kind of out on an
island with North Carolina and I hope I'm wrong.
I don't think North Carolina deserves to be in the field.
I really honestly do not. But I will be surprised if
they're not in the field simply because I have seen with with an
athletic director, especially as the committee chair, I've seen
it happen before and I think the argument will be made well.
North Carolina was one of the best teams in a power
conference. They won 22 games on the season.
And they are a Top 40 team in the NET, and they are, in some
cases 10 to 15 spots ahead of other teams in the NET, which is
supposed to be the metric that the NCAA is using to figure out
who the teams that are most deserving to get into the field
are. So when Chad says in the chat
UNC and over IU as akin to your pot about Painter as a coaching
hire option, are you feeling OK recently?
Yes, I'm feeling fine. I'm just saying this is this is
where. As I've looked at this.
It's hard for me to shake the ghosts of some previous
selections past where a team like this has gotten it, Noah
says. Wasn't UNC left out two years
ago when they were on the bubble?
Sure they were. I think this is a different
scenario, all things considered, largely because that year there
were teams that had clearly better resumes.
And I think the problem with North Carolina, with Texas, with
Indiana, is that most of them have bad overall resumes.
There's not a lot there to clearly say this team is in the
field. So I look at North Carolina and
and even though, as Caleb points out, Gavitt said, the
predictives aren't as important as who you beat.
That's true. But they also are using the net
to try to figure out exactly who's going to to be in the
field. It doesn't mean that the net is
the end all be all, but the predictives are baked into the
net and you have a North Carolina team that played the
5th toughest non conference strength of schedule played a
lot of those teams tough. I just have, again, not arguing
for North Carolina, but I can see the arguments in the
conference room being, well, they've shown the potential of
doing this and they've come really close on a bunch of
occasions. And they also won 22 games.
So again, I hope I'm wrong. I really don't want North
Carolina in the field. I think it would illustrate a
kind of a cynicism about the selection process that is
deserved because we've seen it enough times.
But hopefully we're sitting here and and listening to North
Carolina complain about being in the NIT when the evening arrives
here today. Let's go to the other team,
which I also have in the field, which is Texas.
So Texas is an an odd mix. And this is where, if you're
going to argue that North Carolina's not in the field
because of the lack of winds, I don't know what the argument
would be for Texas not being or Texas not not being in the field
under that same scenario, given the plethora of winds that they
have. They are 19 and 15.
They are 6 and 12 in, in, in terms of their record against
the SEC. The SEC was also the best
conference in the country this year.
And it's not like Texas didn't pick up some impressive wins
along the way in the SEC. And you look down the list, and
this is where like, look at who Texas has beaten.
They've beaten Kentucky, they've beaten Texas A&M on a neutral
floor. They wanted Mississippi State.
They beat Missouri, they beat Texas A&M again.
They won out of Oklahoma, they won on a neutral court against
Vanderbilt a little bit ago. That's seven wins against teams
in the field right now. Their net is 39, which is better
than a couple of the teams that we're about to look at.
Their predictives are fine. They're they average out to be
about a 42 and their overall strength of schedule was 16th.
So this is where when the committee says over and over
again, we don't look at conference records, Texas is
kind of the the test case or maybe test case is the wrong
word. But it's like the prototype case
for why they don't overlook at conference records.
Because you know, when you get right down to it, Texas played a
really tough schedule. And you know, you go through and
and look at overall, you know, set up with the schedule.
You know, Texas had a lot of games that other teams in the
SEC didn't necessarily have to deal with.
They they had to go to Texas A&M.
They had to go to Florida, they had to go to Vanderbilt.
You know, they went to Mississippi State and one, they
went to Oklahoma and one. So again, I look at all of this
and I say to myself. When you look at Texas's overall
marks, I'm I'm again, I don't know that they necessarily
deserve to be in, but here we are.
Now let's look at Indiana. Indiana's right next to Texas.
And the problem for Indiana, I think at this point, and This is
why ultimately I don't have them in, is that at this stage,
Indiana's got two wins against teams in the field.
And as we've heard on a lot of different podcasts talking about
bracketology over the course of the last couple of of days, the
only reason Indiana's even in the conversation is that one win
that they had at Michigan State. Very good win, tremendous win.
But if you look at Indiana overall, I don't see the
impressiveness in the resume. They don't have the close but
didn't quite get the job done numbers that North Carolina has.
Indiana's net is 54 N Carolina's is 36.
Indiana's only won five games away from home.
North Carolina's won double that.
You know, Indiana's got the same number of quad one and two wins
that North Carolina has. And I think part of the problem
is that Indiana would not even be sweating this right now if
Ohio State hadn't tripped over themselves on the way to the
finish line. Because you figure like 2 of
Indiana's 5 best wins are against an Ohio State team
that's not going to be in the field.
And you know, you look at Penn State, Penn State, the two wins
against Penn State, Penn State's not going to be anywhere close
to the field either. Penn State didn't even make the
Big 10 tournament. So I look at all of that and
even though Indiana doesn't have any sub quad won losses, to me,
you look at this Indiana team and you say, well, they have 3
fewer wins than North Carolina and they have a net that's 18
spots worse than North Carolina. And they won half the games away
from home and they only have one more win against the tournament
team the North Carolina has. This is where I look at this and
I say, if it's down to Indiana and North Carolina for the final
spot, I think the committee's going to choose North Carolina.
I don't think they should. But I think the argument that
Indiana has about the quad one wins kind of resonates in an
empty fashion when you look at the fact that right now only two
of the teams they've beaten are going to be in the field.
So again, hope I'm wrong. And I think we're most
bracketologists are looking at this is they're saying, well, at
least Indiana has four quad one wins and at least Indiana
doesn't have any bad losses. But ultimately as I look through
this, when I think about how the committee might be evaluating
this, I don't think, I don't think that you can emphasize
quality wins and net both at the same time.
And in the balance between the two, would you rather select a
team that is going to demonstrate through predictives
and through the net that it can play with the best teams in the
country versus an Indiana team that doesn't have those those
quantitative measures and that's reflected in their net ranking
and really only has one more win of quality over what North
Carolina has? Patrick says counter argument.
The fact that UN CS guy in the chair, will there be a push
against him showing favoritism? This is always where you would
think that that would be the case.
But what we've seen over time is that, you know, there's always
this this, you know that the NCAA and I believe that they do
this, but they'll say, well, anytime somebody's in a vote
that's talking about their team or team that they're connected
with, whether it's an athletic director or whether it's a
conference commissioner, they have to leave the room.
I'm sure that happens. But again, I've been doing this
for a long time. I've seen it over and over again
where it almost feels like the rest of the committee gives that
person's team extra deference. It's it's a wild set of things
that happens over time and they kind of get buried in the
shuffle. And then the committee chair
always comes out and says, I wasn't in the room or, you know,
says that person wasn't in the room.
The committee looked at it and really decided as a group that
these metrics were a bit better than those metrics.
And that's why that team got in. A lot of time they never even
get asked about it because most of the time when they're being
questioned by CBS or whomever, they're not being interrogated
in terms of the numbers necessarily, and they'll always
give vague answers on these things.
So I've actually found the opposite happens, Patrick, where
they tend to give extra deference to the person's team
that's on the committee. And just because the
bracketologists have circled around this and said, well,
North Carolina doesn't have an argument to be in, we've seen
multiple instances historically where the opposite has been
decided upon by the committee. So again, would be happily wrong
on this. When you look at Indiana, you
also have to look at Xavier, which is our fourth team in the
mix. Xavier is kind of like a
supercharged North Carolina in a way.
And to be honest with you, I think if the committee's not
going to put North Carolina in, they may end up putting Xavier
in instead of North Carolina as opposed to putting Indiana in
instead of North Carolina. So you look at Xavier, 21 wins,
which is better than Indiana and almost as good as North
Carolina. Their Nets not as good, the 45th
in the net, North Carolina's 36th.
Their predictives average around 40.
Their KPI, which is one of the resume numbers is pretty bad.
But again, you know, going through and looking at it, they
remind me a little bit of of a hybrid of Texas and North
Carolina. They have a win against
Marquette, who's not only solidly in the field, they have
a win against UConn. They have a win against
Creighton. So they have three wins against
teams that are going to be in the field as opposed to
Indiana's two and North Carolina's one.
They have a strength of schedule of 60.
They have six wins in rodent neutral sites.
That's kind of a Ding against them, but it's still better than
Indiana by one. And then they the really only
thing dragging them down is they have the two Rd. losses in Tier
2. So I went back and forth about,
you know, Xavier, North Carolina, Xavier, Texas, Xavier,
Indiana, all of these teams in a mix.
I have Xavier as the first team out in my field right now.
Let's go to Boise State. And and this is where, you know,
I said on Twitter the other day that there really isn't an
argument for Boise State over Indiana.
So there there are a couple of small arguments and I will I
will make them here for the sake of discussing the argumentation.
Boise's got wins against Saint Mary's on a neutral court,
Clemson, New Mexico, Utah State, New Mexico again and San Diego
State. That's six teams that are going
to be in the field. Their net is 44, which is again,
not as good as North Carolina, about the same as Xavier and
better than Indiana, also worse than Texas.
Strength to schedule 79, which is fine.
Their resume and their predictives are both around 50.
What really drags Boise State down and where I think they
don't have an argument is they have a tier three loss and a
Tier 4 loss. And I don't know how you can
reconcile those with the fact that essentially, you know, if
you look at their wins in conference, most of the wins
that they're they're putting forward are wins against teams
that are right on the bubble in the Mountain West.
Like all those Mountain West teams are clustered between
essentially like a nine seed and the play in games.
So they're in the field, yes, but these are not as impressive
as some of the other ones you see.
And I think they get cancelled out by the bad losses that Boise
State is a crew. They do have eleven wins away
from home, which I think is laudable.
And you know, if the committee were to look at this and say,
well, we want to reward you because you won 23 games against
Division One opponents and you didn't lose 15 games like Texas,
I could see an argument being made there potentially.
But I think ultimately they will get left out of the shuffle.
So that's the five teams that I've got in the mix for those
last three spots. Would I be shocked to see
Indiana and Xavier instead of Texas and North Carolina?
No, not at all. Would I be shocked to see Boise
State and Indiana in in place of like a North Carolina and a
Texas? I'd be a little surprised if
Boise State was in that mix, but I wouldn't be shocked.
I don't think there's another team right now that's really in
competition for those final two spots.
I just have a sense looking at what all we're, you know, what
all we're seeing in the mix here from a data perspective.
I just, I just had this sneaking suspicion they're going to opt
for Texas and they're not going to allow, you know, the season
to end with so few ACC teams in the NCAA tournament.
That's again, hope I'm wrong, hope that North Carolina is in
the NIT where they belong. But that's the rationale that
I've got for why we're doing things the way we're doing
things. So let me look, let's go over
and look at the seed list and kind of see where we landed with
everything on that front. And I'm going to zoom in a
little bit more here so we can see.
So right now, I've actually bumped Houston up to the number
one overall seed. And there were reports yesterday
that they've actually requested the West region, which is an
interesting one. I can see why they would do
that. I think if I was Houston, I'd
rather play in San Francisco than play in Indianapolis simply
because there's a lot better chance of running into a team
that's got a homecourt advantage in Indianapolis than there is in
San Francisco. I've got Auburn as the two
overall, I've got Duke as the three overall, and then I think
Florida has definitely demonstrated that they're a one
seed, so I've got them as the 4th overall.
Tennessee, Alabama, Michigan State, St.
John's. I think the two lines pretty
straightforward and then my three line is Texas Tech, Iowa
State, Kentucky, Maryland and then the to round out the
protected seeds, Wisconsin, Clemson, Arizona and Michigan.
That's a, that's a really tough one.
I could see Michigan being as high as a four.
I could see them being as low as a six.
That's one of those teams that's it's really hard to predict
where they're going to land in the mix because, again, they are
one of those teams that has a resume that's big on wins, but
their predictives aren't particularly good.
And so I could see the predictives dragging their
seating down into the five range or maybe even the six range.
But then on the flip side, you've got a team that, you
know, was, you know, right near the top of the Big 10 and is in
the Big 10 title game today. So nothing would surprise me on
that front. If you go down the list, you've
got Vanderbilt, San Diego State, Texas and North Carolina
basically straddling the 1112 line.
I've got VCU right now ahead of West Virginia.
West Virginia is my last buy team.
And then you got Oklahoma, Arkansas, Utah State, New
Mexico, Georgia, Baylor, UConn. That's that next grouping of at
large teams going up. I think UC San Diego it was, it
was wise of them to win last night.
I think it would have been tight for them to get into the field
if they hadn't gotten the auto bid.
But they picked that up last night against UC Irvine.
I don't think UC Irvine gets in. I don't see the argument for
that. Colorado State gets in with the
auto bid for the Mountain West. They're twelve seed Drake's 12
seed Liberty wins in Conference USA last night and then Mcnee's
of course in the Southland. That rounds out the twelves When
we look at bid Steelers is that there's really only two things
to look at today. One of them is going to be the
the final of the Atlantic 10. Always feels like they're in the
mix. You've got George Mason and
you've got VCU. You know VCU, when you look at
them, they're they're to me a little bit of a supercharged
North Carolina in that they've got 26 wins.
They've got twelve wins away from home.
Their strength of schedule though is 133.
Their resume numbers are fairly good.
Their predictives are great. Like their predictives all
essentially equate to to them being a top thirty team.
But they really don't have a lot of wins.
Like they they beat Colorado State on a neutral floor.
That's an auto bid team and then they've got nothing else of
note. They also have a a quad four
loss to Seton Hall. Now.
I think the overall quality of their resume and their metrics
puts them in a position where they could potentially make the
tournament if they lose today. But I'm having a hard time
reconciling the idea that if VCU loses to George Mason today that
they would automatically get in. You know, we've talked about how
the committee really does appreciate, as I think they
should, teams that win a lot of games.
And it's not like VCU strike. The schedule is awful, but
again, I'm looking at VCU in North Carolina and I'm saying to
myself, if you're going to argue that VCU should get in, North
Carolina's essentially got a very similar resume with a few
fewer victories and a much better strength of schedule.
The other one that we need to keep an eye on is in the
American Conference and it's Memphis versus UAB.
So Memphis is going to get in and Memphis has a, a, a bevy of,
I think pretty good wins. Their metrics are really bad.
It's fascinating. Like their predictives are
essentially very similar to Indiana's.
But Memphis has the, the 4th toughest strength of schedule in
the country. They beat Michigan State, they
won at Clemson, they beat Mizzou, they beat Ole Miss, they
beat UConn. You know, they've, they've,
they've done what they need to do on that front.
And you know, they have a couple of questionable losses in Tier
3, but they've more than made-up for that.
UAB obviously is not going to get in without winning the auto
bid as they don't really have a lot on their on their resume.
They've got 2 quad 4 losses. So you know, that's the
nightmare scenario would be UAB coming out and defeating Memphis
because that would, I think unless Indiana is 2 teams into
the field, I think that at that point that would kill them off
in terms of their overall placement within things.
So that's all you really have to worry about today.
The rest of the games that are going on aren't really going to
affect a whole lot. You know, by the time Tennessee,
Florida starts and Wisconsin and Michigan starts, you know,
Tennessee, Florida's at 1:00 today, Wisconsin, Michigan's at
3:30, by the time those games get going, the committee will
have already made decisions about that level of the bracket.
In fact, you know, as as much as we're talking right now about
things, realistically speaking in, you know, as of this
morning, the committee has already selected the field in
terms of what teams are going to be in.
They've probably already seated and scrubbed the first 3 or 4
lines. So today is not really a day
that's going to decide a whole lot in terms of seeding or
getting into the field. The one exception being they
will have created some contingency brackets in case
Memphis loses in the American Championship game.
And then depending on how they feel about BCU, they probably
created a contingency bracket for that as well.
And you know, that's where it gets a little bit complicated if
you're the committee, because that UAB Memphis game doesn't
start until 3:00. And so they'll, they will almost
certainly the way that their procedures work, they will end
up with a bracket or two brackets probably by that point,
they'll, they'll get George Mason, VCU out of the way.
They'll, they'll know what's going on with that by about
3:00. But then they'll have two
parallel brackets going and they will probably have to create
both of those. And then depending on what
happens in that Memphis game, whichever 1 is accurate to those
results will be the one that they put forward to CBS and and
show us when we get down to the actual show at what what 6:00
today looking at how all of this happens within the placement
structure. So I think some of you have seen
this board before. The way that all this works is
your number one overall seed is Houston.
They selected the West region. They would go to Wichita for
their first round game. Auburn, S Region will be in
Lexington, and then Duke in the East and I got Florida going to
the Midwest. If indeed Houston goes to the
West, that then requires us to separate the SEC teams from each
other. So normally Tennessee through an
S curve approach would go to the Midwest, but they can't because
you got to keep Florida and Tennessee separate.
So Tennessee goes to the East and then Alabama would normally
there go to the Midwest. They can't do that.
They can't go to the South, so they have to go to the West
opposite Houston. And then that slots Michigan
State into the Indianapolis region, which is beneficial for
them. And then Saint John's goes South
and ends up being paired across from Auburn.
And then you go continue down the S curve.
Texas Tech ends up in the east, You've got Iowa State in the
South, you've got Kentucky in the Midwest, and Maryland has to
get shipped out West. And then Wisconsin in the South
is the four seed. You've got Clemson in the West
again to keep them away from Duke.
Arizona goes to the Midwest and Wisconsin goes to the South.
So that's how I've got it. Looking at this stage.
The two play in games, 11 seed games at this point and you from
there you kind of have to account for a bunch of different
things. You have to account for you.
You don't want to have conference rematches prior to
rounds two or three really prior to the Elite 8 if you can avoid
it, unless the teams have only played once.
You want to avoid regular season rematches, which gets really
hard with some of these teams this year because a lot of them
played each other like it. It feels like Gonzaga played
everybody and Memphis played everybody so it was 8 nines.
That makes it very difficult to like find good spots for them to
go. You also have to account for BYU
who has to go into both a sub regional that plays Thursday,
Saturday and a regional that plays Thursday, Saturday, which
means they have to go either east or West cause Newark and
San Francisco are the only two regions that play Thursday,
Saturday. And then they have to be in one
of those Thursday, Saturday, 1st and second round sites, which is
that's Denver, Lexington, Providence or Wichita.
So all these things have to be factored in and that's why the
committee's gonna have to do a lot of work ahead of time
because it's not just about sliding in UAB, moving Memphis
down a spot and then going from there.
It's also about, well, if you put UAB in, it upsets a lot of
the the math in terms of who's played each other and where
everybody lands. So as I look back, I wanted to
make sure I want, I had everybody's questions that they
asked. We had a lot of talk from people
about the coaching search. We're not going to talk coaching
search right now. We will talk about it tomorrow
or tonight, but not right now. Let's see.
I wanted to go and check X and see if we had any questions
there. Looks like no we well we had a
couple of questions here. So yeah, the Pumpkin Spice
reserve asked are we out of Memphis or VCU lose.
So I would say yes, but I've already got us out right now
barely. Again, I could see right now I
would going back to my board here, I would still have Xavier
in ahead of Indiana. If you were going to take North
Carolina out. I'm going to think about that a
lot more. I still think the North Carolina
is going to get in, but I might change my mind before my final
bracket. Noah asked his IU in.
I again, you got my answer with that.
And Brody Brooks said my last four are UNC, Texas, Xavier and
IU as long as VCU and Memphis win.
And my only question there is, well, are you leaving out
Mountain West teams? Are you leaving out Vanderbilt?
Like, I don't know how those could be your last four in
unless, unless there's something that I'm missing in terms of
teams that you don't think you're going to be in elsewhere.
So anyway, there's a lot of question marks today and it's
really fascinating. I'm going to stop sharing here.
You know, Ross noted that fan Duolod Swan and I use favor
overnight, which is true. Now, one of two reasons why that
might be the case. Either A, there's a leak in the
committee to the gambling markets that seems unlikely, not
impossible, but unlikely, or Vegas is looking at the
probabilities from the bracketologist.
And as someone pointed out earlier, a lot of brackets have
decided I use going to be in. And in fact, you know, these are
these are not just fringe brackets.
You know, a lot of people who get the brackets right every
year do have Indiana in. So as an Indiana fan, if you're
sitting here thinking, you know, what's what's my route to hope
and you're watching this and you're like, well crap, Crimson
cast doesn't have IU in right now.
I will freely admit I could be wrong.
The rest of the bracketologist that have said Indiana's going
to be in could be right. As I look at it though, I'm just
having a hard time reconciling it with the numbers because if
you're going to take a case that one set of metrics or another is
important, Indiana kind of fails in a head to head with several
different teams on those. If you're taking it
holistically, I think Indiana loses in a bunch of those
matchups as well. So that's kind of the scene at
this stage. And I think ultimately, you
know, we, we'll need to keep an eye on the VCU game.
I I don't know that that's necessarily going to to be a
case where if VCU loses that they would necessarily even get
in as an at. Large it's possible.
The Big 1 is going to be UAB Memphis, so we're going to have
to be hanging on at least until 5:00 to really get a sense of
what to expect when the final reveal happens.
So anyway, wanted to keep this one relatively short as there's
still a lot of basketball to be played today.
We're probably not going to hear a whole lot.
There normally is something that pops on the CBS show for the the
first game that they do, they'll have the committee chair back
in. So I would be sure to watch that
Atlantic 10 game and watch the halftime show 'cause they may
have some updates. They normally will doubt.
They won't tell you what's going on there with that and then, you
know, but they'll allude to things and the illusions are the
things that we need to be paying attention to.
Jeff notes DraftKings had IU at plus 245, which for those who
are not familiar with gambling parlance, means Indiana would
not be favored to get in. Plus 245 would mean you're kind
of a 2 to one chance that you're not getting in.
That got quickly taken down. Xavier was plus 300, no, And
that got taken down. I think Jeff makes a good point.
The DraftKings realized they put very public friendly odds.
I do think there's arguments for Indiana.
Like I said, I'll just be surprised if it ends up working
out for everyone. Anyway, Ryan popped up, said
happy Sunday morning. And Ryan, I hate to tell you
this, but we're wrapping this up right now, but this, this was
about a 40 minute show. Please feel free and go back and
watch the whole thing. Leave some comments and
questions. Again, just to reiterate from
the beginning, my final four teams in Vanderbilt, San Diego
State, Texas, North Carolina. I hope I am wrong that North
Carolina's in. I hope I'm wrong that Texas is
in. I wouldn't be shocked even if
San Diego State wasn't in the field.
Like as much as I think overall they'll be fine, I do see an
argument for them to be out of the field.
So it's it's very unsettled right now.
In terms of this last grouping. I think even Delphi Bracketology
noted that there was a lot of debate there because there were
not clear best teams amongst the group that we were trying to
decide the last few bids from. Question here, if we're out, do
we play in the NIT or the Crown? I think given the coaching
change and given the fact that the portal opens on the 24th of
March and the Crown doesn't start till the 31st of March, my
my guess would be that no, Indiana would not be taking part
in either of those tournaments. And even even if, as Russell
points out, the Crown is in Vegas and players get paid like
what you're whatever you're going to get paid in the crown
is not going to be as important as what you're going to get paid
in NIL elsewhere. And if you have to enter the
portal and save yourself, like do you really want to endanger
your market value or endanger the interest of other teams?
If you go and play in a frankly meaningless tournament and get
injured, I think a lot of players are going to be looking
at that and saying that in no way, shape or form is that worth
it. To me, that might mean that
we've got brand names in Vegas for the crown that end up having
the walk ONS playing for them or little used players.
I, I don't think the crown thing was thought all the way through
and it certainly wasn't reconciled with the NCAA's rules
on the transfer portal dates. We'll see I I could be wrong
again, but I'm having a hard time seeing how this is going to
reconcile given that the schools are on the hook for the crown,
but the players are not and there's no contractual
obligations that you play in anything.
So another good argument for changing the system.
Anyway, we're going to go wrap things up.
I'll be back on Twitter throughout the course of the
day. We'll be on the back home
network discord and talking about things as well.
So folks, it'll be a fascinating ride.
I'm looking forward to seeing what happens throughout the
course of the day and we'll see what happens without you.
Hopefully we see them in the field when it's revealed at 6:00
for Crimson Cast. I'm Galen Clavio, thanks to our
presenting sponsor, Home Field Apparel.
We'll catch you folks. On the flip side, stay never
daunted, bring back the Bison. So everybody.