Pre-Champ Week Bracketology
'Twas the nights before Selection Sunday....
Champ Week Recap
A few tickets have been punched so far this week, mostly from some low and mid-major conferences.
Tomorrow is a big day, with all remaining conferences crowning their tournament champs, aside from the A-10, American, Big Ten, Ivy, and SEC. The biggest surprise so far is St. Francis (PA), with a record of 13-17 heading into the NEC tournament, the Red Flash had just a 7.2% chance to win the championship, per Bart Torvik. With mostly smaller conferences crowing their champion, we haven’t had any “bid-thieves” yet, but are sure to get some soon.
Bid-Thief Watch
The Atlantic-10 Conference is probably the likeliest conference to produce a bid-thief. Top-seed VCU is the conference’s sole lock to go dancing, but Dayton, George Washington, St. Joseph’s and Loyola-Chicago remain alive. Dayton currently sits in Lunardi’s “first four out”, but would probably need several domines to fall their way in order to get in without a conference championship. Memphis, a projected top-8 seed, is the only at-large candidate that the American Athletic Conference could produce, but should Memphis fall in the AAC tournament, someone on the bubble will lose a spot the the AAC champ. This is entirely possible, especially as North Texas ranks just 13 spots behind Memphis on KenPom, and Bart Torvik gives the Mean Green a 31.9% chance to win the AAC.1 The Mountain West Conference is probably the only other plausible league to burst a bubble. New Mexico is a lock, while Utah State is likely in as a projected 10-seed by Lunardi. However, if Colorado St. or Boise State, both “first-four out” teams, take the MWC crown, someone’s bubble will probably burst, especially if Dayton also locks up the A-10. With Texas having seemingly slid comfortably into the field over the past two weeks, these seem to be the only conferences which could produce a bid thief, with all other leagues either having all remaining teams a sure lock to go dancing, or are one-bid league’s no matter what.
Beyond The Score Bracketology
Below is my updated bracketology before the big conference title games this weekend. I will update it once more here prior to the selection show. Remember that this bracketology is based solely on Elo ratings, while I personally think that SMU and Wake Forest are surely out, and Texas is surely in, this goes strictly off of the numbers (So lets see how much eye-test and committee bias come into play…).
Overall this mostly make sense—or is at least plausible—in my opinion…except for one. Kentucky is a 3-seed according to Joe Lunardi, ranks 13th in the NET, 15th on KenPom and 15th in the AP Top-25. In my bracketology, they are the last 7-seed. The perceived excellence of the SEC this season has given Kentucky 20 Quad-1 opportunities (in which they went 11-9), and a number of very high profile games (at least per the media’s opinion). How Kentucky performs in March Madness may be a referendum on the quality of the SEC this season — is the conference really as good as everyone thinks? Teams with similar profiles to Kentucky have not faired all that well in the tournament. The below chart from Bart Torvik shows how the top-ten teams with the most similar efficiency profiles fared in March Madness.
On average, similar teams won just 1.1 game—less that what would be expected from a 3-seed—with 3 first-round exits and never advancing past the Sweet-16. Interestingly, seed-lines are all-over the place, with two 10-seeds, an 11-seed, and a 7-seed. My 7-seed for Kentucky doesn’t look all that crazy now! Torvik also produces charts of similar resumes.
Here, we again have just 3 Sweet-16 instances (including one championship) with a couple of first round exits. Keep in mind, also, this resume chart is heavily dependent on the perception of SEC. While it would be foolish to place our perception of a league’s entire season on how one team does over the course of less than three weeks in March, it would also be foolish to blindly consider the SEC the greatest conference ever when they only play themselves for two-thirds of a season.
T-minus-48 hours until the selection show. The Madness is about to begin.
Memphis, meanwhile, is below 50% at 45.3%.