Sunday, February 22, 2004

Bubble Analysis

Bubble teams should be rooting against Alabama, Maryland, and Florida State...

(One question mark means you're in, but shaky. Two question marks means you're out, but can get in with a strong finish.)

ACC (7 teams in) – Duke, North Carolina St., Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, North Carolina, Florida St., Maryland.

Right now Maryland is 13-10 with 8 losses to the top 15. They are 4-7 in conference with 4 games remaining, 3 at home, and 2 of those against the 8th and 9th place teams in the conference. If they get to 6-10, they’ll probably still need a win in the ACC tourney to get in. But the other home game is against Wake Forest, and that is somewhat winnable as well. For now I put them down as safe.

Florida St. faces some difficulty at 6-7 and with road games against Wake and Ga. Tech, and a home game against Duke left. They really could use one of those to be comfortable. Because their non-conference schedule was so pathetic, they are less secure than Maryland in the 6-10 conference record scenario.

SEC (7) – Mississippi St., Kentucky, Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, LSU, Vanderbilt, Georgia(??).

I documented Alabama’s case in my last post. Georgia is saddled with the home loss to #200 Winthrop. That and the fact that they would be the 8th team in from the SEC, which would make Billy Packer even more bitter and angry than usual on Selection Sunday. But if the committee were truly picking the best 34 at-large teams based on their current level of play, Georgia would be on their list.

Big East (6) – Connecticut, Providence, Pittsburgh, Seton Hall, Boston College, Syracuse, Notre Dame(??).

Rutgers loses by 30+ at BC on Sunday, and still have only 2 true road wins on the year. Therefore, they have been dropped off the board.

Notre Dame has easily the worst loss among at-large possible teams with the debacle against Central Michigan (4-20). CMU was below #300 in the RPI before their Bracket Buster win.

Syracuse has proven to be barely NIT-quality since losing Billy Edelin to personal problems. If Edelin doesn’t return and the Orange continue to free-fall, they may be out as well.

Big 12 (5) – Kansas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma St., Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri(??).

Missouri has started to click – or maybe ‘sputtered less than before’ is a better way to put it – since Quin Snyder was forced to shorten his bench with the injury to big man Linas Kleiza two weeks ago. Jason Conley is finally playing like he was at VMI (24 pts, 10-14 shooting in 31 minutes against Baylor on Saturday). But Rickey Paulding still can’t shoot straight. Tuesday night, Missouri shows if its serious about this whole thing as it hosts Oklahoma State on Tuesday, who should be a #1 seed if the season ended today. If Mizzou finishes 3-1, they’ll have an RPI of approximately #34 heading into the Big 12 tourney.

Big 10 (3) – Wisconsin, Michigan St., Illinois.

There are 20 teams that have at least 5 wins over top 50 teams. Purdue’s the only one of them that won’t be dancing.

Conference USA (6) – Louisville, Cincinnati, Charlotte, UAB, Memphis, DePaul(?).

A costly home loss for DePaul against St. Louis. But DePaul gets credit for being a game ahead of Louisville in CUSA. Among common conference opponents DePaul is actually 2 games better than the Cards.

Atlantic 10 (3) – St Joseph’s, Dayton, Richmond (?), George Washington(??), Xavier(??).

All 3 bubble teams won this weekend. All sorts of permutations still possible down the stretch.

Pac 10 (2) – Stanford, Arizona.

Mountain West (3) – Air Force, BYU(?), Utah(?).

AFA’s loss at Texas Pan American knocked the whole conference down. The Falcons lead the conference by 2.5 games after the win at Utah and are still looking fairly good based on that fact alone. The MWC and A-10 may fight it out for the last bid or two.

WAC (1) – Nevada (?), UTEP(??).

The WAC is heading to a one-bid conference.

MAC (2) – Kent State, Western Michigan(?).

Kent State is the stronger of the two teams, but both must avoid another regular season loss to be able to feel good about an at-large bid.

45 bids are available from these 11 conferences, and I listed 51 teams. So that leaves 6 teams on the outside looking in. Others: Gonzaga (a lock from the WCC), Southern Illinois (looking good from the MVC), Utah St. (Big West). Utah State is still on shaky ground after getting taken to OT by Cal Riverside in Logan.

So here’s this week’s Doubting Dozen. The top six teams would be in, the bottom six are out. Gonzaga, Southern Illinois, and Utah State are assumed to get the automatic bid from their conference. But if they don’t, the bubble divider gets moved up one team. The same applies if a team not listed from the 51 teams above gets one of their conference’s automatic bids. That means that while Nevada is listed as in, they would only get in under the ideal and unrealistic scenario that nothing stupid happens in conference tournaments. Because Nevada is the highest rated WAC team, this renders the WAC a one-bid conference right now.

1) Western Michigan
(Utah St.)
2) BYU
3) Utah
4) Richmond
5) DePaul
6) Nevada

---bubble divider---

7) UTEP
8) George Washington
9) Xavier
10) Notre Dame
11) Missouri
12) Georgia

Bracket Buster 2: The Wrath of Kann

ESPN gave us much better Bracket Buster matchups this year, due to the wise decision to include more teams in the event. The best game was played in Kalamazoo, Michigan of all places. The Broncs' 'Zoo is where Western Michigan center Anthony Kann drained a 13 footer as the horn sounded to send the game to OT. Then the Broncos closed out a victory to keep their at-large hopes alive. The MAC also got good news from a win by Kent St. over Creighton. This nearly assures the conference of two teams in the dance if both win out in the regular season.

Other thoughts:

1) Alabama upset Mississippi State today. I have never considered Alabama a bubble team. They are not a lock either - they are really playing for their own automatic bid. They have the #1 strength of schedule and will hold that distinction on Selection Sunday. All the Tide has to do is get to 2 games over .500 to get the bid. They made this task more difficult with a loss at home to Vanderbilt earlier in the week, dropping their record to 12-10 with 5 games left and 2 of those against SEC leader Mississippi State. After today's win, all they have to do is split those 4 remaining games and I think they're in, regardless of what happens in the SEC tourney.

2) Any game involving St. Joe's or Gonzaga is fun to watch, even if it's a 20 point blowout.

3) Air Force came back from its embarrasing 37-35 loss at Texas Pan American on Monday (the lowest scoring game in D1 this year) to win at Utah today, restoring their at-large chances.

4) Kevin Clark at St. John's won't get any consideration for coach of the year, but he has made the most out of his situation. With only 5 scholarship players, one of them being a 300+ pound medical miracle, the Red Storm were awfully close to putting together a 2 game winning streak in the Big East today, falling at Virginia Tech by a point.

5) All in all, today was remarkably clarifying for the bubble picture. Right now, the committee would have its easiest task in recent memory. There are still loose ends to tie up in the WAC, MWC, and the A-10. I'm sure things will get muddier in the next 3 weeks, but for now picking the teams would be relatively easy.

6) Later this week, I going to present some work I've done on determining how likely a team is to rebound its own 2 point miss as opposed to its own 3 point miss. The reason I bring this up is I wonder what the perception is out there on this. I've never seen any work done on it, although that doesn't mean it hasn't been done. It probably means that I don't know how to work a search engine to its fullest potential. Anyway, you can guess (in your head - or e-mail me) what the answer is, and later I'll reveal what I think is something close to the real answer.

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

George W Winning Votes

George Washington beats Dayton tonight and further muddies the bubble situation from the Atlantic 10. Richmond, GW, and Xavier are all fighting for bids. It's possible two of them will get in. It's possible none of them will get in. But it's most likely that one and only one will get a bid. Whomever finishes 2nd in the A-10 West should get the bid. Here's how the conference standings look now:

Team/Record (Remaining games)

Dayton/10-2 (@#57 Xavier, vs. #154 LaSalle, vs. #93 Rhode Island, @ #179 Duquesne)

GW/9-3 (@ #179 Duquesne, vs. #43 Richmond, @ #57 Xavier, @ #154 LaSalle)

Richmond/7-5 (vs. #154 LaSalle, @#93 Rhode Island, @#62 GW, vs. #141 UMass)

Xavier/6-5 (vs. #38 Dayton, @#187 St. Bonny, vs. #179 Duquesne, vs. #62 GW, @#79 Temple)

The schedule favors Richmond a little, but they have two games to make up on GW. No doubt the February 28th game between Richmond and GW will have major at-large implications. If Richmond wins and can pull into a tie with GW for 2nd, they'll get first dibs on an at-large spot assuming they win their first round game in the A-10 tourney. If GW wins, they'll probably need to have won their other remaining regular season games to get a bid. Their RPI rank is 62, and it won't get much better if another loss is thrown in there.