I’m using my ratings and Bill James’ log5 formula to estimate the chances of each participating team advancing to a particular round of its conference tournament.

Horizon League
Location: First round at higher seed, quarters/semis at Green Bay, finals at higher seed
Dates: March 4, 7, 8, 11
Chance of bid thief: 5% (?)
Current kPOY: Kiefer Sykes, Green Bay

Projections:

                Qtrs  Semis  Final  Champ
1 Green Bay      100    100   88.8   68.7
2 Cleveland St.  100    100   69.1   22.7
3 Wright St.     100   61.3   21.2    4.7
4 Valparaiso    83.5   50.7    6.8    1.8
6 Oakland       65.8   25.6    6.4    0.9
7 Youngstown St 34.2   13.2    3.3    0.4
5 Milwaukee     62.3   26.1    2.3    0.4
8 Detroit       37.7   17.1    1.7    0.3
9 UIC           16.5    6.1    0.3    0.03

Green Bay’s ranked 51st in my system, and they must be pretty decent in the RPI because they are at-large worthy in most brackets posted at Bracket Matrix. That’s also because Green Bay beat Virginia and that is their meal ticket right now. That game happened to be at the Resch Center this season. What if it was at Charlottesville? They probably would have lost. And nobody would be saying Green Bay is an at-large. Yet they would be the exact same team. The tournament selection process hurts my head.

Maybe Green Bay is in today, but what if it lost on its home-floor? I don’t know. It seems like you can’t rule the Phoenix out in that case, but they’re far from automatic, so there’s probably just a low chance of this becoming a two-bid league. But you never know. I hear this is the weakest bubble since the last time the bubble was weak. Remember that year with the strong bubble? It was that time UNC went 25-2 and was kept out in favor of 28-1 Kentucky, who snuck in with the 12-seed. There were 42 unbeaten teams that year. Lucky for Green Bay, this is not that season.

The Horizon gives a double-bye to the top two seeds and a double-bird to everyone else, so there’s a 91 percent chance that either Green Bay or Cleveland State gets the auto bid. Both of those teams are substantially better than the rest of the league, so if one of them wins this event, the conference will be well-represented in the bigger tourney.