This is part two of my look at every conference race using a Monte Carlo and my current ratings for each team. The listed numbers are how many simulations each team won out of 10000, so divide that number by 100 to get the percent chance I am giving each team of winning the one-seed for its conference tournament. (Note: not all teams listed are eligible for their conference tournament, so in some cases it’s a mythical one-seed.) If a team isn’t listed, I didn’t forget about them – they didn’t win a single simulation.<\/p>\n
Conferences are ordered from least to most competitive. I’ll tackle the ten-most competitive conference races in the final part tomorrow. The following results include all games played through yesterday.<\/p>\n
21. Southland<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Stephen F. Austin.<\/strong> The Jacks have continued to roll under first-year head coach Brad Underwood and it looks like they’ll be favored in every Southland game except for a January 23rd game at Oral Roberts. <\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Oral Roberts.<\/strong> After a two-year stint in the Southland, ORU is going back to the Summit next season, which has something to do with the fact that nine of the 14 Southland teams are rated worse than #300. <\/p>\n 20. Big West<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: UC Santa Barbara.<\/strong> The Gauchos are more than just Alan Williams. OK, no, they\u2019re actually just Alan Williams, but he is a really good player.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: UC Irvine.<\/strong> If you follow the Big West, then you might think Hawaii at 10-3 would even be the favorite. But keep in mind they play their non-conference schedule almost entirely at home, where they have one of the best home court advantages in the country. What I\u2019m saying is UC Irvine at 7-7, playing a few road games against Pac-12 teams, has about the same chance as the Rainbow Warriors.<\/p>\n 19. MAC<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Toledo.<\/strong> The Rockets\u2019 unbeaten run ended at Kansas on Monday night, but their streak of scoring at least 1.08 PPP in every game didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Eastern Michigan.<\/strong> Rob Murphy\u2019s team has been the surprise of the conference so far, and convincing wins over Green Bay and Cleveland State are solid evidence that they\u2019ll win a few games in league play.<\/p>\n 18. Big East<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Villanova.<\/strong> The Big East seas have kind of parted for the Wildcats with Georgetown and Marquette struggling more than expected. This is looking like a two team race. Villanova’s win at Butler yesterday was probably underrated by most. It boosted their title chances by 3%.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Creighton.<\/strong> This isn\u2019t all that contrarian. I had actually pencilled Marquette in here because the offense has to come around at some point, right? After seeing it shut down by the Jays less-than-stellar D last night, it’s clear that it might not.<\/p>\n 17. Big 12<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Oklahoma State.<\/strong> The Cowboys don\u2019t seem to get the respect they deserve because they lack a true big. (Especially so with Michael Cobbins done for the season.) Either it\u2019s a point guard’s game or not people. What\u2019s it going to be this season?<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Iowa State.<\/strong> Well, the Cyclones are one of seven remaining unbeatens, so this isn\u2019t all that contrarian, but with Baylor in the AP top ten and Kansas\u2019s omission from it being the best example of how useless the polls are, ISU is the de facto contrarian choice. <\/p>\n 16. CAA<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Drexel.<\/strong> Before the season, the CAA race was one of the most difficult to predict, but the Dragons have emerged as a surprisingly heavy favorite despite not really overachieving. They were ranked 83rd preseason and are ranked 82nd now.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Delaware.<\/strong> The Blue Hens are the classic team that doesn\u2019t have any quality wins, but has demonstrated in their losses that they are going to be trouble in conference play. They\u2019ve hung with the likes of Villanova, full-strength Notre Dame, and Richmond on the road. So I give Delaware\u2019s Kyle Anderson a 25% chance of playing his last game after UCLA\u2019s Kyle Anderson this season.<\/p>\n 15. SoCon<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Elon.<\/strong> The Phoenix\u2019s 7-7 record has been the result of a brutal non-conference slate. That schedule isn\u2019t over, though. Somehow, they host UMass on January 18th. Upset alert!<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Wofford.<\/strong> The Terriers are 5-7, but they\u2019ve played well against quality opponents, and they only have to play Elon once so the schedule gives them an edge over Davidson. They also have an all-name teamer in point guard Indiana Faithfull.<\/p>\n 14. Big Ten<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Ohio State.<\/strong> The Buckeyes continue to easily lead the country in adjusted defensive efficiency, having held every opponent but one below 1 PPP.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Iowa.<\/strong> Well, the Hawkeyes would be a good contrarian pick if they had Wisconsin\u2019s schedule. Instead, they get to play Ohio State, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Michigan, and Minnesota twice each. So if Iowa does win the league, it will be be an amazing accomplishment.<\/p>\n 13. Mountain West<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: San Diego State.<\/strong> The MW has been a colossal disappointment, currently sitting tenth in the conference ratings. The Aztecs have been one of the few overachievers. <\/p>\n The contrarian pick: UNLV.<\/strong> The Rebels got off to an extremely shaky start, but have looked like a competent squad in recent weeks. Nobody is going to confuse UNLV\u2019s point-guard-playing Smiths with Kenny Smith or even Ishmael Smith, but the conference is so down that it wouldn\u2019t be crazy if they won it. <\/p>\n 12. Horizon<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Green Bay.<\/strong> The Phoenix has spent most of the season in the lower end of the top 100 and has the claim to fame of giving Wisconsin its closest game so far (a three-point Badger win in Green Bay). <\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Cleveland State.<\/strong> The Vikings are coming off a road win against Kent State, and as you may remember, put a rather large second-half scare into Kentucky about a month ago. <\/p>\n 11. SWAC<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Texas Southern.<\/strong> Mike Davis\u2019s team has gotten a boost from transfer Aaric Murray. The Tigers\u2019 annual buy-game barnstorming tour included a win at Temple when Murray exploded for 48.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Southern.<\/strong> Gotta be Southern, right? I mean, all that confidence they gained from a 104-point win has to be worth something.<\/p>\n This is part two of my look at every conference race using a Monte Carlo and my current ratings for each team. The listed numbers are how many simulations each team won out of 10000, so divide that number by 100 to get the percent chance I am giving each team of winning the one-seed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Stephen F. Austin 6357\nOral Roberts 2168\nNorthwestern St. 1000\nSam Houston St. 360\nSoutheastern Louisiana 90\nNew Orleans 9\nHouston Baptist 6\nNicholls St. 5\nMcNeese St. 3\nTexas A&M Corpus Chris 2\n\n<\/pre>\n
UC Santa Barbara 5690\nHawaii 1883\nUC Irvine 1804\nCal Poly 362\nLong Beach St. 181\nCal St. Fullerton 70\nCal St. Northridge 9\nUC Riverside 1\n\n<\/pre>\n
Toledo 5087\nOhio 2264\nAkron 818\nEastern Michigan 573\nWestern Michigan 440\nBuffalo 403\nKent St. 334\nBowling Green 64\nMiami OH 13\nBall St. 4\nNorthern Illinois 2\n\n<\/pre>\n
Villanova 5049\nCreighton 3427\nGeorgetown 642\nXavier 587\nMarquette 138\nButler 93\nSt. John's 49\nProvidence 9\nSeton Hall 7\nDePaul 1\n\n<\/pre>\n
Oklahoma St. 5005\nKansas 2943\nIowa St. 1391\nBaylor 483\nTexas 68\nKansas St. 46\nOklahoma 32\nWest Virginia 31\nTexas Tech 1\n\n<\/pre>\n
Drexel 4971\nDelaware 3450\nNortheastern 630\nTowson 508\nCollege of Charleston 213\nWilliam & Mary 162\nJames Madison 44\nUNC Wilmington 19\nHofstra 3\n\n<\/pre>\n
Elon 4790\nDavidson 2306\nWofford 1212\nWestern Carolina 1130\nGeorgia Southern 361\nSamford 58\nFurman 44\nChattanooga 37\nUNC Greensboro 33\nAppalachian St. 29\n\n<\/pre>\n
Ohio St. 4524\nWisconsin 2223\nMichigan St. 1758\nIowa 891\nMichigan 365\nMinnesota 165\nIllinois 40\nIndiana 31\nNebraska 2\n\n<\/pre>\n
San Diego St. 4465\nNew Mexico 1901\nBoise St. 1658\nUNLV 1008\nUtah St. 671\nWyoming 228\nColorado St. 45\nFresno St. 21\nNevada 2\n\n<\/pre>\n
Green Bay 4168\nCleveland St. 2243\nValparaiso 863\nOakland 648\nDetroit 570\nYoungstown St. 544\nMilwaukee 515\nWright St. 440\nIllinois Chicago 9\n\n<\/pre>\n
Texas Southern 4131\nJackson St. 3095\nSouthern 2328\nAlabama A&M 217\nAlabama St. 122\nPrairie View A&M 56\nArkansas Pine Bluff 25\nMississippi Valley St. 23\nAlcorn St. 3<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"