With conference play heating up this week, it\u2019s time for Monte Carlo simulations. For the noobs, this is where I run each conference\u2019s schedule 10,000 times on my computer using the current ratings. (To the nerds: I dumb down the exponent used to account for the inherent uncertainty in the current ratings.) <\/p>\n
What\u2019s recorded below is the number of cases in which each team earned its conference\u2019s one-seed in the conference tournament. Divide these numbers by 100 to get the chance in percent of a team winning its conference. For conferences with divisions, I am using the team with best conference record. If your team is not listed, they did not win a single simulation. Values listed may add up to something other than 10,000 due to ties, which I split among the tying teams. <\/p>\n
I am splitting this series into three parts. I will be counting down the conference from most to least competitive. Today we will look at conferences 32 to 22. I am providing \u201cthe pick\u201d which is the team favored to win the conference and the \u201cthe contrarian pick\u201d which is some other team I feel like isn\u2019t getting enough attention and not necessarily the second-best team. It\u2019s basically a crutch to write about some other aspect of the conference, so don\u2019t get all huffy about me disrespecting your team. <\/p>\n
Sometime in March, I\u2019ll try to look back and see how well these did. It\u2019s go time.<\/p>\n
32. WAC<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: New Mexico State.<\/strong> Nothing to see here. In October, if you had to pick a team to run its conference table, the Aggies were a solid choice and they remain that way.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: None.<\/strong> The Aggies are Southern and everyone else is Champion Baptist.<\/p>\n 31. MVC<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Wichita State.<\/strong> Nothing really surprising here, either. The Shockers have dominated the non-conference schedule. It\u2019s a good time to mention that they are getting far less credit for road wins against Saint Louis and Alabama than they deserve.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Wichita State to go undefeated.<\/strong> I don\u2019t get why national talking heads increasing play down the undefeated angle. At some point as a youngster Seth Davis told someone he was going to be the nation\u2019s voice of college basketball. People laughed at him for his dreams. It was way more of a longshot than Wichita State going unbeaten, but Seth made it happen. Now he\u2019s the one laughing at the dreamers. <\/p>\n 30. Atlantic Sun<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Mercer.<\/strong> Last year was supposed to be the season that Mercer would be good enough to scare somebody in the NCAA tournament. That didn\u2019t work out, but they\u2019ve repeatedly been competitive with lower-end power-conference teams so far this season.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: USC Upstate.<\/strong> The tenants of the smallest home gym in D-I have done themselves proud in getting wins at South Carolina and Virginia Tech, relegating Florida Gulf Coast to the the third option from the A-Sun.<\/p>\n 29. AAC<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Louisville.<\/strong> I\u2019m not sure how much Chane Behanan\u2019s dismissal affects these numbers. He was effective when he played, but he wasn\u2019t playing as much as last season. Pitino has rarely played small this season, so it figures that Mangok Mathiang will be asked to do more. Draw your own conclusions.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Memphis.<\/strong> It\u2019s either the Tigers or UConn for this honor, and the computer says Memphis is looking more like the second-best team, which I\u2019m not sure agrees with the general consensus. I’m never good about gauging that kind of thing.<\/p>\n 28. Ivy<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Harvard.<\/strong> Despite being at less than full strength, Harvard has been Harvard, getting to 11-1 by winning games with mostly comfortable margins. The problem is the rest of the Ivy has been significantly more difficult than most anticipated.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Princeton.<\/strong> The Tigers ridiculously-prolific three-point attack has produced a bunch of wins over teams in the 100-200 range and a close road loss to Butler. <\/p>\n 27. MEAC<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: North Carolina-Central.<\/strong> Central has had some good fortune, winning all three of its overtime games, but one of those was at N.C. State, so this is a decent team. The Eagles are the second-most experienced team in the country and<\/em> the second-most experienced team in the MEAC.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Norfolk State.<\/strong> The most-experienced team in the land may not be as good as Central (then again, it\u2019s a bit early to make a definitive statement on these types of things) but the only meeting between the two is in Norfolk, and it\u2019s the last game of the season. And the Spartans will have stud big-man RaShid Gaston back soon.<\/p>\n 26. WCC<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Gonzaga.<\/strong> The Zags haven\u2019t exactly impressed, but no contender has emerged from the rest of the league. Gary Bell\u2019s out for a month, but it may not matter<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Saint Mary\u2019s.<\/strong> The Gaels went 0-3 in Hawaii and are thought to be worse than St. Katherine at this point. But they got a win at Pacific last night and they play their first three conference games on the road. If they can get through that stretch at 2-1, they\u2019ll have a real shot to win the league.<\/p>\n 25. MAAC<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Manhattan.<\/strong> The Jaspers are 7-0 in true road games and 1-2 at Draddy Gym. Play the entire conference slate on the road, Steve Masiello, I dare you!<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Iona.<\/strong> The Gaels have lost four straight, but they won their first two MAAC games and the non-conference schedule was pretty brutal. Don’t count them out.<\/p>\n 24. America East<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Stony Brook.<\/strong> The Seawolves have lost to the three best teams on their schedule and have been a slight disappointment, but they\u2019ve been competitive in each of those games and stil appear to be the best team in the conference.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Vermont.<\/strong> The Catamounts are 5-8. They have just three wins over D-I teams. That is not the resume of a conference champ, lacking confidence and all. But Brian Voelkel and co. actually have a decent shot.<\/p>\n 23. Pac-12<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: Arizona.<\/strong> The computer doesn\u2019t like Arizona as much as everyone else. At least in the sense that they\u2019re not obviously the best team in the country. The computer also doesn\u2019t think as much of the conference as most do, so the Wildcats are the clear favorite.<\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Colorado.<\/strong> The Buffs have the best home-court advantage in the league between the altitude and a packed house every night. If they can get something done away from Boulder, they\u2019re a good sleeper pick.<\/p>\n 22. Summit League<\/strong><\/p>\n The pick: North Dakota State.<\/strong> The Bison feature (Marshall) Bjorklund, the Norse god of field goal percentage. He made 67 percent of his shots last season, and is sitting at 69 percent this season. He will smite and\/or smote you if you get between him and a Summit League title. <\/p>\n The contrarian pick: Omaha.<\/strong> The Mavs are in the D-I reclassification process so they will not be participating in the Summit League tournament. That\u2019s a shame, because they\u2019re good enough to win it. This team was preseason #307, but the system didn\u2019t know that Devin Patterson would be the best point guard in the conference.<\/p>\n Coming tomorrow: conferences 21 through 11.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With conference play heating up this week, it\u2019s time for Monte Carlo simulations. For the noobs, this is where I run each conference\u2019s schedule 10,000 times on my computer using the current ratings. (To the nerds: I dumb down the exponent used to account for the inherent uncertainty in the current ratings.) What\u2019s recorded below […]<\/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\/245"}],"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=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}New Mexico St. 8955\nSeattle 408\nCal St. Bakersfield 269\nIdaho 198\nUtah Valley 119\nUMKC 29\nGrand Canyon 18\nChicago St. 4\n\n<\/pre>\n
Wichita St. 8527\nIndiana St. 898\nDrake 319\nNorthern Iowa 167\nMissouri St. 48\nIllinois St. 30\nEvansville 8\nSouthern Illinois 2\n\n<\/pre>\n
Mercer 7436\nUSC Upstate 1836\nFlorida Gulf Coast 434\nEast Tennessee St. 142\nLipscomb 76\nNorth Florida 72\nStetson 3\nNorthern Kentucky 2\n\n<\/pre>\n
Louisville 7239\nMemphis 1474\nConnecticut 579\nCincinnati 467\nSMU 227\nTemple 12\nUCF 1\n\n<\/pre>\n
Harvard 7198\nPrinceton 2049\nColumbia 410\nBrown 151\nYale 90\nDartmouth 89\nPenn 12\n\n<\/pre>\n
North Carolina Central 6942\nNorfolk St. 1638\nHampton 822\nMorgan St. 319\nCoppin St. 164\nNorth Carolina A&T 90\nFlorida A&M 12\nSavannah St. 10\nSouth Carolina St. 4\n\n<\/pre>\n
Gonzaga 6459\nSaint Mary's 3035\nBYU 284\nLoyola Marymount 106\nPacific 45\nSanta Clara 28\nPepperdine 25\nSan Francisco 12\nSan Diego 4\nPortland 3\n\n<\/pre>\n
Manhattan 6161\nIona 2114\nCanisius 847\nRider 426\nQuinnipiac 400\nSiena 36\nNiagara 7\nFairfield 5\nMarist 2\nSaint Peter's 2\nMonmouth 1\n\n<\/pre>\n
Stony Brook 6072\nVermont 2053\nAlbany 1423\nHartford 428\nUMBC 21\nMaine 2\nNew Hampshire 1\n\n<\/pre>\n
Arizona 5986\nOregon 1389\nColorado 976\nUCLA 769\nArizona St. 349\nStanford 326\nCalifornia 133\nUtah 64\nUSC 3\nWashington St. 3\nOregon St. 2\n\n<\/pre>\n
North Dakota St. 5982\nDenver 1659\nNebraska Omaha 1286\nSouth Dakota St. 694\nIPFW 299\nSouth Dakota 38\nWestern Illinois 33\nIUPUI 9\n\n<\/pre>\n