\nI. Principles for Selecting At-Large Teams<\/p>\n
1. The committee shall select the best available teams to fill the at-large berths, regardless of conference affiliation. <\/p>\n
2. There is no limit on the number of teams the committee may select from one conference.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I think Maryland has a strong case as being one of the \u2018best available teams.\u2019 They are 14-11 overall, 2-9 against the top 25. It\u2019s obvious that they aren\u2019t a top 25 team so let\u2019s ignore those games. They are 12-2 on the rest of their schedule. Their losses are at #46 and an almost-home game against #91. Their quality wins include home vs. #47, @#52, and a home\/road sweep of #75, and a home win vs. #94. They still must get a win in the finale hosting #52 UVa. Assuming they do, they would be 5-1 against teams ranked between 26-75. Considering the final at-large team will probably get a 12 seed, one needs to be in the theoretical top 45 or so to get a bid. With a solid record against teams in this range, and two quality non-conference wins (at Florida, home vs. Wisconsin), I\u2019d put Maryland in if they split their last two. A 1st round loss in the ACC tourney to Georgia Tech would complicate things and may leave them at home. <\/p>\n
Florida State on the other hand is in dire straits. They need a win in the finale at Georgia Tech. Wilbon, among other casual observers, believes Florida State has a better chance than the Terps of getting in with a 6-10 record. This is probably based on FSU\u2019s higher win total. They picked up 2 extra D-1 wins by virtue of participating in the prestigious \u201cPittsburgh Holiday Classic.\u201d Their two wins were against Wagner and Chicago State. Does this make them better than Maryland? Obviously not. They don\u2019t have a quality non-conference win. Their record against the top 25 is 3-8, and against 25-75 it\u2019s 3-3. 6-10 in the ACC won\u2019t get it done for the Seminoles unless they get to the ACC championship.<\/p>\n
SEC (7) \u2013 Mississippi St., Kentucky, Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, LSU, Vanderbilt, Georgia(??).<\/strong> <\/p>\nGeorgia is still lacking a good road resume. They have two wins away from Athens: at Kentucky which is worth a lot, and against Clemson in Atlanta’s Philips Arena. They also took Gonzaga into overtime in Spokane which may be taken into consideration. A win at Florida or a trip to the SEC semis would make them hard to leave out.<\/p>\n
Big East (6) \u2013 Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Providence, Seton Hall, Boston College, Syracuse, Notre Dame(??), Rutgers(??).<\/strong><\/p>\nBig 12 (6) \u2013 Oklahoma St., Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma(?), Texas Tech(?), Colorado(??).<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Big 12 tourney is more intriguing than any other conference tourney this year. Suddenly, Wednesday\u2019s Missouri @ Texas Tech game has become more important for the Red Raiders than the Tigers. Tech has lost 7 of their last 10.<\/p>\n
Big 10 (3) \u2013 Wisconsin, Michigan State, Illinois, Michigan(??).<\/strong><\/p>\nConference USA (6) \u2013 Memphis, Cincinnati, Charlotte, Louisville, UAB, DePaul.<\/strong><\/p>\nAtlantic 10 (3) \u2013 St Joseph\u2019s, Dayton, Richmond(?).<\/strong><\/p>\nRichmond needs to make noise in the A-10 tourney to get the committee\u2019s attention again. The fact that the A-10 decided to let St. Bonaventure play in the tourney was not good news, because Richmond would have otherwise had a 1st round bye as the 3rd seed in the A-10 West.<\/p>\n
Pac 10 (2) \u2013 Stanford, Arizona.<\/strong><\/p>\nArizona barely hangs on to safe status this week.<\/p>\n
Mountain West (3) \u2013 Air Force, BYU, Utah.<\/strong><\/p>\nAll of these teams can play their way out. <\/p>\n
Air Force has no room for error, and must win their 2 games this week and then beat Colorado St. in the 1st round of the MWC tourney.<\/p>\n
The winner of Utah at BYU on Big Monday makes a much stronger case, especially if the winner is Utah. While BYU is on a 6 game win streak, 4 of the 6 games were at home and the two road wins were against the two worst teams in the MWC. I am not impressed.<\/p>\n
WAC (2) \u2013 Nevada (?), UTEP(?). <\/strong><\/p>\nBoth of these teams have to go deep into the WAC tourney to have any hope.<\/p>\n
———————-<\/p>\n
44 bids are available from these 10 conferences, and I listed 50 teams. So that leaves 6 teams on the outside looking in.
\nTeams from other conferences getting consideration: Gonzaga (a lock from the WCC), Southern Illinois (a lock from the MVC), Utah St. (looking good from the Big West), and Western Michigan(MAC).<\/p>\n
So here\u2019s this week\u2019s 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\u2019t, the bubble divider gets moved up one team. The same applies if a team not listed from the 50 teams above gets one of their conference\u2019s automatic bids. That means that while Richmond is listed as in, they would only get in under the ideal and unrealistic scenario that nothing stupid happens in conference tournaments. <\/p>\n
\n1) Texas Tech\n2) Maryland\n3) Oklahoma\n(Western Michigan)\n4) Nevada\n5) UTEP\n6) Richmond\n\n---bubble divider---<\/strong>\n\n7) Georgia\n8) Florida St.\n9) Colorado\n10) Michigan\n11) Notre Dame\n12) Rutgers<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two weeks until the speculation can end. Conference tournaments will decide the fate of most teams that still have questions about their at-large status. (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 (6 teams in) \u2013 Duke, North Carolina St., […]<\/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\/948"}],"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=948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}