ADVERTISEMENT

What we learned from the selection committee...

bac2therac

Legend
Gold Member
Jul 30, 2001
216,217
138,954
113
54
Belle Mead NJ
again its one year and every year is somewhat different. There are some takeaways but also some things that need to be printed out and saved as it seems like twitter has given every amateur the right to bloviate about metrics, efficiency and what the committee actually values.

Rutgers got in with a bad net of 77 which is the worst in history. No it doesn't mean the net doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things but it does confirm that if a school has significant wins or a solid resume besides the NET ranking, the school will be selected. See Arizona State, St Johns, Michigan State in recent years with NETs in the 65-75 range.

Quality wins matter the most. Quad one wins matter alot. Wins vs the field really help a school. RU was 8-5. That a big time number. Very very hard to leave off and it was stunning to watch the metrics driven guys look at the number and just dismiss the wins out of hand. Some really bad takes on the Rutgers resume. RU was listed on just 1/3 of the brackets on the Matrix in the end and much of the commentary from them were focused solely on their losses and metrics and not wins. My number one tool in bracketology is wins vs the field. Q1 and 2 record is important but you have to dig deeper. I believe Wyoming was 11-6 in Q1/2 but still in first 4 games. All those wins are not the same. RU had high level Q1 wins as opposed to beating a bunch of 500 WCC/MWC schools. Wyoming only had 2 wins vs the field and thats why despite a gaudy record fell precipitously every week in bracketology from a projected 8 seed to last 4 in.

Quality wins matter more than bad losses. See Rutgers and then see surprising Dayton which came out of left field to be the last team out. Dayton had wins over Kansas, Miami and Va Tech. In league beat Davidson and Richmond. 5 wins vs the field. 5-0. They have 4 horrific losses, 3 in just one week to Lipscomb, Austin Peay, Umass Lowell, the other was La Salle. Those are hideous losses. Yet incredible out of conference wins for a high mid major. Rutgers overcame bad losses to Umass and Lafayette but had 8 wins vs the field.

The selection committee has an affinity for the Atlantic 10. Dayton just missing was twofold...it was the wins but it was also that the committee almost always is searching for that 2nd A10 team. I see it every year. I hate it because I think that having the Commish from the A10 on the committee has biased it a bit. Sometimes they seem to get a little bit of benefit of the doubt. I am glad a school like VCU lost and was nowhere near getting in because the metric and efficiency guys were pumping up a blank resume simply because their computer ratings were high

They say conference record and finish does not matter but it clearly did with Notre Dame, 15-5 2nd place in the ACC. Inexplicably got in over Texas A&M (more on them later) with just a pedestrian 4-9 mark in Q1/2 and 4 wins vs the field and one of those was late addition Corpus Christi. They had a high end win over Kentucky sure but the other wins were just Miami and UNC. UNC AD on committee putting his thumb on things. I am sort of torn. I realize the ACC was down but IMO I do think conference record should be considered...look at RU...12-8. I think finishing 15-5 in the ACC does show they did not screw up too much against the weaker schools.

Conference tournaments mean less than we thought. Even I always fall into that trap. Tourneys are just one to three games during a season. It is body of work. It is hard to go from fringes of the bubble to into the field. We see it with Va Tech and Texas A&M. Va Tech did get in by winning the ACC AQ but if they had lost in the finals, they were not getting in. That seed of 11 and placement on the seedlist behind RU says it all. Texas A&M amassed two big quality wins and a nice won over bubble Florida but still didnt make it. At the end of the day A&M was too far back off the bubble. The committee looks like they had done alot of work heading into the final few days and had an idea of who they were putting in the field and the Aggies were not on the radar screen. Even with the wins they got, they still were a wobbly 4-10 vs Q1...do not get caught up in recency bias, body of work. That is not a good number at all. While they were 5-9 vs field, 6-9 if adding Corpus Christi, its okay but not overwhelming. They had some Q2 losses and their OOC sos was 257 whereas Notre Dame was 26. Those comparisons are important are the very end. I do feel that A&M probably deserved it over Notre Dame...and geez they beat them head to head but thats another thing we learned. Head to head really does not matter for selection or for seeding.

Sunday results mean almost nothing because the field is already set and besides a contingency bracket for a bid stealer the seeds are basically set. Iowa winning the Big 10 played no role as they were a 5 whether they won the tourney but in reality that should have immediately bumped them to a 4. Alot of talk about Tennessee not being a 2 seed, well dont expect a change on that day. Tennessee was also beating a team they didnt have in the field. Beating A&M wasnt going to push them up a seed.

Duke still gets favoritism. So on the other end of the argument, Duke really hasnt looked good in a weak conference even though they dominated the regular season. Losing to a team in the final who wasnt going to get in the field otherwise not a good look. Besides Tennessee one could argue Purdue over Duke as the last 2 too. UNC still gets favoritism. 8 seed which I got right because I knew they would the committee would overseed them. 3 wins vs tourney teams...alot of Q3 wins, if they didnt beat Duke they still would have got in with very little quality wins.

Big 10 also getting alot of favoritism. 9 schools out of 14 in. I mean agree with it but its alot. One can argue about spreading the wealth but with the ACC and Pac 12 being garbage this year. The Big 10 benefits from that.

Non conference wins matter alot...especially high end wins. Alabama just 19-13 and 9-9 in SEC play had a slew of high end wins. Notre Dame's win over Kentucky was a game changer. Non conference activity is a big factor in determining how your NET is going to end up and how your conference is going to do in the NET. That really helped the SEC and Mountain West out and you see it represented in their strong numbers. And while the NET isnt all that important its going to be important if you are a power 6 school and you have both a great net and great wins. In Iowas case they had a great net without the great wins. PS yes RU got but yes they need to schedule stronger OOC

15 losses is a bridge too far. See Oklahoma. Only one school ever with that many losses. You have to be extraordinary to get in. Oklahoma wasnt...they were just 4-12 vs the field. Perhaps if they beat Texas Tech and made the Big 12 final, 19-15 would be a new test for the committee but that did not happen. Michigan at 17-14 was just 3 above 500 which means they became the 5th school to make it in a non covid year less than 4 games above 500. If they were 17-15 they were not getting in. Record matters but its a tightrope walk. Michgan was also 7-12 vs the field. Better stuff than Oklahoma. You do see that schools with bulky loss totals like Michigan and RU will be put into the field if they have a significant amount of quality wins...

A big blow to metrics guys like Norlander, Parrish, Warriner, and the younger bracketologists. Efficiency and Predictive ratings are not how the field is selected. Many suspected this and it was confirmed. Old school wins out. The Kenpom, bpi, blah blah blah appear on the team sheet as numbers, nothing more. The committee is given no instruction to even consider them. If number looks out of whack or numbers in RU's case, the committee is going to see they are outliers given the meat of the resume. Personally when I evaluate, I do not even look at any of the 5-6 numbers like sor, bpi, kenpom, totally ignore them. The NET I do pay attention to but not until I have made my full evaluation. The committee knows full well stuff like Houston at 3, San Fran at 22, Va Tech at 27 , Rutgers at 77 does not fool anyone. What your resume says rather than the number matters more. I never want to see KenPom on the this board or his partner Bart Torvik...they are literally meaningless especially stuff like wins above the bubble..what does that even mean...someone please explain. its literally useless and so is Bart.

Bracketology should not begin in December and heat up in January. Bracketology should start in February and heat up by the end of the month. Alot of worthless brackets in January. Xavier was a projected 4 seed in January. Wake Forest was being talked about as a lock for 6 weeks. Both schools were talked about as locks even 2 weeks. Wyoming was a lock for weeks. Things can change in a hurry once the resumes are actually looked at rather than looking at a number or efficiency ratings. It was funny to watch how these schools dropped day after day and the big adjustments made.

Bracketologists have big egos including me. No one wants to be wrong. We all are. I need to do a better job on seeding, some of that is I have to get more in tune with how the committee sees things and not how I see things. Much to clean up there. Bracketologists are always learning.

Joe Lunardi is such a polarizing figure but I like him. He was the first. He is generally good at what he does. He knows his stuff. He is more consistent than most and he is old school. Jerry Palm is the worst guy that CBS can have. He is awkward not photogenic. In some ways I do like having a geek up there and it seems to be embracing his role as the Village Idiot but CBS is covering the NCAA tourney they should have a guy that give it to you straight. His bracketing the final week was awful. He was putting BYU in the field, like the only one on the matrix to do so. He was keeping Michigan, Indiana and RU out and then suddenly putting the former 2 in even though no one played. Yes we all scrub the field, but Jerry knew better, he knew what he was doing and he knew he was going to move at least one if not two Big 10 schools in. Historical data matters until it does not. Jerry knows this and will go with the odds over rational discussion about Rutgers.
 
Last edited:
General consensus on what we learned is 2 extra committee members was a net negative as they put together one of the worst fields/seeds in a while.

I think Oklahoma was robbed by old school logic. People point to their Q1 records. I forget how Q1A is defined but they played 11 Q1 games against the Kenpom top 15 (8 or 9 against the top 10) 12 against top 20. Somehow found 18 wins. Pretty incredible performance.

I don’t understand how in the same bracket Michigan can skip play-in but Oklahoma be left out entirely.

Overall felt conference tournaments didn’t really matter as much as we thought it would (unless an auto bid was earned).

Conference record meant a lot.

Felt like the sporting world took a few steps back after making a lot of progress over the years on how to more accurately understand team strength.
 
Last edited:
Thanks BAC, excellent post.

One thing I took away from this year's selection process is simply confirmation that there still is a human committee that, rightly or wrongly, is capable of independent thought and analysis.
 
Last edited:
General consensus on what we learned is 2 extra committee members was a net negative as they put together one of the worst fields/seeds in a while.


huh? doesnt make sense. The only real complaint is that A&M should be in over Notre Dame but I get why that wasnt the case.

I actually think the committee did more homework, its just they already had their teams in mind before Friday hit.
 
I was actually going to ask you to create a post like this.

Clearly, many of our worst fears were unfounded. You have to give the committee a ton of credit for actually watching games and knowing what's going on, rather than just relying on computers.

I really appreciate you sharing these thoughts. And thanks again for all of your time here with meaningful and inciteful information and opinions.
 
I was actually going to ask you to create a post like this.

Clearly, many of our worst fears were unfounded. You have to give the committee a ton of credit for actually watching games and knowing what's going on, rather than just relying on computers.

I really appreciate you sharing these thoughts. And thanks again for all of your time here with meaningful and inciteful information and opinions.
Lol committee watching the games!
 
Palm also did a slimy last-minute move to avoid looking even worse. Having BYU in the field when they weren't even First Four Out would've made him look so, SO stupid.

 
Why is it slimy? You implying he had inside info?
Maybe slimy is wrong but to release a "final" projection and then change something is weird. My guess is that he doesn't read other brackets as to not influence his own (a good idea, probably) but maybe read some at the last minute and saw how out of touch he was with BYU's projection.
 
Great post Bac. You made so many good points.

Bart or KenPom really don't watch the games, or if they do, they don't feed all the proper info into their evaluation.

KenPom for example, has St. John's 13 spots ahead(61 vs 74) of us and anyone who watches games, knows that surely is not an accurate portrait of both teams.

Best of Luck,
Groz
 
General consensus on what we learned is 2 extra committee members was a net negative as they put together one of the worst fields/seeds in a while.

I think Oklahoma was robbed by old school logic. People point to their Q1 records. I forget how Q1A is defined but they played 11 Q1 games against the Kenpom top 15 (8 or 9 against the top 10) 12 against top 20. Somehow found 18 wins. Pretty incredible performance.

I don’t understand how in the same bracket Michigan can skip play-in but Oklahoma be left out entirely.

Overall felt conference tournaments didn’t really matter as much as we thought it would (unless an auto bid was earned).

Conference record meant a lot.

Felt like the sporting world took a few steps back after making a lot of progress over the years on how to more accurately understand team strength.
Your take is just really bad here dude. Conference record as a stand alone metric did not mean a lot. Go ask WF about that.

It wasn’t JUST that Oklahoma went 7-11 in conference play. It was that they didn’t do amazing in non-conference play either. Yes - they beat Arkansas and Florida but they also lost to Utah State and Butler and got blown out by Auburn. If your going to overcome closing out the regular season winning only 7
of 18 games and have 15 losses, you’d better have not just done OK OOC, but done amazing, and that’s not really the case.
 
  • Like
Reactions: bac2therac
Great post Bac. You made so many good points.

Bart or KenPom really don't watch the games, or if they do, they don't feed all the proper info into their evaluation.

KenPom for example, has St. John's 13 spots ahead(61 vs 74) of us and anyone who watches games, knows that surely is not an accurate portrait of both teams.

Best of Luck,
Groz
The flip side of that is that the computers said Virginia Tech was a strong team despite their record and then lo and behold they go and win the ACC tournament.

The computer systems are a pure team strength measurement, and they do a very good job of that. I do not believe they should have any influence with the committee however (aside from judging how good a team's wins are, that is)
 
Palm also did a slimy last-minute move to avoid looking even worse. Having BYU in the field when they weren't even First Four Out would've made him look so, SO stupid.


With Palm I dont have the issue with changing per se because I do full scrubs too and change, the issue is that his reasoning for why he kept michigan out meant that he should not be flipping them back into the field, He is a staunch believer in history, so he isnt putting schools that over less than 4 games under 500 in the field...be consistent with your criteria. He didnt do a scrub he just pulled and plugged in because he knew he was wrong. Remember he didnt even have RU as a serious bubble contender 10 days ago
 
  • Like
Reactions: RUfanSinceAnderson
The flip side of that is that the computers said Virginia Tech was a strong team despite their record and then lo and behold they go and win the ACC tournament.

The computer systems are a pure team strength measurement, and they do a very good job of that. I do not believe they should have any influence with the committee however (aside from judging how good a team's wins are, that is)


how did that work out for Auburn or Baylor
 
General consensus on what we learned is 2 extra committee members was a net negative as they put together one of the worst fields/seeds in a while.

I think Oklahoma was robbed by old school logic. People point to their Q1 records. I forget how Q1A is defined but they played 11 Q1 games against the Kenpom top 15 (8 or 9 against the top 10) 12 against top 20. Somehow found 18 wins. Pretty incredible performance.

I don’t understand how in the same bracket Michigan can skip play-in but Oklahoma be left out entirely.

Overall felt conference tournaments didn’t really matter as much as we thought it would (unless an auto bid was earned).

Conference record meant a lot.

Felt like the sporting world took a few steps back after making a lot of progress over the years on how to more accurately understand team strength.


there is certainly old school logic that losing 15 games and going 4-12 vs the field means you are not very good. OK had all the opportunities and generally lost. they lost 75% of their games against NCAA caliber teams..that simply atrocious. Why would they do any better in the NCAA

ken pom is meaningless so I dont know why you are bringing this up...if you use NET I will engage that discussion.

Michigan beat 7 schools in the field...what dont you get about 7-12 vs 4-12....you do realize that wins over WVU, OKie State and KState do not move many needles.

Michigan did better its as simple as that....and if they had 15 losses they would be left out too. You have to have some standards for winning.

There is no steps back...computer ratings are not used and they never were besides as a sorting tool. This is college hoops, not baseball, not nba. Big win for humanity IMO
 
The flip side of that is that the computers said Virginia Tech was a strong team despite their record and then lo and behold they go and win the ACC tournament.

The computer systems are a pure team strength measurement, and they do a very good job of that. I do not believe they should have any influence with the committee however (aside from judging how good a team's wins are, that is)
Uh, until the very end they were playing slightly ahead of a Duke team that chucked shots, conceded rebounds, and dinner pay any team defense.

It was the epitome of that old football home about the visiting team hearing a train whistle and walking off the field in the middle of the fourth period.

Three plays later the home team scored.

That was how bad that game was
 
huh? doesnt make sense. The only real complaint is that A&M should be in over Notre Dame but I get why that wasnt the case.

I actually think the committee did more homework, its just they already had their teams in mind before Friday hit.
I think his main gripe with the committee is that they let Rutgers in.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: bac2therac
The two biggest takeaways for me:

1 - Conference tournaments had very little bearing on seeding or getting in, other than Richmond or VT, who won the auto-bids. Possible 3rd exception, Indiana.

2 - Quality wins is still >> metrics in the eyes of the committee when handing out bids.
 
Didn't Palm call us officially the most annoying fanbase on Twitter the other day? If true then ya gotta think he may have actually left us off just to piss us off, for clicks and attention, etc. Sounds crazy I know since it messed with him predicting perfectly, but you never know with idiots like him.
 
again its one year and every year is somewhat different. There are some takeaways but also some things that need to be printed out and saved as it seems like twitter has given every amateur the right to bloviate about metrics, efficiency and what the committee actually values.

Rutgers got in with a bad net of 77 which is the worst in history. No it doesn't mean the net doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things but it does confirm that if a school has significant wins or a solid resume besides the NET ranking, the school will be selected. See Arizona State, St Johns, Michigan State in recent years with NETs in the 65-75 range.

Quality wins matter the most. Quad one wins matter alot. Wins vs the field really help a school. RU was 8-5. That a big time number. Very very hard to leave off and it was stunning to watch the metrics driven guys look at the number and just dismiss the wins out of hand. Some really bad takes on the Rutgers resume. RU was listed on just 1/3 of the brackets on the Matrix in the end and much of the commentary from them were focused solely on their losses and metrics and not wins. My number one tool in bracketology is wins vs the field. Q1 and 2 record is important but you have to dig deeper. I believe Wyoming was 11-6 in Q1/2 but still in first 4 games. All those wins are not the same. RU had high level Q1 wins as opposed to beating a bunch of 500 WCC/MWC schools. Wyoming only had 2 wins vs the field and thats why despite a gaudy record fell precipitously every week in bracketology from a projected 8 seed to last 4 in.

Quality wins matter more than bad losses. See Rutgers and then see surprising Dayton which came out of left field to be the last team out. Dayton had wins over Kansas, Miami and Va Tech. In league beat Davidson and Richmond. 5 wins vs the field. 5-0. They have 4 horrific losses, 3 in just one week to Lipscomb, Austin Peay, Umass Lowell, the other was La Salle. Those are hideous losses. Yet incredible out of conference wins for a high mid major. Rutgers overcame bad losses to Umass and Lafayette but had 8 wins vs the field.

The selection committee has an affinity for the Atlantic 10. Dayton just missing was twofold...it was the wins but it was also that the committee almost always is searching for that 2nd A10 team. I see it every year. I hate it because I think that having the Commish from the A10 on the committee has biased it a bit. Sometimes they seem to get a little bit of benefit of the doubt. I am glad a school like VCU lost and was nowhere near getting in because the metric and efficiency guys were pumping up a blank resume simply because their computer ratings were high

They say conference record and finish does not matter but it clearly did with North Carolina, 15-5 2nd place in the ACC. Inexplicably got in over Texas A&M (more on them later) with just a pedestrian 4-9 mark in Q1/2 and 4 wins vs the field and one of those was late addition Corpus Christi. They had a high end win over Kentucky sure but the other wins were just Miami and UNC. UNC AD on committee putting his thumb on things. I am sort of torn. I realize the ACC was down but IMO I do think conference record should be considered...look at RU...12-8. I think finishing 15-5 in the ACC does show they did not screw up too much against the weaker schools.

Conference tournaments mean less than we thought. Even I always fall into that trap. Tourneys are just one to three games during a season. It is body of work. It is hard to go from fringes of the bubble to into the field. We see it with Va Tech and Texas A&M. Va Tech did get in by winning the ACC AQ but if they had lost in the finals, they were not getting in. That seed of 11 and placement on the seedlist behind RU says it all. Texas A&M amassed two big quality wins and a nice won over bubble Florida but still didnt make it. At the end of the day A&M was too far back off the bubble. The committee looks like they had done alot of work heading into the final few days and had an idea of who they were putting in the field and the Aggies were not on the radar screen. Even with the wins they got, they still were a wobbly 4-10 vs Q1...do not get caught up in recency bias, body of work. That is not a good number at all. While they were 5-9 vs field, 6-9 if adding Corpus Christi, its okay but not overwhelming. They had some Q2 losses and their OOC sos was 257 whereas Notre Dame was 26. Those comparisons are important are the very end. I do feel that A&M probably deserved it over Notre Dame...and geez they beat them head to head but thats another thing we learned. Head to head really does not matter for selection or for seeding.

Sunday results mean almost nothing because the field is already set and besides a contingency bracket for a bid stealer the seeds are basically set. Iowa winning the Big 10 played no role as they were a 5 whether they won the tourney but in reality that should have immediately bumped them to a 4. Alot of talk about Tennessee not being a 2 seed, well dont expect a change on that day. Tennessee was also beating a team they didnt have in the field. Beating A&M wasnt going to push them up a seed.

Duke still gets favoritism. So on the other end of the argument, Duke really hasnt looked good in a weak conference even though they dominated the regular season. Losing to a team in the final who wasnt going to get in the field otherwise not a good look. Besides Tennessee one could argue Purdue over Duke as the last 2 too. UNC still gets favoritism. 8 seed which I got right because I knew they would the committee would overseed them. 3 wins vs tourney teams...alot of Q3 wins, if they didnt beat Duke they still would have got in with very little quality wins.

Big 10 also getting alot of favoritism. 9 schools out of 14 in. I mean agree with it but its alot. One can argue about spreading the wealth but with the ACC and Pac 12 being garbage this year. The Big 10 benefits from that.

Non conference wins matter alot...especially high end wins. Alabama just 19-13 and 9-9 in SEC play had a slew of high end wins. Notre Dame's win over Kentucky was a game changer. Non conference activity is a big factor in determining how your NET is going to end up and how your conference is going to do in the NET. That really helped the SEC and Mountain West out and you see it represented in their strong numbers. And while the NET isnt all that important its going to be important if you are a power 6 school and you have both a great net and great wins. In Iowas case they had a great net without the great wins. PS yes RU got but yes they need to schedule stronger OOC

15 losses is a bridge too far. See Oklahoma. Only one school ever with that many losses. You have to be extraordinary to get in. Oklahoma wasnt...they were just 4-12 vs the field. Perhaps if they beat Texas Tech and made the Big 12 final, 19-15 would be a new test for the committee but that did not happen. Michigan at 17-14 was just 3 above 500 which means they became the 5th school to make it in a non covid year less than 4 games above 500. If they were 17-15 they were not getting in. Record matters but its a tightrope walk. Michgan was also 7-12 vs the field. Better stuff than Oklahoma. You do see that schools with bulky loss totals like Michigan and RU will be put into the field if they have a significant amount of quality wins...

A big blow to metrics guys like Norlander, Parrish, Warriner, and the younger bracketologists. Efficiency and Predictive ratings are not how the field is selected. Many suspected this and it was confirmed. Old school wins out. The Kenpom, bpi, blah blah blah appear on the team sheet as numbers, nothing more. The committee is given no instruction to even consider them. If number looks out of whack or numbers in RU's case, the committee is going to see they are outliers given the meat of the resume. Personally when I evaluate, I do not even look at any of the 5-6 numbers like sor, bpi, kenpom, totally ignore them. The NET I do pay attention to but not until I have made my full evaluation. The committee knows full well stuff like Houston at 3, San Fran at 22, Va Tech at 27 , Rutgers at 77 does not fool anyone. What your resume says rather than the number matters more. I never want to see KenPom on the this board or his partner Bart Torvik...they are literally meaningless especially stuff like wins above the bubble..what does that even mean...someone please explain. its literally useless and so is Bart.

Bracketology should not begin in December and heat up in January. Bracketology should start in February and heat up by the end of the month. Alot of worthless brackets in January. Xavier was a projected 4 seed in January. Wake Forest was being talked about as a lock for 6 weeks. Both schools were talked about as locks even 2 weeks. Wyoming was a lock for weeks. Things can change in a hurry once the resumes are actually looked at rather than looking at a number or efficiency ratings. It was funny to watch how these schools dropped day after day and the big adjustments made.

Bracketologists have big egos including me. No one wants to be wrong. We all are. I need to do a better job on seeding, some of that is I have to get more in tune with how the committee sees things and not how I see things. Much to clean up there. Bracketologists are always learning.

Joe Lunardi is such a polarizing figure but I like him. He was the first. He is generally good at what he does. He knows his stuff. He is more consistent than most and he is old school. Jerry Palm is the worst guy that CBS can have. He is awkward not photogenic. In some ways I do like having a geek up there and it seems to be embracing his role as the Village Idiot but CBS is covering the NCAA tourney they should have a guy that give it to you straight. His bracketing the final week was awful. He was putting BYU in the field, like the only one on the matrix to do so. He was keeping Michigan, Indiana and RU out and then suddenly putting the former 2 in even though no one played. Yes we all scrub the field, but Jerry knew better, he knew what he was doing and he knew he was going to move at least one if not two Big 10 schools in. Historical data matters until it does not. Jerry knows this and will go with the odds over rational discussion about Rutgers.
The two things I said mattered most were record against the field and in are case record in league. You seemed to take exception with league record as not something they considered
 
Bac does not good but excellent work....I need bac to embrace the aspect of what makes sense for TV.

We (I think) could see Michigan in the final four, but they made the 11 seed without going to Dayton. Michigan is going to essentially headline the Thursday games as the 1st game of the day, which is usually reserved for a big name or big story.

For RUsojo.....I don't know why you continue to question bac, he has been around the block 100x over year to year.....he is reliable.....on your Oklahoma aspect, I actually agree with you they they're one of the best At Large teams....BUT the rule is you CANNOT have 14 or 15 losses and make the field. The committee does not reward you for being a schedule hero and piling up a bunch of losses.

The simple metric for me is 13.....13 is the total number of losses in a 31 game schedule that you need to stay as far away from.....if you get to 13, you will be in trouble or right there, if you're in a Power 5/6 league.

The fact that Dayton was apparently the 1st team out, confirmed that they want win/loss record to matter more than metrics. Dayton does not have the resume of others, if you base it on other factors.....but they entered the A10 tournament with just 9 losses....and bac addresses 3 of them being downright ridiculous, but common sense those losses are somewhat of an outlier. Maybe if they cleaned up 1 or 2 of those, they're comfortably in as a 10 seed with Davidson and Richmond would have made it 3 teams from the A10.....I think Indiana or Wyoming would have been OUT.

The only other takeaway is to please ignore the dumb people talking about OOC.....it's irrelevant to your resume.....if you dominate it and the teams are not good, you solve nothing (see Wake Forest).

The NCAAs is reliant on your league, not your schedule OOC. If the B1G declines considerably and consistently in the next 3 to 5 years, then you revisit the OOC. But the league is actually improving from the bottom-up. Penn State, Minnesota and others are respectable enough to not be Georgetown or Oregon State this year. Even Nebraska eventually started to clean up its act. I don't see a free lunch anywhere in the B1G, you have to be solid to win games and 9 bids without a favorite for the National Championship, speaks volumes.
 
Didn't Palm call us officially the most annoying fanbase on Twitter the other day? If true then ya gotta think he may have actually left us off just to piss us off, for clicks and attention, etc. Sounds crazy I know since it messed with him predicting perfectly, but you never know with idiots like him.
If that's the case than he really is a shitbird and deserves to be fired even more for allowing emotions to dictate his work.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DirtyRU
The company you keep...

Since we were in both at one point, B1G > A-10

Had to help because of the opportunity of more Q1 games and our results in them. Not as many chances in a lesser league.
 
  • Like
Reactions: RUfanSinceAnderson
General consensus on what we learned is 2 extra committee members was a net negative as they put together one of the worst fields/seeds in a while.

I think Oklahoma was robbed by old school logic. People point to their Q1 records. I forget how Q1A is defined but they played 11 Q1 games against the Kenpom top 15 (8 or 9 against the top 10) 12 against top 20. Somehow found 18 wins. Pretty incredible performance.

I don’t understand how in the same bracket Michigan can skip play-in but Oklahoma be left out entirely.

Overall felt conference tournaments didn’t really matter as much as we thought it would (unless an auto bid was earned).

Conference record meant a lot.

Felt like the sporting world took a few steps back after making a lot of progress over the years on how to more accurately understand team strength.
While I don’t think conference record generally matters, I do think it’s different in a round robin league like the B12 or BEast.

Being four games under .500 in league when you play everyone is a tough sell.

With that said, they should have made it over ND. I really think league politics won out there-leaving our the second place ACC team for the 9th place B12 team was going to be a tough sell.
 
  • Like
Reactions: RUsojo
again its one year and every year is somewhat different. There are some takeaways but also some things that need to be printed out and saved as it seems like twitter has given every amateur the right to bloviate about metrics, efficiency and what the committee actually values.

Rutgers got in with a bad net of 77 which is the worst in history. No it doesn't mean the net doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things but it does confirm that if a school has significant wins or a solid resume besides the NET ranking, the school will be selected. See Arizona State, St Johns, Michigan State in recent years with NETs in the 65-75 range.

Quality wins matter the most. Quad one wins matter alot. Wins vs the field really help a school. RU was 8-5. That a big time number. Very very hard to leave off and it was stunning to watch the metrics driven guys look at the number and just dismiss the wins out of hand. Some really bad takes on the Rutgers resume. RU was listed on just 1/3 of the brackets on the Matrix in the end and much of the commentary from them were focused solely on their losses and metrics and not wins. My number one tool in bracketology is wins vs the field. Q1 and 2 record is important but you have to dig deeper. I believe Wyoming was 11-6 in Q1/2 but still in first 4 games. All those wins are not the same. RU had high level Q1 wins as opposed to beating a bunch of 500 WCC/MWC schools. Wyoming only had 2 wins vs the field and thats why despite a gaudy record fell precipitously every week in bracketology from a projected 8 seed to last 4 in.

Quality wins matter more than bad losses. See Rutgers and then see surprising Dayton which came out of left field to be the last team out. Dayton had wins over Kansas, Miami and Va Tech. In league beat Davidson and Richmond. 5 wins vs the field. 5-0. They have 4 horrific losses, 3 in just one week to Lipscomb, Austin Peay, Umass Lowell, the other was La Salle. Those are hideous losses. Yet incredible out of conference wins for a high mid major. Rutgers overcame bad losses to Umass and Lafayette but had 8 wins vs the field.

The selection committee has an affinity for the Atlantic 10. Dayton just missing was twofold...it was the wins but it was also that the committee almost always is searching for that 2nd A10 team. I see it every year. I hate it because I think that having the Commish from the A10 on the committee has biased it a bit. Sometimes they seem to get a little bit of benefit of the doubt. I am glad a school like VCU lost and was nowhere near getting in because the metric and efficiency guys were pumping up a blank resume simply because their computer ratings were high

They say conference record and finish does not matter but it clearly did with North Carolina, 15-5 2nd place in the ACC. Inexplicably got in over Texas A&M (more on them later) with just a pedestrian 4-9 mark in Q1/2 and 4 wins vs the field and one of those was late addition Corpus Christi. They had a high end win over Kentucky sure but the other wins were just Miami and UNC. UNC AD on committee putting his thumb on things. I am sort of torn. I realize the ACC was down but IMO I do think conference record should be considered...look at RU...12-8. I think finishing 15-5 in the ACC does show they did not screw up too much against the weaker schools.

Conference tournaments mean less than we thought. Even I always fall into that trap. Tourneys are just one to three games during a season. It is body of work. It is hard to go from fringes of the bubble to into the field. We see it with Va Tech and Texas A&M. Va Tech did get in by winning the ACC AQ but if they had lost in the finals, they were not getting in. That seed of 11 and placement on the seedlist behind RU says it all. Texas A&M amassed two big quality wins and a nice won over bubble Florida but still didnt make it. At the end of the day A&M was too far back off the bubble. The committee looks like they had done alot of work heading into the final few days and had an idea of who they were putting in the field and the Aggies were not on the radar screen. Even with the wins they got, they still were a wobbly 4-10 vs Q1...do not get caught up in recency bias, body of work. That is not a good number at all. While they were 5-9 vs field, 6-9 if adding Corpus Christi, its okay but not overwhelming. They had some Q2 losses and their OOC sos was 257 whereas Notre Dame was 26. Those comparisons are important are the very end. I do feel that A&M probably deserved it over Notre Dame...and geez they beat them head to head but thats another thing we learned. Head to head really does not matter for selection or for seeding.

Sunday results mean almost nothing because the field is already set and besides a contingency bracket for a bid stealer the seeds are basically set. Iowa winning the Big 10 played no role as they were a 5 whether they won the tourney but in reality that should have immediately bumped them to a 4. Alot of talk about Tennessee not being a 2 seed, well dont expect a change on that day. Tennessee was also beating a team they didnt have in the field. Beating A&M wasnt going to push them up a seed.

Duke still gets favoritism. So on the other end of the argument, Duke really hasnt looked good in a weak conference even though they dominated the regular season. Losing to a team in the final who wasnt going to get in the field otherwise not a good look. Besides Tennessee one could argue Purdue over Duke as the last 2 too. UNC still gets favoritism. 8 seed which I got right because I knew they would the committee would overseed them. 3 wins vs tourney teams...alot of Q3 wins, if they didnt beat Duke they still would have got in with very little quality wins.

Big 10 also getting alot of favoritism. 9 schools out of 14 in. I mean agree with it but its alot. One can argue about spreading the wealth but with the ACC and Pac 12 being garbage this year. The Big 10 benefits from that.

Non conference wins matter alot...especially high end wins. Alabama just 19-13 and 9-9 in SEC play had a slew of high end wins. Notre Dame's win over Kentucky was a game changer. Non conference activity is a big factor in determining how your NET is going to end up and how your conference is going to do in the NET. That really helped the SEC and Mountain West out and you see it represented in their strong numbers. And while the NET isnt all that important its going to be important if you are a power 6 school and you have both a great net and great wins. In Iowas case they had a great net without the great wins. PS yes RU got but yes they need to schedule stronger OOC

15 losses is a bridge too far. See Oklahoma. Only one school ever with that many losses. You have to be extraordinary to get in. Oklahoma wasnt...they were just 4-12 vs the field. Perhaps if they beat Texas Tech and made the Big 12 final, 19-15 would be a new test for the committee but that did not happen. Michigan at 17-14 was just 3 above 500 which means they became the 5th school to make it in a non covid year less than 4 games above 500. If they were 17-15 they were not getting in. Record matters but its a tightrope walk. Michgan was also 7-12 vs the field. Better stuff than Oklahoma. You do see that schools with bulky loss totals like Michigan and RU will be put into the field if they have a significant amount of quality wins...

A big blow to metrics guys like Norlander, Parrish, Warriner, and the younger bracketologists. Efficiency and Predictive ratings are not how the field is selected. Many suspected this and it was confirmed. Old school wins out. The Kenpom, bpi, blah blah blah appear on the team sheet as numbers, nothing more. The committee is given no instruction to even consider them. If number looks out of whack or numbers in RU's case, the committee is going to see they are outliers given the meat of the resume. Personally when I evaluate, I do not even look at any of the 5-6 numbers like sor, bpi, kenpom, totally ignore them. The NET I do pay attention to but not until I have made my full evaluation. The committee knows full well stuff like Houston at 3, San Fran at 22, Va Tech at 27 , Rutgers at 77 does not fool anyone. What your resume says rather than the number matters more. I never want to see KenPom on the this board or his partner Bart Torvik...they are literally meaningless especially stuff like wins above the bubble..what does that even mean...someone please explain. its literally useless and so is Bart.

Bracketology should not begin in December and heat up in January. Bracketology should start in February and heat up by the end of the month. Alot of worthless brackets in January. Xavier was a projected 4 seed in January. Wake Forest was being talked about as a lock for 6 weeks. Both schools were talked about as locks even 2 weeks. Wyoming was a lock for weeks. Things can change in a hurry once the resumes are actually looked at rather than looking at a number or efficiency ratings. It was funny to watch how these schools dropped day after day and the big adjustments made.

Bracketologists have big egos including me. No one wants to be wrong. We all are. I need to do a better job on seeding, some of that is I have to get more in tune with how the committee sees things and not how I see things. Much to clean up there. Bracketologists are always learning.

Joe Lunardi is such a polarizing figure but I like him. He was the first. He is generally good at what he does. He knows his stuff. He is more consistent than most and he is old school. Jerry Palm is the worst guy that CBS can have. He is awkward not photogenic. In some ways I do like having a geek up there and it seems to be embracing his role as the Village Idiot but CBS is covering the NCAA tourney they should have a guy that give it to you straight. His bracketing the final week was awful. He was putting BYU in the field, like the only one on the matrix to do so. He was keeping Michigan, Indiana and RU out and then suddenly putting the former 2 in even though no one played. Yes we all scrub the field, but Jerry knew better, he knew what he was doing and he knew he was going to move at least one if not two Big 10 schools in. Historical data matters until it does not. Jerry knows this and will go with the odds over rational discussion about Rutgers.

Great post.

On OU, it’s worth noting that Florida and Vandy have both made the field in recent seasons at 19-15 and both avoided Dayton.

I think OUs issue is (1) the conference tournaments don’t matter as much (for reasons noted) and (2) 7-11 when you play everyone in league is a tough sell.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DirtyRU
Palm finished nearly 200th out of 211 on Bracket Matrix. It's embarrassing that the channel that shows the games has such a dud as their bracket guy.
It also tells you that getting all but one of the teams right is about the standard for a bracketologist. Worse than that in a typical year and you aren't that good at it.

Which is pretty imprrssive in its own right.
L
 
  • Like
Reactions: RUfanSinceAnderson
not sure what to think of conference record, they say it does not matter but with ND and RU it may have.
I think it’s time to put the theory to bed that NET is the end all be all. I also said at the end of the day committee members are making the decisions and not computers. Granted, we are probably in Dayton because of NET, but things like conference record, record against teams in dance and the way you finish definitely matters.
 
again its one year and every year is somewhat different. There are some takeaways but also some things that need to be printed out and saved as it seems like twitter has given every amateur the right to bloviate about metrics, efficiency and what the committee actually values.

Rutgers got in with a bad net of 77 which is the worst in history. No it doesn't mean the net doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things but it does confirm that if a school has significant wins or a solid resume besides the NET ranking, the school will be selected. See Arizona State, St Johns, Michigan State in recent years with NETs in the 65-75 range.

Quality wins matter the most. Quad one wins matter alot. Wins vs the field really help a school. RU was 8-5. That a big time number. Very very hard to leave off and it was stunning to watch the metrics driven guys look at the number and just dismiss the wins out of hand. Some really bad takes on the Rutgers resume. RU was listed on just 1/3 of the brackets on the Matrix in the end and much of the commentary from them were focused solely on their losses and metrics and not wins. My number one tool in bracketology is wins vs the field. Q1 and 2 record is important but you have to dig deeper. I believe Wyoming was 11-6 in Q1/2 but still in first 4 games. All those wins are not the same. RU had high level Q1 wins as opposed to beating a bunch of 500 WCC/MWC schools. Wyoming only had 2 wins vs the field and thats why despite a gaudy record fell precipitously every week in bracketology from a projected 8 seed to last 4 in.

Quality wins matter more than bad losses. See Rutgers and then see surprising Dayton which came out of left field to be the last team out. Dayton had wins over Kansas, Miami and Va Tech. In league beat Davidson and Richmond. 5 wins vs the field. 5-0. They have 4 horrific losses, 3 in just one week to Lipscomb, Austin Peay, Umass Lowell, the other was La Salle. Those are hideous losses. Yet incredible out of conference wins for a high mid major. Rutgers overcame bad losses to Umass and Lafayette but had 8 wins vs the field.

The selection committee has an affinity for the Atlantic 10. Dayton just missing was twofold...it was the wins but it was also that the committee almost always is searching for that 2nd A10 team. I see it every year. I hate it because I think that having the Commish from the A10 on the committee has biased it a bit. Sometimes they seem to get a little bit of benefit of the doubt. I am glad a school like VCU lost and was nowhere near getting in because the metric and efficiency guys were pumping up a blank resume simply because their computer ratings were high

They say conference record and finish does not matter but it clearly did with North Carolina, 15-5 2nd place in the ACC. Inexplicably got in over Texas A&M (more on them later) with just a pedestrian 4-9 mark in Q1/2 and 4 wins vs the field and one of those was late addition Corpus Christi. They had a high end win over Kentucky sure but the other wins were just Miami and UNC. UNC AD on committee putting his thumb on things. I am sort of torn. I realize the ACC was down but IMO I do think conference record should be considered...look at RU...12-8. I think finishing 15-5 in the ACC does show they did not screw up too much against the weaker schools.

Conference tournaments mean less than we thought. Even I always fall into that trap. Tourneys are just one to three games during a season. It is body of work. It is hard to go from fringes of the bubble to into the field. We see it with Va Tech and Texas A&M. Va Tech did get in by winning the ACC AQ but if they had lost in the finals, they were not getting in. That seed of 11 and placement on the seedlist behind RU says it all. Texas A&M amassed two big quality wins and a nice won over bubble Florida but still didnt make it. At the end of the day A&M was too far back off the bubble. The committee looks like they had done alot of work heading into the final few days and had an idea of who they were putting in the field and the Aggies were not on the radar screen. Even with the wins they got, they still were a wobbly 4-10 vs Q1...do not get caught up in recency bias, body of work. That is not a good number at all. While they were 5-9 vs field, 6-9 if adding Corpus Christi, its okay but not overwhelming. They had some Q2 losses and their OOC sos was 257 whereas Notre Dame was 26. Those comparisons are important are the very end. I do feel that A&M probably deserved it over Notre Dame...and geez they beat them head to head but thats another thing we learned. Head to head really does not matter for selection or for seeding.

Sunday results mean almost nothing because the field is already set and besides a contingency bracket for a bid stealer the seeds are basically set. Iowa winning the Big 10 played no role as they were a 5 whether they won the tourney but in reality that should have immediately bumped them to a 4. Alot of talk about Tennessee not being a 2 seed, well dont expect a change on that day. Tennessee was also beating a team they didnt have in the field. Beating A&M wasnt going to push them up a seed.

Duke still gets favoritism. So on the other end of the argument, Duke really hasnt looked good in a weak conference even though they dominated the regular season. Losing to a team in the final who wasnt going to get in the field otherwise not a good look. Besides Tennessee one could argue Purdue over Duke as the last 2 too. UNC still gets favoritism. 8 seed which I got right because I knew they would the committee would overseed them. 3 wins vs tourney teams...alot of Q3 wins, if they didnt beat Duke they still would have got in with very little quality wins.

Big 10 also getting alot of favoritism. 9 schools out of 14 in. I mean agree with it but its alot. One can argue about spreading the wealth but with the ACC and Pac 12 being garbage this year. The Big 10 benefits from that.

Non conference wins matter alot...especially high end wins. Alabama just 19-13 and 9-9 in SEC play had a slew of high end wins. Notre Dame's win over Kentucky was a game changer. Non conference activity is a big factor in determining how your NET is going to end up and how your conference is going to do in the NET. That really helped the SEC and Mountain West out and you see it represented in their strong numbers. And while the NET isnt all that important its going to be important if you are a power 6 school and you have both a great net and great wins. In Iowas case they had a great net without the great wins. PS yes RU got but yes they need to schedule stronger OOC

15 losses is a bridge too far. See Oklahoma. Only one school ever with that many losses. You have to be extraordinary to get in. Oklahoma wasnt...they were just 4-12 vs the field. Perhaps if they beat Texas Tech and made the Big 12 final, 19-15 would be a new test for the committee but that did not happen. Michigan at 17-14 was just 3 above 500 which means they became the 5th school to make it in a non covid year less than 4 games above 500. If they were 17-15 they were not getting in. Record matters but its a tightrope walk. Michgan was also 7-12 vs the field. Better stuff than Oklahoma. You do see that schools with bulky loss totals like Michigan and RU will be put into the field if they have a significant amount of quality wins...

A big blow to metrics guys like Norlander, Parrish, Warriner, and the younger bracketologists. Efficiency and Predictive ratings are not how the field is selected. Many suspected this and it was confirmed. Old school wins out. The Kenpom, bpi, blah blah blah appear on the team sheet as numbers, nothing more. The committee is given no instruction to even consider them. If number looks out of whack or numbers in RU's case, the committee is going to see they are outliers given the meat of the resume. Personally when I evaluate, I do not even look at any of the 5-6 numbers like sor, bpi, kenpom, totally ignore them. The NET I do pay attention to but not until I have made my full evaluation. The committee knows full well stuff like Houston at 3, San Fran at 22, Va Tech at 27 , Rutgers at 77 does not fool anyone. What your resume says rather than the number matters more. I never want to see KenPom on the this board or his partner Bart Torvik...they are literally meaningless especially stuff like wins above the bubble..what does that even mean...someone please explain. its literally useless and so is Bart.

Bracketology should not begin in December and heat up in January. Bracketology should start in February and heat up by the end of the month. Alot of worthless brackets in January. Xavier was a projected 4 seed in January. Wake Forest was being talked about as a lock for 6 weeks. Both schools were talked about as locks even 2 weeks. Wyoming was a lock for weeks. Things can change in a hurry once the resumes are actually looked at rather than looking at a number or efficiency ratings. It was funny to watch how these schools dropped day after day and the big adjustments made.

Bracketologists have big egos including me. No one wants to be wrong. We all are. I need to do a better job on seeding, some of that is I have to get more in tune with how the committee sees things and not how I see things. Much to clean up there. Bracketologists are always learning.

Joe Lunardi is such a polarizing figure but I like him. He was the first. He is generally good at what he does. He knows his stuff. He is more consistent than most and he is old school. Jerry Palm is the worst guy that CBS can have. He is awkward not photogenic. In some ways I do like having a geek up there and it seems to be embracing his role as the Village Idiot but CBS is covering the NCAA tourney they should have a guy that give it to you straight. His bracketing the final week was awful. He was putting BYU in the field, like the only one on the matrix to do so. He was keeping Michigan, Indiana and RU out and then suddenly putting the former 2 in even though no one played. Yes we all scrub the field, but Jerry knew better, he knew what he was doing and he knew he was going to move at least one if not two Big 10 schools in. Historical data matters until it does not. Jerry knows this and will go with the odds over rational discussion about Rutgers.
Excellent debrief here, bac. Very enlightening.

I will be interested to see what your personal seeding percentage was in your final bracket.

CBS needs to get rid of Palm and hire a bracketologist who: (1) is more accurate; and (2) doesn't look like a pedophile.
 
again its one year and every year is somewhat different. There are some takeaways but also some things that need to be printed out and saved as it seems like twitter has given every amateur the right to bloviate about metrics, efficiency and what the committee actually values.

Rutgers got in with a bad net of 77 which is the worst in history. No it doesn't mean the net doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things but it does confirm that if a school has significant wins or a solid resume besides the NET ranking, the school will be selected. See Arizona State, St Johns, Michigan State in recent years with NETs in the 65-75 range.

Quality wins matter the most. Quad one wins matter alot. Wins vs the field really help a school. RU was 8-5. That a big time number. Very very hard to leave off and it was stunning to watch the metrics driven guys look at the number and just dismiss the wins out of hand. Some really bad takes on the Rutgers resume. RU was listed on just 1/3 of the brackets on the Matrix in the end and much of the commentary from them were focused solely on their losses and metrics and not wins. My number one tool in bracketology is wins vs the field. Q1 and 2 record is important but you have to dig deeper. I believe Wyoming was 11-6 in Q1/2 but still in first 4 games. All those wins are not the same. RU had high level Q1 wins as opposed to beating a bunch of 500 WCC/MWC schools. Wyoming only had 2 wins vs the field and thats why despite a gaudy record fell precipitously every week in bracketology from a projected 8 seed to last 4 in.

Quality wins matter more than bad losses. See Rutgers and then see surprising Dayton which came out of left field to be the last team out. Dayton had wins over Kansas, Miami and Va Tech. In league beat Davidson and Richmond. 5 wins vs the field. 5-0. They have 4 horrific losses, 3 in just one week to Lipscomb, Austin Peay, Umass Lowell, the other was La Salle. Those are hideous losses. Yet incredible out of conference wins for a high mid major. Rutgers overcame bad losses to Umass and Lafayette but had 8 wins vs the field.

The selection committee has an affinity for the Atlantic 10. Dayton just missing was twofold...it was the wins but it was also that the committee almost always is searching for that 2nd A10 team. I see it every year. I hate it because I think that having the Commish from the A10 on the committee has biased it a bit. Sometimes they seem to get a little bit of benefit of the doubt. I am glad a school like VCU lost and was nowhere near getting in because the metric and efficiency guys were pumping up a blank resume simply because their computer ratings were high

They say conference record and finish does not matter but it clearly did with North Carolina, 15-5 2nd place in the ACC. Inexplicably got in over Texas A&M (more on them later) with just a pedestrian 4-9 mark in Q1/2 and 4 wins vs the field and one of those was late addition Corpus Christi. They had a high end win over Kentucky sure but the other wins were just Miami and UNC. UNC AD on committee putting his thumb on things. I am sort of torn. I realize the ACC was down but IMO I do think conference record should be considered...look at RU...12-8. I think finishing 15-5 in the ACC does show they did not screw up too much against the weaker schools.

Conference tournaments mean less than we thought. Even I always fall into that trap. Tourneys are just one to three games during a season. It is body of work. It is hard to go from fringes of the bubble to into the field. We see it with Va Tech and Texas A&M. Va Tech did get in by winning the ACC AQ but if they had lost in the finals, they were not getting in. That seed of 11 and placement on the seedlist behind RU says it all. Texas A&M amassed two big quality wins and a nice won over bubble Florida but still didnt make it. At the end of the day A&M was too far back off the bubble. The committee looks like they had done alot of work heading into the final few days and had an idea of who they were putting in the field and the Aggies were not on the radar screen. Even with the wins they got, they still were a wobbly 4-10 vs Q1...do not get caught up in recency bias, body of work. That is not a good number at all. While they were 5-9 vs field, 6-9 if adding Corpus Christi, its okay but not overwhelming. They had some Q2 losses and their OOC sos was 257 whereas Notre Dame was 26. Those comparisons are important are the very end. I do feel that A&M probably deserved it over Notre Dame...and geez they beat them head to head but thats another thing we learned. Head to head really does not matter for selection or for seeding.

Sunday results mean almost nothing because the field is already set and besides a contingency bracket for a bid stealer the seeds are basically set. Iowa winning the Big 10 played no role as they were a 5 whether they won the tourney but in reality that should have immediately bumped them to a 4. Alot of talk about Tennessee not being a 2 seed, well dont expect a change on that day. Tennessee was also beating a team they didnt have in the field. Beating A&M wasnt going to push them up a seed.

Duke still gets favoritism. So on the other end of the argument, Duke really hasnt looked good in a weak conference even though they dominated the regular season. Losing to a team in the final who wasnt going to get in the field otherwise not a good look. Besides Tennessee one could argue Purdue over Duke as the last 2 too. UNC still gets favoritism. 8 seed which I got right because I knew they would the committee would overseed them. 3 wins vs tourney teams...alot of Q3 wins, if they didnt beat Duke they still would have got in with very little quality wins.

Big 10 also getting alot of favoritism. 9 schools out of 14 in. I mean agree with it but its alot. One can argue about spreading the wealth but with the ACC and Pac 12 being garbage this year. The Big 10 benefits from that.

Non conference wins matter alot...especially high end wins. Alabama just 19-13 and 9-9 in SEC play had a slew of high end wins. Notre Dame's win over Kentucky was a game changer. Non conference activity is a big factor in determining how your NET is going to end up and how your conference is going to do in the NET. That really helped the SEC and Mountain West out and you see it represented in their strong numbers. And while the NET isnt all that important its going to be important if you are a power 6 school and you have both a great net and great wins. In Iowas case they had a great net without the great wins. PS yes RU got but yes they need to schedule stronger OOC

15 losses is a bridge too far. See Oklahoma. Only one school ever with that many losses. You have to be extraordinary to get in. Oklahoma wasnt...they were just 4-12 vs the field. Perhaps if they beat Texas Tech and made the Big 12 final, 19-15 would be a new test for the committee but that did not happen. Michigan at 17-14 was just 3 above 500 which means they became the 5th school to make it in a non covid year less than 4 games above 500. If they were 17-15 they were not getting in. Record matters but its a tightrope walk. Michgan was also 7-12 vs the field. Better stuff than Oklahoma. You do see that schools with bulky loss totals like Michigan and RU will be put into the field if they have a significant amount of quality wins...

A big blow to metrics guys like Norlander, Parrish, Warriner, and the younger bracketologists. Efficiency and Predictive ratings are not how the field is selected. Many suspected this and it was confirmed. Old school wins out. The Kenpom, bpi, blah blah blah appear on the team sheet as numbers, nothing more. The committee is given no instruction to even consider them. If number looks out of whack or numbers in RU's case, the committee is going to see they are outliers given the meat of the resume. Personally when I evaluate, I do not even look at any of the 5-6 numbers like sor, bpi, kenpom, totally ignore them. The NET I do pay attention to but not until I have made my full evaluation. The committee knows full well stuff like Houston at 3, San Fran at 22, Va Tech at 27 , Rutgers at 77 does not fool anyone. What your resume says rather than the number matters more. I never want to see KenPom on the this board or his partner Bart Torvik...they are literally meaningless especially stuff like wins above the bubble..what does that even mean...someone please explain. its literally useless and so is Bart.

Bracketology should not begin in December and heat up in January. Bracketology should start in February and heat up by the end of the month. Alot of worthless brackets in January. Xavier was a projected 4 seed in January. Wake Forest was being talked about as a lock for 6 weeks. Both schools were talked about as locks even 2 weeks. Wyoming was a lock for weeks. Things can change in a hurry once the resumes are actually looked at rather than looking at a number or efficiency ratings. It was funny to watch how these schools dropped day after day and the big adjustments made.

Bracketologists have big egos including me. No one wants to be wrong. We all are. I need to do a better job on seeding, some of that is I have to get more in tune with how the committee sees things and not how I see things. Much to clean up there. Bracketologists are always learning.

Joe Lunardi is such a polarizing figure but I like him. He was the first. He is generally good at what he does. He knows his stuff. He is more consistent than most and he is old school. Jerry Palm is the worst guy that CBS can have. He is awkward not photogenic. In some ways I do like having a geek up there and it seems to be embracing his role as the Village Idiot but CBS is covering the NCAA tourney they should have a guy that give it to you straight. His bracketing the final week was awful. He was putting BYU in the field, like the only one on the matrix to do so. He was keeping Michigan, Indiana and RU out and then suddenly putting the former 2 in even though no one played. Yes we all scrub the field, but Jerry knew better, he knew what he was doing and he knew he was going to move at least one if not two Big 10 schools in. Historical data matters until it does not. Jerry knows this and will go with the odds over rational discussion about Rutgers.
I'd also add the Acc isn't getting respect anymore. Their champion is an 11 seed.
 
  • Like
Reactions: bigmatt718
ADVERTISEMENT