Bracketology 2012

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

The Pac 12 has a bunch of mediocre teams. I have them with 3 teams in right now as well as Oregon in my "first 6 out" and Colorado as a "long shot". However, with Washington and Arizona barely hanging on to their bids, there will not be more than 3 teams from that conference. Falling back down to 2 is still very possible, and it is still somewhat possible that they fall all the way to just 1. A couple of upsets by teams like Stanford and UCLA could result in the NIT changing its name to the Pac 12 Tourney #2.

I just updated my blog with my first full seeding of the year. WSU a 5. Creighton an 8. Don't be surprised if WSU ends up drawing one of these Pac 12 teams in the first round.

[billybud]

He has FSU in Portland with the Shockers...a long, long way from Florida to Oregon.

[ABC]

Jamar, what are the numbers next to the 7+ seeds on your blog?

[shock4life]

Well with Missouri losing twice this week they will drop in seeding. If they could drop to a 3 or 4 seed and wsu gets a 3 or 4 the committee might send Missouri to Louisville or Nashville which are both about the same distance as omaha is. That would open the door for wsu to go to Omaha as it would be the next closest to omaha. This website makes it easier to understand, gives the distance to all the 2nd/3rd round sites for each team..

http://www.crashingthedance.com/distance.php

[ABC]

Here is Lunardi's latest; WSU is still a 5 seed, with Florida and Notre Dame ahead of us in the 5 seed line and Louisville the lowest 4 seed. All of those teams lost, yet are currently ahead of WSU. Lunardi's S curve does not take into account the issue of teams from the same conference playing against each other before Regional finals, so it isn't exact.

And he has Creighton as the top #6 seed.

http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/50096/joe-lunardis-latest-bracketology-update-10

[Hurley]

re:

4 HUGE games today in terms of our NCAA seeding:

WISCONSIN at Ohio St.
FLORIDA ST at Miami
Pitt at LOUISVILLE
INDIANA at Minnesota

Need the capitalized teams to lose. Fortunately 3 of them are on the road.

[1979Shocker]

Well with Missouri losing twice this week they will drop in seeding. If they could drop to a 3 or 4 seed and wsu gets a 3 or 4 the committee might send Missouri to Louisville or Nashville which are both about the same distance as omaha is. That would open the door for wsu to go to Omaha as it would be the next closest to omaha. This website makes it easier to understand, gives the distance to all the 2nd/3rd round sites for each team..
http://www.crashingthedance.com/distance.php

Missouri is a BCS school. I doubt they are less than a 2 seed.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

Jamar, what are the numbers next to the 7+ seeds on your blog?

Those are "magic numbers"... the number of games I think those teams need to win (conference tourneys included) in order to secure their atlarge bids.

[shock-it-to-me]

The Pac 12 has a bunch of mediocre teams. I have them with 3 teams in right now as well as Oregon in my "first 6 out" and Colorado as a "long shot". However, with Washington and Arizona barely hanging on to their bids, there will not be more than 3 teams from that conference. Falling back down to 2 is still very possible, and it is still somewhat possible that they fall all the way to just 1. A couple of upsets by teams like Stanford and UCLA could result in the NIT changing its name to the Pac 12 Tourney #2.

I just updated my blog with my first full seeding of the year. WSU a 5. Creighton an 8. Don't be surprised if WSU ends up drawing one of these Pac 12 teams in the first round.

None of your four seeds have a higher RPI than WSU. WSU is currently ranked higher than one of your 4 seeds (Indiana) and will likely be ranked ahead of 2 if not 3 more of your 4 seeds in the 'human' polls tomorrow, because they all lost this week. Just curious what other factors are you using to seed them higher than WSU? The same could be said of 2 of your 3 seeds. WSU has a higher rpi and will be ranked ahead of as of Monday both Michigan and Baylor due to their losses. That's 5 to 6 teams with worse RPI and human poll rankings still earning higher seeds.

[ShockTalk]

None of your four seeds have a higher RPI than WSU. WSU is currently ranked higher than one of your 4 seeds (Indiana) and will likely be ranked ahead of 2 if not 3 more of your 4 seeds in the 'human' polls tomorrow, because they all lost this week. Just curious what other factors are you using to seed them higher than WSU? The same could be said of 2 of your 3 seeds. WSU has a higher rpi and will be ranked ahead of as of Monday both Michigan and Baylor due to their losses. That's 5 to 6 teams with worse RPI and human poll rankings still earning higher seeds.

I'll let JH4P do his own answering, but Baylor did not lose last week and, I believe, has a higher RPI. Also, don't be disappointed if WSU doesn't just leap frog over every team above them in the rankings that lost. Wisconsin beating Ohio St today just countered their Iowa loss, so they'll probably stay ahead of us in the rankings. WSU beat 2 teams around 130 RPI las week, while Louisville lost to a 70s team, beat a 90s team....we'll probably pass them, but no sure thing. Now that Miami beat Florida St, we should pass them, but not because they lost to Duke. Michigan being well above us will probably not drop far losing to a high 40s Purdue. Just some examples.

[Capitol Shock II]

It seems that in the past, not playing the week before Selection Sunday hurt us. Teams below us that won were moved ahead of us because we didn't play. If we are able to manufacturer three wins in St. Louis, which will be very tough to do, I am hopeful that we continue to move up, or at least hold our ranking even though we aren't playing. It will be interesting to watch.

[wusphlash]

We are playing this weekend before, basically, the last poll that matters until the final one. While many teams continue playing, Selection Sunday will happen before the next poll occurs. The only poll that counts at that point is the seeding poll.

[WuDrWu]

The Pac 12 has a bunch of mediocre teams. I have them with 3 teams in right now as well as Oregon in my "first 6 out" and Colorado as a "long shot". However, with Washington and Arizona barely hanging on to their bids, there will not be more than 3 teams from that conference. Falling back down to 2 is still very possible, and it is still somewhat possible that they fall all the way to just 1. A couple of upsets by teams like Stanford and UCLA could result in the NIT changing its name to the Pac 12 Tourney #2.

I just updated my blog with my first full seeding of the year. WSU a 5. Creighton an 8. Don't be surprised if WSU ends up drawing one of these Pac 12 teams in the first round.

The fact JH4P has the Shocks as a 5 tells you he is looking at things fair and objectively. He did well last year on this and while I believe this year will be much tougher, his opinion should be highly valued and I personally place more value on his selections than any of the talking heads at ESPN or CBS etc.

And no, I was not paid for this endorsement nor do I even know JH4P.

[shockerofandover0943]

Let me just say that I would much rather take some random Pac 12 team in the first round than a mid-major like The Beach.

[Jamar Howard 4 President]

None of your four seeds have a higher RPI than WSU. WSU is currently ranked higher than one of your 4 seeds (Indiana) and will likely be ranked ahead of 2 if not 3 more of your 4 seeds in the 'human' polls tomorrow, because they all lost this week. Just curious what other factors are you using to seed them higher than WSU? The same could be said of 2 of your 3 seeds. WSU has a higher rpi and will be ranked ahead of as of Monday both Michigan and Baylor due to their losses. That's 5 to 6 teams with worse RPI and human poll rankings still earning higher seeds.

The RPI is not generally a very good way to seed the NCAA field. It gives a "very rough" initial assessment, but that's about it. For example, Colorado State (16-10 overall, 6-6 in the Mountain West) has a better RPI than 25-1 Murray State. Does anyone on this board think Colorado State is better than Murray State? How about UConn being 11 spots higher in the RPI than Notre Dame? That's the same UConn team that has only won 5 games in the calendar year 2012! (Note: Notre Dame has won 11 games in that same time period and plays in the same conference) Who would YOU seed higher?

AP Poll? It can be downright silly at times. I gave Murray State props earlier in this thread, but I have to admit that it was a bit silly seeing them reach #7 in the country a couple weeks ago. If you eliminated their wins against teams not even sniffing the NIT, their new record at the time would have been 4-0 without any eye popping wins. Winning at Memphis was nice, and Murray State should have been ranked, but #7 was a bit silly and makes me feel that the polls don't really bring much to the table for analysis when it comes to seeding the field of 68.

So you ask what DO I use? Well, the RPI and AP polls CAN atleast give a starting point, but quite a few adjustments need to be made from there. For example, here's one major thing I look at... Who were a team's easiest 5-10 opponents on the schedule? Team A might have won 10 games against teams ranked 150-200. Team B might have won 10 games against teams 250-300. Because of this, team A will likely have a much better RPI despite doing nothing all that much more impressive than team B. Good teams beat anyone outside the top 150 nearly every time, but the RPI seems to think that beating #198 is significantly better than beating #298. In reality, there isn't much difference. This is the reason you see everyone on this board cringe when Chicago State comes to town. Playing bad teams artificially drops your RPI and there is nothing you can do (on the court) about it.

This year, WSU did an excellent job scheduling and mostly avoided playing cupcakes. However, were Cal State Fullerton and Charleston Southern actually threats to beat WSU in Wichita? Probably not, but playing them (RPIs 150-200 range) instead of a bunch of RPI 250+ teams did wonders for WSU's RPI. Swapping those 2 wins with wins over teams in the 300+ range would have probably cost WSU about 8-10 spots in the RPI right now. My point is that WSU's RPI is probably overrated due to the type of schedule they played. You can say that a team that was stupid enough to schedule a bunch of 300+ teams deserves to be penalized, but if you are honest, you know that the RPI has a real problem with this part of its formula. If WSU has a 98% chance of beating a team with an RPI of 170 and a 99% chance of beating a team with an RPI of 270, that 1% difference is really small considering how much difference it makes in the RPI formula.

I could go on and on, but I'll stop for now. Maybe if I have time tomorrow I'll make a post breaking down WSU's resume and listing some more specific reasons why I ranked them where I did.