NCAA Tournament Selection: Theory and Application

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

I decided to start this thread because I have read both accurate and inaccurate posts about this topic on other threads.

THEORY

Men’s Basketball Tournament Selection Criteria – NCAA.com

Team sheets

The committee often refers to "team sheets" when comparing team performance. The team sheets contain in-depth team information about strength of schedule, performance against top-50 teams and home/road records.

Ron Wellman answers questions about conference tournaments, Big Dance – NCAA.com Press Release - March 12, 2014

Q. The Kenpom analytic service that a lot of coaches use to evaluate teams, I'm curious if that's part of your discussion at all. There's some dramatic swings in what a team's RPI is and what a teams Kenpom number is. I wonder if the Committee is aware of those situations.

RON WELLMAN: To me, the Committee is very aware of everything. The Committee looks at every piece of data that we can put our hands on.

Kenpom, RPI, all that data, we have a list of data points that we can use. Sagarin, the LRNC, it just goes on and on.

Various Committee members will emphasize and use that data to various degrees. Some of them will reply on certain data more than others. So it just depends upon the Committee member.

This process can be very subjective. Certain Committee members will value certain pieces of data more than others. All of that information is available and easily accessible by the Committee members.

NCAA Basketball Tournament Selection Process Wikipedia

The selection committee only selects the 36 teams who receive at-large bids. Though each conference receives only one automatic bid, the selection committee may select any number of at-large teams from each conference. The at-large teams generally come from college basketball's top conferences, including the ACC, The American, Atlantic-10, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Conference USA, Mountain West, Pac-12, and SEC. Many of these at-large teams, however, are "on the bubble", meaning their chances of gaining a tournament berth are borderline, and they will not know if they have gained entry until the Selection Sunday bracket announcements.

The RPI rating is often considered a factor in selecting and seeding the final few teams in the tournament field. However, the NCAA selection committee in 2015 said the RPI is no longer relevant only utilized for grouping the teams into groups such as top 50 and top 100 teams to value the wins and losses and not as a factor for selection.

Additionally, the committee officially considers other computer rankings such as ESPN's BPI, Sagarin, and Pomeroy Ratings which use additional factors considered by the committee such as injured players in the case of the BPI.

Additionally, committee members consider how teams do on the road and at neutral courts, strength of conference and schedule, non-conference strength of schedule, record against other selected tournament teams, and other extenuating factors. Finally, the "eye test" is often quoted by pundits as something the committee uses, however NCAA.org's sparse description of the selection process doesn't officially mention the "eye test".

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APPLICATION

The following information concerns the 2015 NCAA Tournament – specifically, the application of the Selection Committee’s stated criteria.

NCAA Men’s Basketball RPI Rankings – RealTimeRPI.com – Sunday, March 15, 2015 (with NCAA Tournament Teams shown in bold font)


Here is the committee's official 1-68 list. Dayton was the last team in. – Stewart Mandel, Fox Sports – Sunday, March 15, 2015




2015 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament Bracket – NCAA.com


2015 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament – Wikipedia


Three things the selection committee got right and three it got wrong – Jeff Eisenberg, The Dagger, Yahoo! – Sunday, March 15, 2015

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

Moving on to the 2016 NCAA Tournament . . .

Today and tomorrow (Feb. 11th and 12th), the annual NCAA Tournament Mock Selection is taking place at the NCAA Headquarters in Indianapolis.

Today, the committee of about 15 journalists participating in the exercise seeded the top 14 teams (detailed in the Twitter Feed linked below), with the seeding of the remainder of the field of 68 team scheduled to be concluded tomorrow.


The NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis.

Indianapolis travelblog: 14 degrees in a great city - Berry Tramel, News O.K. - February 11, 2016

Twitter Feed - NCAA Tournament Mock Selection - February 11, 2016

[DudeAnon]

Hope nobody just ate, because this might make you throwup.

‏@JonRothstein
Syracuse will be evaluated for the NCAA Tournament based on what it will have shown under Jim Boeheim, per the NCAA.

[marquette]

Well that's...interesting. Syracuse get's a break because their coach broke some rules? What was the point of the punishment in the first place?

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

Zach Braziller ‏@NYPost_Brazille - 20 minutes ago

The field of 68 #MockSelection



2. Villanova
10. Xavier
26. Providence
43. Butler

Seton Hall's homecourt loss to Butler was very costly according to the Mock Selection Committee.

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

It appears that Zach Braziller tweeted a premature 'final' list. To wit:

Michael Yam ‏@Mike_Yam - 45 minutes ago

The final 68 according to the NCAA #MockSelection. There are 7 #pac12 teams included. Notable missing UW.



Butler moved up to # 42, and the final at-large place (# 46) was taken from LSU and given to St. Bonaventure.

[stever20]

saw this:
http://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men ... division-i

thought this part was interesting:
RESOURCES

Committee members have a wide-range of observation, consultation and data resources available to them throughout the season and during selection week. These resources provide the foundation for a thorough and educated process that is reinforced by the committee member’s discussion and deliberation. Among the resources available to the committee are an extensive season-long evaluation of teams through watching games, conference monitoring calls and NABC regional advisory rankings; complete box scores and results, head-to-head results, results versus common opponents, imbalanced conference schedules and results, overall and non-conference strength of schedule, the quality of wins and losses, road record, player and coach availability and various computer metrics. Each of the 10 committee members uses these various resources to form their own opinions, resulting in the committee’s consensus position on teams’ selection and seeding.

I think 2 things are really interesting...
1- the part about player and coach availability. Syracuse may get somewhat of a pass for Boeheim being out...
2- the fact that it says various computer metrics. Folks- that means Ken Pom.

[ChelseaFriar]

I think 2 things are really interesting...
1- the part about player and coach availability. Syracuse may get somewhat of a pass for Boeheim being out...

That's pretty bad considering it was the NCAA that punished him

That said, if they are getting a pass for cheating, I damn well hope PC gets a pass on the DePaul loss for only getting 14 minutes out of Bentil. But that probably won't happen...

[stever20]

I think 2 things are really interesting...
1- the part about player and coach availability. Syracuse may get somewhat of a pass for Boeheim being out...

That's pretty bad considering it was the NCAA that punished him

That said, if they are getting a pass for cheating, I damn well hope PC gets a pass on the DePaul loss for only getting 14 minutes out of Bentil. But that probably won't happen...

Oh I know. It's like, we're going to punish you, but then you lost games because of the punishment- we're going to reward you because you lost due to the punishment so we're going to kind of ignore that. Total BS IMO.

[PMThor]

It appears that Zach Braziller tweeted a premature 'final' list. To wit:

Michael Yam ‏@Mike_Yam - 45 minutes ago

The final 68 according to the NCAA #MockSelection. There are 7 #pac12 teams included. Notable missing UW.



Butler moved up to # 42, and the final at-large place (# 46) was taken from LSU and given to St. Bonaventure.

It was later tweeted that St. Bonnie gets that last spot ONLY if they win the A10 tourney...so there's that.