Bracketology '17

[stever20]

Wisconsin overall has 12 games sub 100. 7 in the 101-200 range, and 5 sub 300. 10 1-50 and 12 51-100.
Minnesota overall has 13 games sub 100. 10 in the 101-200 range, and 3 sub 200. 14 1-50 and 6 51-100

So overall Minnesota had 4 more top 50 games than Wisconsin did. And their bad games were better.

Also looking at Ken Pom- their conference SOS was much stronger than Wisconsin was. Minnesota was #8 while Wisconsin was #12.
Wisconsin played 2x- Rutgers, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio St. So 3 non tourney teams.
Minnesota played 2x Michigan St, Ohio St, Penn St, Wisconsin, and Maryland. So only 2 non tourney teams.
you take out Ohio St and each other-
Wisconsin- Rutgers 172, Indiana 79, Michigan 25
Minnesota- Michigan St 50, Penn St 101, Maryland 34

pretty big difference there.

[GumbyDamnit!]

The Committee really struggled with what to do with the B1G10. Minny as a 5? MD as a 6? Yet Wiscy as a 8? I don't get it. If you go by conference success Wiscy finished 2nd in regular season and the tourney. In the B10 tourney MD loses basically on its home floor to NW, who turns around and gets completely waxed by UW. Minny falls before UW as well.

OOC Wiscy schedules @ Creighton (with Watson); vs UNC (both losses), then beats Cuse and Oklahoma. It's not their fault both FF teams from a year ago were not that great this year. Minny on the other hand played FSU OOC (lost) and got both Vandy and Arkansas early (wins). Other than that they played slop OOC. And BTW Wiscy beats Minny twice, as well as Maryland. Their reward? A 8/9 game vs a good P6 team and the #1 overall the next round.

Kenpom #s make it all the more head-scratching. KenPom: UW - 23; Minn. - 33; MD - 45

And this is a UW team that has had success in the tourney before. You'd think they'd get the benefit of the doubt. WTF?

The problem is you can't just reward teams because they tried to schedule good.
Minnesota OOC SOS 23 overall 23
Maryland OOC SOS 114 overall 44
Wisconsin OOC SOS 276 overall 68

Wisconsin had 5 games vs Central Arkansas, Chicago St, Prairie View, Idaho St, and Florida A&M. 5 of the 41 worst Ken Pom teams, and 5 of the worst 50 teams in RPI. Minnesota had only 1 team in the worst 100 teams of RPI in NJIT.

you look at the RPI and it shows why Minnesota is where they are
Minnesota 20, Maryland 34, Wisconsin 36.
also top 50 records
Minnesota 7-7, Maryland 4-3, Wisconsin 4-6.

Maryland is ahead of Wisconsin due to being 11-3 away from home, compared to only 10-7 for Wisconsin.

OOC SOS is the single most overrated metric in all of college BB. Why?

Top 5 OOC game comparison:

Team A: 73(H), 39 (H), 90 (H), 56 (n); 80 (n)
Record: 4-1
Games favored in: 5
Avg Opp RPI rank - 67

Team B: 84(H), 83(n), 5 (n), 61(A), 26(A)
Record: 3-2
Games favored: 3
Avg Opp RPI rank : 52

Team C: 45(H), 25(H), 115(H), 38(n), 13(A)
Record: 4-1
Games Favored: 4
Avg Opp RPI Rank: 47

Team A (MD) doesn't face one team 100 or better as a true away game and still loses one of the games they are favored in. They also schedule the weakest 5 top games. Team C (MN) plays 3 home games, one neutral and one away and win the games they are favored. Team B (UW) plays only 1 home game and they win all the games they are favored. Looking at OOC through this lens makes so much more sense.

If you are telling me that it is all about RPI, then why is MD a 6 and UW a 8? They have identical RPI's: 35. If it's about record vs the top 50 MN is 7-5, MD is 4-4 and UW is 5-6. Give MN a slight edge but as I already showed who you play and where doesn't show up in that metric. If UW is playing the tough teams away and MN is doing so at home, then it's not a fair comparison.

Here's some other stats that we can also look at...

UW has more top 100 wins and more road/neutral wins than MN.
MD has (2) 100+ losses; MN has (1) and UW has ZERO.
UW is 3-0 vs MN & MD.
UW lost in the finals of the BTT. The other two bowed out early.

So MN and MD might have better wins on paper but we don't know where these wins occurred. They also have worse losses. This is a case of the RPI skewing the numbers based on a couple too many OOC RPI poison teams. I think the NCAA tourney committee needs to come up with a definitive system of evaluating teams and let those teams know ahead of time. B/c if UW knew the rules perhaps they would not have scheduled teams in the 300's. They could have scheduled middling A10 teams like LaSalle or St Joe's, guaranteeing wins but not killing this stupid OOC SOS metric.

[GumbyDamnit!]

Wisconsin overall has 12 games sub 100. 7 in the 101-200 range, and 5 sub 300. 10 1-50 and 12 51-100.
Minnesota overall has 13 games sub 100. 10 in the 101-200 range, and 3 sub 200. 14 1-50 and 6 51-100

So overall Minnesota had 4 more top 50 games than Wisconsin did. And their bad games were better.

Also looking at Ken Pom- their conference SOS was much stronger than Wisconsin was. Minnesota was #8 while Wisconsin was #12.
Wisconsin played 2x- Rutgers, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio St. So 3 non tourney teams.
Minnesota played 2x Michigan St, Ohio St, Penn St, Wisconsin, and Maryland. So only 2 non tourney teams.
you take out Ohio St and each other-
Wisconsin- Rutgers 172, Indiana 79, Michigan 25
Minnesota- Michigan St 50, Penn St 101, Maryland 34

pretty big difference there.

Yeah and Wisc finished with a better record. So it's not like they finished tied and you give MN the benefit of the doubt. They also beat them twice and finished 1 game up in the standings. So what's your ultimate point about conf SOS? Wiscy still won more games in the regular season and the BTT.

Just curious...what is MD conf SOS?

[EMT]

It is hilarious that head to head isn't considered when it is close.

[stever20]

Looking at the official NCAA selection sheet
https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/St ... ctions.pdf

Maryland vs Wisconsin
a lot of it is SOS.
Maryland by the NCAA way of SOS(which is dumb ass plain W-L record if memory serves me correct)- #52 overall, #130 OOC.
Wisconsin by the NCAA way of SOS- #79 overall, #301 OOC
Minnesota by the NCAA way of SOS- #21 overall, #29 OOC

vs top 100-
Minnesota 12-8 (7-7 vs top 50)
Wisconsin 13-9(4-6 vs top 50)
Maryland 14-6(4-3 vs top 50)

Maryland's conference SOS was 14.

The thing is, and we saw it with the old Big East- they do take into account your conference schedule when looking at teams from the same conference. My hunch with Maryland was they looked at their 8-2 record away as being a big plus.

now looking at the team sheets:
https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/St ... ctions.pdf
Minnesota- average RPI win- 105 avg RPI loss- 48. 4-4 away from home vs top 50. 6-5 vs top 100 away from home.
Maryland- average RPI win- 117 avg RPI loss- 61. 2-1 away from home vs top 50. 8-2 vs top 100 away from home.
Wisconsin- avg RPI win- 135. avg RPI loss- 41. 1-6 away from home vs top 50. 7-7 vs top 100 away from home

so you can see some of the things that they were seeing- especially regarding Minnesota. Maryland/Wisconsin IMO a different story.

[GumbyDamnit!]

I guess my biggest gripe with looking at OOC SOS as part of a RPI # is that numbers can get easily skewed by outlier type games. When MN plays a team with an RPI of 200, it is so much better than UW playing a team with an RPI of 300. On the court they are both cupcakes. You can't tell me that MD challenged itself more OOC when it stayed on its home court for its toughest 5 games and UW went out and played tough teams in tough places. Those games are all but negated by whether MD played teams in the high 100 & 200's and UW sprinkled in a few games in the 300's. I still contend they challenged themselves more than MD did. And UW performed better than both MD and MN in conference and the BTT. And yet the committee sees them as 9/12 spots worse than MN and 5/8 worse than MD. If that is mostly because UW played one or two more games vs the teams in the 300's then it was a disservice to UW, VT and Nova.

[Savannah Jay]

I guess my biggest gripe with looking at OOC SOS as part of a RPI # is that numbers can get easily skewed by outlier type games. When MN plays a team with an RPI of 200, it is so much better than UW playing a team with an RPI of 300. On the court they are both cupcakes. You can't tell me that MD challenged itself more OOC when it stayed on its home court for its toughest 5 games and UW went out and played tough teams in tough places. Those games are all but negated by whether MD played teams in the high 100 & 200's and UW sprinkled in a few games in the 300's. I still contend they challenged themselves more than MD did. And UW performed better than both MD and MN in conference and the BTT. And yet the committee sees them as 9/12 spots worse than MN and 5/8 worse than MD. If that is mostly because UW played one or two more games vs the teams in the 300's then it was a disservice to UW, VT and Nova.

Put another way, if you were ranking those teams in the order that you would want to play them to advance, I would want Minny first, Maryland second, then Wisconsin the team I'd least want my team to play. And that's the opposite order of their seeding.

[kayako]

Put another way, if you were ranking those teams in the order that you would want to play them to advance, I would want Minny first, Maryland second, then Wisconsin the team I'd least want my team to play. And that's the opposite order of their seeding.

I am going to do a 360 and actually think the committee did our conference a huge favor. Xavier gets very beatable #6 seed, Butler's 2nd round opponent stinks, and it matters little who gets fed to Nova in the 2nd round.

[Bill Marsh]

Put another way, if you were ranking those teams in the order that you would want to play them to advance, I would want Minny first, Maryland second, then Wisconsin the team I'd least want my team to play. And that's the opposite order of their seeding.

I am going to do a 360 and actually think the committee did our conference a huge favor. Xavier gets very beatable #6 seed, Butler's 2nd round opponent stinks, and it matters little who gets fed to Nova in the 2nd round.

I agree. In my brackets, I have Xavier beating Maryland and Butler beating Minnesota. In addition, I think Marquette will upset South Carolina, setting up a chance for Wojo to get a shot at his old boss. Always an advantage when the understudy knows what to expect the other team to do.

[stever20]

I guess my biggest gripe with looking at OOC SOS as part of a RPI # is that numbers can get easily skewed by outlier type games. When MN plays a team with an RPI of 200, it is so much better than UW playing a team with an RPI of 300. On the court they are both cupcakes. You can't tell me that MD challenged itself more OOC when it stayed on its home court for its toughest 5 games and UW went out and played tough teams in tough places. Those games are all but negated by whether MD played teams in the high 100 & 200's and UW sprinkled in a few games in the 300's. I still contend they challenged themselves more than MD did. And UW performed better than both MD and MN in conference and the BTT. And yet the committee sees them as 9/12 spots worse than MN and 5/8 worse than MD. If that is mostly because UW played one or two more games vs the teams in the 300's then it was a disservice to UW, VT and Nova.

But should you get rewarded by just scheduling those tough road/neutral games?

Also a few sub 300 games would be 2 or 3. 5 of them is 38% of the OOC schedule. You know when you schedule Central Arkansas, Chicago St, Prairie View, Idaho St, and Florida A&M that you are getting dregs.

I think part of your problem with it is the name of the team. It's because of Wisconsin's reputation. If the names were switched, I don't think you would have had anywhere near the problem with the matchups.