I will be assembling my "usual" stats-based analysis of the bracket, complete with picks a little later this week (but before Thursday). For now, I had some thought on the bracket. In general, MSU's draw is about as good as fans could expect. I will go into more detail on that later. As for the job that the committee did... I am far from impressed. Once again, there are multiple errors in team selection, seeding, and bracketing as a whole. Let's look at each one in turn.
Did the Committee get the right 68 teams?
More or less. This is the area where I am the least concerned. As I mentioned yesterday, my metrics had UNC safely in the field and not even in the First Four, but I swapped them out for WVU at the last minute. UNC's single Q1 win gave me too much pause. I felt slightly vindicated when UNC made it. My biggest beef is with Texas making it in at 19-15. That's just too many loses. Yes, they had 7 Q1 wins, but that also had 5 loses outside of Q1 and an overall strength of record (as I calculate it) well below Indiana and Xavier (my last two teams in). That said, Texas made a little run in the SEC tournament while Indiana lost to Oregon. That was likely the deciding factor.
Did the Committee seed the teams properly?
I have more issues with how some of the teams were seeded. I will take the hit in swapping UNC for WVU and only give myself credit for getting 66 of the 68 teams correct. Of the 66 teams, I had 41 of them seeded the same as the committee. I had 21 teams seeded within one seed. Of these 21 teams, only nine were seeded more than three spots on the seed list from where I had them. Here are the teams those nine teams:
No. 6 BYU (I have them 7 slots on the seed list lower than the actual placement)
No. 3 Iowa State (I have them 6 slots lower)
No. 4 Purdue (I have them 5 slots lower)
No. 11 Xavier (I have them 5 slots lower, but still in the First Four...)
No. 6 Ole Miss (I have them 4 slots higher)
No. 7 Saint Mary's (I have them 4 slots higher)
No. 12 Colorado State (I have them 4 slots higher)
NO. 11 VCU (I have them 6 slots higher)
No. 12 UC San Diego (I have them 6 slots higher)
That leaves only three teams where I differed by at least two seed lines from the Committee. They are:
No. 8 Gonzaga => they are too low. I had them as a No. 6 seed
No. 4 Louisville => they are too low. I had them as a No. 4 seed
No. 5 Memphis => they are too high. I had them as a No. 9 seed
Overall, my seeding matched the committee pretty well. But the Committee was WAY off with the three teams list above. This is honestly three of the worst examples of botched seeding that I have seen in a while.
Did the Committee assemble the bracket properly?
In a word. No. This was a borderline disaster of a job by the committee.
To see why, let's first look at a simplified version of the actual bracket:
I took the step of color-coded the teams from the six conferences that earned more than two bids in this year's tournament. This highlights some of hte struggles that the committe had.
First off, I don't think that they got the order of the No. 1 seeds correct. They seemed to have formed their opinion weeks ago and never came off of it. Auburn is fine as the No. 1 overall seed, but I would have placed Florida at No. 2, Houston as No. 3 and Duke as No. 4. All three teams won their conference tournaments, but my order is the final order in BOTH Kenpom and in strength of resume.
This would have also made it easier to send Florida to the Midwest Region and Houston to the West Region. Houston is the farthest west of the No. 1 seeds, the West Region has a more accessible airport, and there were rumors that Hoston preferred to be int he West Region. This was a no-brainer of a decision even with the Committee actual seed list. Unfortunately, the Committee seemed particularly brainless this year.
But for the rest of this analysis, let's just assume that the Committee's seed list is "correct." Did they assemble the bracket in a way that makes sense? No. Not really.
The biggest challenge that the Committee had was the 14 SEC teams and how to place them into the bracket to minimize potential conference rematches. This is an important seeding principe, and in my opion, it is the single most important seeding principle. The Committee made two eggregious errors in this regard.
First, they put No. 4 Texas A&M in the same region as No. 1 Auburn. If just the top seeds win, those teams would meet in the Sweet 16. That's not ideal. But, it is not as bad as placing No. 2 Tennessee and No. 3 Kentucky in the same Region. This, simply put, is a flat out joke. Those are two rival teams who already played twice is the regular season and now might face off again in the Sweet 16. This has to be, the single dumbest thing that any committee has ever done in the history of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. It is idiotic and inexcusable. Period.
I have a few other more minor quibles with the goegraphic placement of some of the teams. Wisconsin got screwed a bit by being sent to Denver instead of getting to play in nearby Milwaukee. I can forgive the Commitee a bit for that, though, because the placement of BYU did cause some issues, and Wisconsin wound up being their defacto dance partner. Due to the Mormon connection to BYU, they do not play games on Sundays. So, BYU had to be placed in either the East or West Regions (which play on Thursday and Saturday) AND a first round pod that played on Th/Sat. With the way the Commitee assigned pods for the No. 3/6 seed teams, Denver and Wichita were the only options.
That said, Wisconsin could have been given the closer Wichita site and they could have bumped Texas Tech to Denver. That would have made more sense. What would also have made more sense would be to send Purdue to Seattle and to let Maryland have the much closer Providence, Rhode Island pod. Those two teams were separated by exactly one position on the seed list anyway, and that placement is objectively false to begin with. Maryland should clearly have been ahead of Purdue based on every metric I track.
Just to give a more tangible example of what the bracket should have looked like, I went ahead and rebracketed it using their seed list. This is what I came up with after maybe 90 minutes of work:
I kept the regions and top two seeds lines the same as the actual bracket. As we can see from the color coding, potential conference rematches are minimized. There are a few potential early round rematches that I simply could not avoid, but they are the same as the ones in the original bracket. No. 1 Florida could face No. 9 Oklahoma in the second round and No. 3 Kentucky could face No. 11 Texas in the second round. But one or more upsets would have to occur for those matchups to take place.
Similarly, there are a handful of other potential conference rematches in the Sweet 16 in my bracket. For example, No. 2 Tennessee could face No. 6 Missouri, No. 2 Alabama could face No. 6 Ole Miss, No. 2 Michigan State could face No. 6 Illinois. In all cases, these matchups are less likely that the potential ones in the real bracket. At least one upset would need to occur to create the matchup. When there are more than eight teams from a conference, it is mathmatically unavoidable to have potential rematches on this nature. My revised bracket minimizes potential rematches.
Every year I hope that the Committee will not make multiple, obviously correctable errors. Every year they disappoint me.
Did the Committee get the right 68 teams?
More or less. This is the area where I am the least concerned. As I mentioned yesterday, my metrics had UNC safely in the field and not even in the First Four, but I swapped them out for WVU at the last minute. UNC's single Q1 win gave me too much pause. I felt slightly vindicated when UNC made it. My biggest beef is with Texas making it in at 19-15. That's just too many loses. Yes, they had 7 Q1 wins, but that also had 5 loses outside of Q1 and an overall strength of record (as I calculate it) well below Indiana and Xavier (my last two teams in). That said, Texas made a little run in the SEC tournament while Indiana lost to Oregon. That was likely the deciding factor.
Did the Committee seed the teams properly?
I have more issues with how some of the teams were seeded. I will take the hit in swapping UNC for WVU and only give myself credit for getting 66 of the 68 teams correct. Of the 66 teams, I had 41 of them seeded the same as the committee. I had 21 teams seeded within one seed. Of these 21 teams, only nine were seeded more than three spots on the seed list from where I had them. Here are the teams those nine teams:
No. 6 BYU (I have them 7 slots on the seed list lower than the actual placement)
No. 3 Iowa State (I have them 6 slots lower)
No. 4 Purdue (I have them 5 slots lower)
No. 11 Xavier (I have them 5 slots lower, but still in the First Four...)
No. 6 Ole Miss (I have them 4 slots higher)
No. 7 Saint Mary's (I have them 4 slots higher)
No. 12 Colorado State (I have them 4 slots higher)
NO. 11 VCU (I have them 6 slots higher)
No. 12 UC San Diego (I have them 6 slots higher)
That leaves only three teams where I differed by at least two seed lines from the Committee. They are:
No. 8 Gonzaga => they are too low. I had them as a No. 6 seed
No. 4 Louisville => they are too low. I had them as a No. 4 seed
No. 5 Memphis => they are too high. I had them as a No. 9 seed
Overall, my seeding matched the committee pretty well. But the Committee was WAY off with the three teams list above. This is honestly three of the worst examples of botched seeding that I have seen in a while.
Did the Committee assemble the bracket properly?
In a word. No. This was a borderline disaster of a job by the committee.
To see why, let's first look at a simplified version of the actual bracket:
I took the step of color-coded the teams from the six conferences that earned more than two bids in this year's tournament. This highlights some of hte struggles that the committe had.
First off, I don't think that they got the order of the No. 1 seeds correct. They seemed to have formed their opinion weeks ago and never came off of it. Auburn is fine as the No. 1 overall seed, but I would have placed Florida at No. 2, Houston as No. 3 and Duke as No. 4. All three teams won their conference tournaments, but my order is the final order in BOTH Kenpom and in strength of resume.
This would have also made it easier to send Florida to the Midwest Region and Houston to the West Region. Houston is the farthest west of the No. 1 seeds, the West Region has a more accessible airport, and there were rumors that Hoston preferred to be int he West Region. This was a no-brainer of a decision even with the Committee actual seed list. Unfortunately, the Committee seemed particularly brainless this year.
But for the rest of this analysis, let's just assume that the Committee's seed list is "correct." Did they assemble the bracket in a way that makes sense? No. Not really.
The biggest challenge that the Committee had was the 14 SEC teams and how to place them into the bracket to minimize potential conference rematches. This is an important seeding principe, and in my opion, it is the single most important seeding principle. The Committee made two eggregious errors in this regard.
First, they put No. 4 Texas A&M in the same region as No. 1 Auburn. If just the top seeds win, those teams would meet in the Sweet 16. That's not ideal. But, it is not as bad as placing No. 2 Tennessee and No. 3 Kentucky in the same Region. This, simply put, is a flat out joke. Those are two rival teams who already played twice is the regular season and now might face off again in the Sweet 16. This has to be, the single dumbest thing that any committee has ever done in the history of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. It is idiotic and inexcusable. Period.
I have a few other more minor quibles with the goegraphic placement of some of the teams. Wisconsin got screwed a bit by being sent to Denver instead of getting to play in nearby Milwaukee. I can forgive the Commitee a bit for that, though, because the placement of BYU did cause some issues, and Wisconsin wound up being their defacto dance partner. Due to the Mormon connection to BYU, they do not play games on Sundays. So, BYU had to be placed in either the East or West Regions (which play on Thursday and Saturday) AND a first round pod that played on Th/Sat. With the way the Commitee assigned pods for the No. 3/6 seed teams, Denver and Wichita were the only options.
That said, Wisconsin could have been given the closer Wichita site and they could have bumped Texas Tech to Denver. That would have made more sense. What would also have made more sense would be to send Purdue to Seattle and to let Maryland have the much closer Providence, Rhode Island pod. Those two teams were separated by exactly one position on the seed list anyway, and that placement is objectively false to begin with. Maryland should clearly have been ahead of Purdue based on every metric I track.
Just to give a more tangible example of what the bracket should have looked like, I went ahead and rebracketed it using their seed list. This is what I came up with after maybe 90 minutes of work:
I kept the regions and top two seeds lines the same as the actual bracket. As we can see from the color coding, potential conference rematches are minimized. There are a few potential early round rematches that I simply could not avoid, but they are the same as the ones in the original bracket. No. 1 Florida could face No. 9 Oklahoma in the second round and No. 3 Kentucky could face No. 11 Texas in the second round. But one or more upsets would have to occur for those matchups to take place.
Similarly, there are a handful of other potential conference rematches in the Sweet 16 in my bracket. For example, No. 2 Tennessee could face No. 6 Missouri, No. 2 Alabama could face No. 6 Ole Miss, No. 2 Michigan State could face No. 6 Illinois. In all cases, these matchups are less likely that the potential ones in the real bracket. At least one upset would need to occur to create the matchup. When there are more than eight teams from a conference, it is mathmatically unavoidable to have potential rematches on this nature. My revised bracket minimizes potential rematches.
Every year I hope that the Committee will not make multiple, obviously correctable errors. Every year they disappoint me.
