Count Brad Evans at Yahoo Sports as a believer. Has us as a “Flame” and thinks we have a legit shot at winning the Midwest Region.
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UM has played 16 games against NCAAT teams with an average opponent seed of 7.6.
UM outscored those NCAAT teams by 108 points or +6.8 points per game.
My gut tells me that is pretty good for a 7 seed.
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If we pretend like the difficult games/ losses against Arizona, Kentucky, Duke and Baylor never happened, then…
MSU has played 11 games against NCAAT teams with an average opponent seed of 6.8.
MSU was outscored by those NCAAT teams by 27 points or -2.4 points per game.
My gut tells me that getting a 9 seed is pretty good.
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MSU was seeded 8 teams behind us. Because UM outperformed MSU by 9.2 points per game against similar competition I am left to conclude that there must be a super duper gigantic lack of quality of teams occupying the 8 seed because how else would one explain the huge gap? What better place to put Wisconsin than as an 8 seed, I guess? Wait, Wisconsin actually performed well…HMMMM…Can’t figure this stuff out?!?
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I promise to let this go soon but if we use the Kenpom ranking of the teams in the Midwest some funny stuff happens:
UM is ranked sixth but was demoted to a 7 seed playing OSU who is ranked 7th but was demoted to a 10 seed.
MSU is ranked 11th but was promoted to 9 seed playing Miami who is ranked 9th but was promoted to the 8 seed.
So, really MSU was promoted to effectively the 8 seed from a Kenpom 11 seed because they are playing the kenpom 9 seed in Miami. Whereas, Michigan was effectively demoted from a Kenpom 6 seed to the Kenpom 10 seed because we are playing the Kenpom 7 seed. See how that works?
Michigan (#21) is playing OSU (# 24) who ranked 19 spots higher than MSU (#43) and 8 spots higher than Miami (#32).
I know there must be mathematical models that can determine the odds of corruption better than some goofball (me) on a computer…Gosh, I wonder how this could have ever happened?
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Keep it coming! I love seeing my suspicions and outrage validated in statistics and logic.
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Yeah just let it go. Have to play well and get some luck wherever you’re seeded. Play ball.
You sound like me when the Fab Five were 6 seeds as freshman. I was outraged lol!! They ended up in the championship game; aided by some good luck, with higher rated seeds getting knocked off early.
I’m content with however the tournament shakes out. I’m confident M will acquit themselves well. We will quite naturally be devastated when they lose, but that’s how basketball fans roll regardless of allegiance.
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This is the hardest bracket I’ve filled out in years. I have no idea who will win. Or even make the final four. I like a lot of rosters out there and there isn’t one team that I think is tops.
Am I the only one who thinks Wisconsin if they beat v tech is going to bring nova to the wire?
The committee is officially provided RPI rankings and officially told to use RPI as a metric. Members are allowed to supply their own metrics, if they like, and individual members can present those as part of their discussion points for/against different teams, but RPI still rules the roost ---- at least until next season when reports indicate the NCAA may decide to insert other metrics into the official mix.
That said, most of “outliers” discussed in this thread are pretty easily explained with RPI. Michigan State, withstanding.
According to ESPN:
Michigan finished as RPI 30 – which works out to an 8-seed, but close enough range to warrant the committee’s 27 overall slot and a 7-seed.
Oklahoma State finished tied for RPI 39 — which works out as a 10-seed
Wisconsin finished as RPI 32 — which equates to an 8-seed
Minnesota finished as RPI 20 — which equates to a 5-seed
You and I might be able to see the flaws in RPI as a metric, but that’s the “advanced metric” the committee is tasked with using. And it appears that metric played a major factor in seeding this year.
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So over on reddit.com/r/collegebasketball, some guy posted his “binder” for this year’s tourney: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2inoL6EQLZPS29FTHdtVm5ZSEk/view
Filled with all sorts of stats and trends. Pretty much everything you could ask for. Interesting stuff starts at page 8.
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That is an awesome resource.
I would just warn to be a little careful using that binder. He has the #7 seed going 36-20 OVERALL and 39-12 when favored. I don’t think that’s possible. Looking at the ATS numbers, it seems to be a typo – the seven seed probably went 29-12 when favored. Perhaps that’s the one typo but just a heads up.
By the way, one thing to consider when judging whether the committee screwed Michigan is that Michigan-OSU was probably the 8-9 game and Wisconsin-VATech the 7-10 game, and then they switched that around and put them in different regions. So OSU seems underseeded as the 10 but would have been more reasonable as the 9. The same could be true with MSU. Not that it makes the match-up any easier for us.
The problem with that is, we’re not an 8 if we would have lost that game and we didn’t deserve to play on a Thursday on top of that.
I hate Wisconsin but I would be PISSED if I were them. They got downright screwed.
If they were waiting to swap both teams, it should have been as a 6-11 and 7-10 swap. Wisconsin win gets 6 or loss gets them 7.
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Yeah, I’m not saying we didn’t get screwed. Just that we were almost super-screwed by facing OSU on a Thursday and then facing Nova, and that the OSU part was already baked in. Probably the only way it could’ve been worse for us in terms of first weekend seeding if we hadn’t beaten Wiscy is to have gotten Wichita St. At least this is Hollis’s last year on the committee, right?
I still really like our chances to make a deep run if we can get through the first weekend, which is the one benefit of the draw.
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I hear you for sure. That’s just what bugs me on all this, why were Wisconsin/Michigan even put in that position between screwed vs. super screwed? It boggles my mind how they botch a lot of these.
Either way, I agree with you on the second weekend! I like our potential matchup possibilities if we were to get out of this weekend. That’s the brightside to it.
I’ll also be really curious to see that Wichita St./Dayton game. I’m so sick of their debate because they beat nobody and their advanced metrics look good because they blew out bad teams. Guess we’ll find out if they really are good or a fake. It’s hard to say if that would’ve been a tougher matchup because Oklahoma St beat them in Wichita.
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I went into the weekend pretty much expecting the B1G to be underseeded across the board. The Committee obviously didn’t have much love for the B1G when it released the top 16 last month and Wisky wasn’t on that list (and that was before their string of losses).
The thing that boggles my mind is that Minnesota seeding (even more than MSU). To have them slotted at a 5 seed with that resume just seems odd to me when you factor in the rest of the B1G’s seeding.
As @YostsGhosts pointed out above, looks like RPI basically ‘justifies’ all of the bizarre seeding…except for Hollis’ favorite team, which had an RPI of 51 (should be 12 seed, at the highest), which got a 9 seed. I have no doubt Izzo’s track record, Miles Bridge’s star power, all their freshman who are peaking, MSU just started playing their best ball, insert cliche/crutch that could be said for just about half of the teams in the field, etc. etc. was brought to the committee’s collective attention. There’s absolutely no excuse for that one.
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Minny was 20th in RPI and if you look at the 6 seeds, SMU, Cincy, MD, Creighton, only the first two were higher and they had 2 and 3 top-50 wins respectively, while the latter were lower and had few top-50 wins. MD two lines higher than Wiscy is probably the craziest result of all.
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