Icing on the cake - Pitt loss pushes MU up to a projected No. 5 seed in BE tourney

USF projects to join MU with 1st round bye

Sorry to post again the day after wrapping up the UConn game, but there was some nice icing on the cake as other games broke well all weekend. With USF beating Pitt today, both USF and MU now project to have byes in the Big East Tourney by finishing in the 2nd quartile (5th through 8th place).

The reason MU projects so well is that MU is done playing the projected top 4 teams in the conference, and the three games against the projected 2nd quartile (Pitt 6th place, Lville 7th place and USF 8th place) are all at home. That fact makes MU a favorite in all nine remaining games, with the percentages predicting a 7-2 finish.

A truly hot 8-1 finish would project MU to finish 4th with a double-bye, but even going just 5-4 projects to keep MU in the top half and get the crucial 1st round bye. Based on who everyone has left to play, and which team is home in each game, Pomeroy projects the final standings to be:

Double Bye
1. Syracuse 15-3
2. Nova 14-4
3. WVU 13-5
4. Gtown 12-6 (an 8-1 finish by MU would give us 4th place based on win over Gtown)

Single Bye
5. Marquette 11-7 (he predicts 7-2 finish, but even 5-4 only drops MU two spots to 7th)
6. Pitt 11-7 (Pomeroy only gives Pitt a 27% chance at MU for tie-breaker)
7. Louisville 10-8
8. USF 8-10 (beat SH and favored vs. UConn and Cincy at home, lost at Cincy, so 3-1 in BE miniconference tie-breaker with next three teams)

First Round Game
9. UConn 8-10 (if beat Cincy at home to be 2-2 in tiebreaker between SH and Cincy, with head-to-head over SH in hand)
10. Seton Hall 8-10 (beat Cincy already, so 1-1 against UConn, Cincy)
11. Cincy 8-10 (if beats UConn, then 4-way tiebreaker for 8th gets very confusing)
12. Notre Dame 7-11
13. Providence 6-12
14. St. John's 6-12
15. DePaul 3-15
16. Rutgers 3-15

Obviously the games all start at 0-0, and anyone can win, but Pomeroy (www.kenpom.com) has been right on so far in predicting our Big East games. He has correctly picked the winner in 7 of 9 MU games this year, flipping only the UConn and DePaul winners. Even in the UConn game, the other three models I saw all had UConn beating MU by double figures, and Pomeroy had MU losing 68-69.

In the 2nd half of the season, he has us as favorites in all nine games. Now to be clear, he does not expect us to go 9-0, because if he gives you a 67% chance of winning three different games, that means you should lose one of the three and go 2-1 in those games, not go 3-0, etc.

So now he picks MU as only a slight favorite at Seton Hall (56% chance of winning) and Cincy (59%), so he believes 1-1 is likely there, though more likely to go 2-0 than 0-2.

He gives us BETTER THAN a 2-to-1 edge at Providence and St. John’s, and at home vs. USF, Pitt and Louisville, so basically thinks we will go 4-1 in those games, though more likely to go 3-2 than 5-0.

Finally he has us as huge favorites when DePaul and Notre Dame come to town.
I know, one game at a time so let’s focus on getting revenge when DePaul comes to Milwaukee. But when you look at who we play at home the rest of the year, and the tough back side to the schedule for most of the teams competing with us for the next few spots in the standings, the opportunity is there.

The guy I gave my USF tickets too is getting to take his friends to a much more important game than he thought when we talked at an MU Circles event in Atlanta!