"My rule was I wouldn't recruit a kid if he had grass in front of his house.
That's not my world. My world was a cracked sidewalk." —Al McGuire

Monday, December 24, 2018

MU's NCAA Path: Charleston, Lville, Mich, Texas Tech, UVA, Duke

If the Selection Committee went exactly from the new Net Ratings (that replaced RPI this year) then I have Marquette as the 4-seed in the East. Their path if higher seeds won all other games would be:

13-seed College of Charleston
5-seed Louisville in a rematch of the overtime win
1-seed Michigan
2-seed Texas Tech
East 1-seed Virginia
Overall 1-seed (South) Duke

I did not run a true S-Curve (where the 1 overall necessarily faces the 8 overall) but rather took each four set of the next seed and let the top one go in their closest region, with the worst of the four with that seed getting last dibs on whichever region was left. Still, this would be pretty close. The number to the left of each team is their seed - while the number to their right after the conference is their Net rating.

The Big East gets only four invites going exactly by the current Net Rating, but with great hope in light of recent big wins for 69th ranked Providence (won at 74th ranked Texas who most consider higher), 78th ranked Seton Hall (beat 22nd ranked Kentucky) and 53rd ranked Creighton (ranked 39th at www.kenpom.com and beat Ken Pom's 37th ranked team Clemson on a neutral court). I should say Nate Silver trashed the new Net System, but overall I do believe it is a big improvement over RPI because you get credit for margin of victory up to 10 points (so the K-State and Buffalo wins shot MU way up to 13th) which also gives credit for keeping a tough opponent close.






No comments: