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With just three games left in the regular season, it would seem that Marquette's future is pretty well carved in stone. But looking at resumes over the past 24 hours, this year's bracket separates itself in some clear divides. In any other year, all of the top six teams would be 1-seeds. Michigan State has set themselves apart as a clear 2-seed, Wisconsin is a clear 3-seed (even though they land as a 2), but after that there were 11 teams that could be considered anywhere from the 3-5 lines, starting with #9 St. John's and going all the way to #19 St. Mary's.
Today, Marquette sits at #22 overall, ranked #23 in WAB and a predictive average of 24.7, landing as the second 6-seed on the S-Curve. They travel to Georgetown on March 1, to UConn on March 4, and host St. John's to close the season on March 8. Thanks to fellow Cracked Sidewalks contributor Rob Lowe, we ran 10,000 simulations of Marquette's last three games to determine the odds of every outcome, then extrapolated those into seed ranges and my best guess on where Marquette would land. First, here are the results:
Now let's talk through why I am guessing the seeds where they are:
0-3 (21-10): If Marquette were to lose out, I think they end up right on the cutoff between the 7/8 seeds, but currently there's a bit of a gap between those lines. With 5 Q1 wins banked and no bad losses possible, they likely stay on the high side of that cutoff, though if they also lose on Thursday in the Big East Tournament, I expect I'd have them as an 8-Seed come Selection Sunday. Using the Torvik Teamcast, this would give Marquette an expected WAB of 34 and predictive rank of 30, which lines up with an 8-seed, but their quality wins with no bad losses would likely push them ahead of other teams on that cutoff.
1-2 (22-9): The most likely win here would be Georgetown, which would add a Q2 win and two Q1 losses. Even if they lost at Georgetown and beat UConn or St. John's, the end result would likely be very similar in landing on the 6-line and staying about where we have them today. This would give them a WAB of 27 and predictive rank of 28, but again the quality wins and no bad losses would nudge Marquette up a little bit. This is really showing where the work done in November is paying off as wins over Maryland, Purdue, and Wisconsin have aged very well.
2-1 (23-8): This is the most likely scenario of the simulations and would likely add one win in both Q1 and Q2 with a Q1 loss. In today's bracket we considered Marquette for the last 5-seed but sheer volume of Q1 wins along with some great Q1A scalps gave the edge to Oregon. Metrically, this would give Marquette an expected WAB of 19 and predictive rank of 24.7. Getting a win at UConn or over St. John's would be enough of a dial mover to push them up a seed line.
3-0 (24-7): Winning all three is where you see the resume metrics really perk up. Marquette would have an expected WAB of 11 and predictive average of 24.0. While the predictives wouldn't necessarily take a jump, that's because the UConn and St. John's games are both projected to be within 2 points, so simply winning one more possession than projected could tilt the resume significantly while only marginally changing the predictive results.
Here are the extrapolated grids:
Historically, Championship Week hasn't meant much unless you either flame out very early or cut nets. I think Marquette's absolute floor at this point is an 8-seed, which means under most any circumstance they will be wearing home whites in the first round. I think their ceiling if they win out and win the Big East Tournament would be a 3-seed, but that will depend on what happens around them and how convincingly they win their games as the predictive metrics right now are not favorable to that seed line.
Here's the full S-Curve and bracket as of today:
Multibid Leagues
SEC: 12
Big 10: 11
Big 12: 7
Big East: 4
Mountain West: 4
ACC: 3
Big West: 2
WCC: 2
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