- Please rank the top-four teams in each of the potential multi-bid conferences.
This is actually a fairly interesting question to look at from time to time. For one, in a lots-of-bids conference, all of these teams affect each other's seed. In a couple-of-bids conference, all of these teams have the chance to wreck someone else's season or compete in a conference tourney.
ACC: #1 is obvious, for me, and so is #2, because although Pitt has had a very weak schedule, it still is 16-1 with a couple of ACC road wins. That leaves Florida State, Virginia, Clemson, and Duke for the last two. I'm striking Clemson for having only one good win (Duke) and a bad loss (at Auburn). I'll put FSU #3, because only a home loss to Virginia is hard to defend. For the last spot, Virginia has had a slightly tougher schedule and has road wins, while Duke beat Virginia head-to-head. I'm still giving the 4th spot to UVA, though, since they only lost to Duke by 4 and since it was in Cameron. 1) Syracuse; 2) Pittsburgh; 3) Florida State; 4) Virginia.
American: It would be easy to put Louisville here since it seems like it should be the best team. But it hasn't earned it. The team that has, very clearly, is Cincinnati, with a number of good wins and no bad losses. Circle January 30 on the calendar, as the Bearcats should be 19-2/8-0 when it visits Louisville. From Louisville, we're still waiting for a good win, with nothing really to speak about other than home wins over Southern Miss and SMU. 1) Cincinnati; 2) Louisville; 3) UConn; 4) Memphis. I rearranged UConn, Memphis, and SMU several times before settling on this. UConn, although losing at SMU, has the best wins (Florida, Harvard, at Memphis), two OK losses, and one bad loss (at Houston). SMU has no great wins (best: home over UConn) and four excusable losses. Memphis has four excusable losses too, but it also has two very good wins (OK State in Florida, at Louisville. If SMU wins a couple of games that it probably shouldn't, it will move up.
Atlantic-10: 1) Massachusetts; 2) Saint Louis; 3) George Washington; 4) Dayton. I honestly feel like SLU is better than UMass, but UMass has been either great or lucky in getting this far with one loss. My guess is lucky, but we have plenty of season left for them to prove me wrong, so I'll leave them at #1. As for the other teams, GW has the best wins (Creighton in Anaheim, VCU, Maryland, at Manhattan). Dayton has worse losses than VCU, but it also has better wins to balance those out. I think I just believe more in Dayton than I do in VCU. Something has seemed off with the Rams all season. We'll see what happens when VCU heads to Dayton on Wednsday.
Big 12: I'm going Kansas #1, because despite having more losses (on a harder schedule) than Oklahoma State, I like the evolution the Jayhawks are going through. We've seen Kansas do better as it moves to a bit less reliance on Andrew Wiggins and more on Joel Embiid. A set rotation and reliance on more weapons can only help KU. 1) Kansas; 2) Oklahoma State; 3) Iowa State; 4) Kansas State. Fourth was a competition between KSU, Oklahoma, and Baylor, but KSU has been playing better than the other two the last two months.
Big East: Creighton or Villanova? That's the big question in the Big East. For now I'm taking Villanova. They've proven more against better teams. My gut feeling is that, by the end of the year, Creighton will be better, but I am absurdly excited to see Creighton at Villanova on Monday. 1) Villanova; 2) Creighton; 3) Xavier; 4) Georgetown (though I think Marquette could give Georgetown a run for fourth).
Big Ten: Perhaps the hardest to rank because the top four are all so good. But I'm going to make a shocking omission from the top four: 1) Michigan State; 2) Wisconsin; 3) Iowa; 4) Michigan. Yes, that's right, I'm taking Ohio State out of the top 4. The fact is that Michigan has started the Big Ten season 4-0 and OSU has started 2-3. Sure, Michigan has had the easier schedule, but they also won at Minnesota, where OSU lost. The Buckeyes had a much easier non-conference schedule, and its play the last week and a half shows that going undefeated before it hit the Big Ten was maybe not a very impressive feat.
Pac-12: This is the most obvious #1 in the question. But the rest is extremely muddy. Colorado looked like it could compete for #2 until it lost Dinwiddie. Cal struggled early with a loss at UCSB and with two losses in Maui, but it has two big road wins (Stanford, Oregon). UCLA's only decent win other than at a Dinwiddie-less Colorado is a home win over Arizona State. Washington has 3 decent Pac-12 wins, but it went 8-5 against a terrible non-conference schedule. Stanford has a couple of good wins (at UConn, at Oregon), but it has some bad/medium-bad losses (BYU, at Oregon State). ASU lost its last two games by an average of 19 points, and its best win is a home game against Marquette. Utah has a terrible schedule and some bad losses. And Oregon was looking pretty good until it lost its last 3 games, including two at home to Stanford and Cal. Sigh. The middle of the Pac-12 will be a major dogfight. 1) Arizona; 2) California; 3) UCLA; 4) Oregon.
SEC: Florida is a clear #1, and for all its weird woes, Kentucky is a clear #2. Tennessee could have competed for #2, but not with losses to UTEP and TAMU. A fourth team is hard to find here. I'm gonna go with 1) Florida; 2) Kentucky; 3) Tennessee; 4) Arkansas. The Razorbacks have a few good wins, including Tuesday night's win over Kentucky, and a near win over Florida. It's only bad loss was at TAMU. Every other team has bad losses and/or no good wins. Arkansas can keep this spot without any other wins over Florida, Kentucky, or Tennessee. If Arkansas can just beat up the rest of the relatively weak SEC, Arkansas will sit pretty on Selection Sunday.
I was going to rank the Mountain West, after all, I have been projecting two teams, but the conference is just so weak. If not for San Diego State, the MWC might as well be the MAAC. And I'm still not buying in totally to BYU and Saint Mary's getting in from the WCC (only Gonzaga right now), but BYU at least is on the right track the last two weeks. No one else has even a remote chance at two at-large teams.
- Looking ahead, who has the best chance to steal a bid by winning a conference tournament?
The magic combination that I'm looking for is a team near the top of its conference standings playing games on a home floor that's not too close to the top team. It also has to be a conference where we are expecting that the automatic bid goes to an at-large bid. This means the qualifying conferences are the ones listed in question #1: A-10, ACC, American, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, MWC, Pac-12, SEC, WCC, with MVC (Wichita State) and C-USA (Louisiana Tech). (The Ivy would qualify too if it had a conference tourney.)
Your best bet? Conference USA. Assuming Louisiana Tech can hold on to an at-large bid, C-USA meets all the requirements. The tournament is being held at UTEP this year, who happens to be the third-best team in the conference (behind LA Tech and Southern Miss).
Next best? I'd look at the MWC, which is held in Vegas. Vegas is, of course, the home of UNLV, who just came off of an upset of New Mexico, a top-3 MWC team. This is much less likely than a C-USA berth-steal because San Diego State is so much better than LA Tech, but you never know.
Elsewhere, the MVC is held in St. Louis, but Southern Illinois, closest to STL, is not good. The WCC and Pac-12 hold their tournaments in Vegas, not home to a team in either conference. The SEC isn't a bad bet, because a bad Georgia team has won the conference tournament and stolen a bid before. The Big Ten tourney is in Indianapolis this year, but there is no clue that IU can knock off all those great teams. The Big East tourney is again at MSG, but that hasn't given St. John's a particular advantage before. The American is in Memphis, whose team should already have an at-large bid by the tournament. And the A-10 and ACC are in Brooklyn and Greensboro, respectively, giving no team any particular advantage.
Saturday's basketball schedule is extremely full, with a number of extremely interesting games for you bracket digesters. We start early with Tennessee at Kentucky, a couple of the teams vying for second in the SEC. Then there is Oklahoma at Baylor, but that is well outdone by Oklahoma State at Kansas. We should have a good picture of who is in control of first in the Big 12 and who is in control of fourth. Butler, nearly completely out of the tournament, hosts Marquette in a must-win game, perhaps for both teams. And Pittsburgh heads to Syracuse, which means only one team will be unbeaten in ACC play by the end of Saturday. All of that and much more below.
#13 Toledo at Akron
#10 Tennessee at #6 Kentucky
#11 SMU at UCF
#6 Florida State at #3 Virginia
Boston College at (LFI) #12 North Carolina
#14 Delaware at Northeastern
Seton Hall at #10 Georgetown
West Virginia at #10 Kansas State
#14 Manhattan at Fairfield
#11 Arkansas at Georgia
#8 Oklahoma at #4 Baylor
LeMoyne-Owen at #5 Memphis
USC at #5 Colorado
NC State at #8 Duke
#16 Robert Morris at Mount St. Mary's
(LFI) #12 Marquette at Butler
Alabama at #12 Missouri
#15 Vermont at UMBC
Fordham at #7 Saint Louis
AR Little Rock at #16 Georgia State
Western Illinois at #14 North Dakota State
(FFO) Dayton at Richmond
#7 Pittsburgh at #1 Syracuse
Indiana State at #2 Wichita State
DePaul at #1 Villanova
#3 Florida at Auburn
#3 Iowa State at (NFO) Texas
#5 Oklahoma State at #4 Kansas
#9 UCLA at (NFO) Utah
Wake Forest at (FFO) Clemson
Duquesne at #10 VCU
Washington State at #7 California
#8 Gonzaga at Loyola Marymount
Delaware State at #16 North Carolina Central
#3 Cincinnati at South Florida
#14 Mercer at Lipscomb
UNC Asheville at #16 Charleston Southern
#8 Michigan at #1 Wisconsin
UNLV at #2 San Diego State
#4 Massachusetts at #16 Elon
#9 New Mexico at Fresno State
#11 George Washington at Saint Bonaventure
#2 Michigan State at (FFO) Illinois
#5 Creighton at Providence
#13 New Mexico State at UMKC
#13 Belmont at Tennessee State
#16 Southern at AR-Pine Bluff
#9 Louisville at (LFI) #12 Connecticut
#15 Northern Colorado at Montana
(NFO) BYU at Santa Clara
#13 UC Santa Barbara at CS Northridge
Washington at (LFI) #12 Stanford
No comments:
Post a Comment