Minnesota’s Christmas night win over Iowa was a good one. The Gophers played a phenomenally efficient game offensively, keeping themselves to just eight turnovers over 77 possessions. Marcus Carr was his heroic self. Brandon Johnson stepped up in a big way.
But for as exciting as the win was, it wasn’t all that surprising. Minnesota was playing at home. Iowa’s defense has long been called suspect. This was the sort of thing that happens with some routineness in conference play. The Gophers got a big home win. A résumé-changing home win. A home win that, given as many chances as they’ll have this year, was somewhat expected.
Then last night happened.
Michigan State, to be clear, is not Iowa. The Spartans, as you can see in the “Moving Out” section below, have found at least a temporary home for themselves in our NIT Bracketology, nestled among the likes of Western Kentucky, Drake, and TCU. But the manner in which the Gophers beat Tom Izzo’s team: holding Sparty to 56 points in a rather fast-paced game, posting 81 despite missing 19 threes, grabbing a 36-16 lead in the first half…this may not pop on a team sheet like the Iowa win does, but it signifies a much better team than we expected to find in Dinkytown. The Gophers may not be for real. They’ll likely be 2-2 in conference following Thursday’s trip to Madison. But for at least the time being, there’s no reason to consider them a part of the bubble.
Moving Up: Minnesota
Last week, Minnesota was one of our bracketology’s last four teams in. This week, they’re a projected 4-seed. Again, we’ll see if it holds, but it was a good week up there.
Moving Down: Indiana
Indiana’s loss to Northwestern stung, and they failed to right the ship against Illinois. Our model has 27 teams landing with median seeds between 17th overall (the first 5-seed) and 36th overall (the last 9-seed), so it only takes a little to drop as far as Indiana did (from 5 to 9, in case we left that unclear), but more concerning is the fact the Hoosiers are only expected to finish the regular season one game over .500. For as good as IU’s looked at times, they’re nowhere near safe.
Moving In: Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina State, Hofstra (Auto-Bid), UC-Irvine (Auto-Bid), Murray State (Auto-Bid)
Maryland’s triumph in Madison made enough of a difference, as did NC State holding off UNC. Mississippi played just one game, and beating UT-Martin by 47 isn’t all that much to be proud of, but it combined with results elsewhere to bring Kermit Davis across the line as his guys go to Tuscaloosa tonight to begin SEC play.
In automatic bid land, Hofstra’s upset over Richmond in Richmond pushed the Dutchmen ahead of Drexel in our projections (credit to KenPom for the numbers we use to simulate individual games), while UC-Irvine opened Big West play by sweeping UC-Santa Barbara at home, and Murray State and Belmont continued to oscillate despite neither playing a game (The long and short of what happened here is that the two are so close that our model can fall on either side depending on a number of surrounding factors).
Moving Out: Michigan State, Richmond, Saint Mary’s, Belmont (Auto-Bid), UC-Santa Barbara (Auto-Bid), Drexel (Auto-Bid)
The Hofstra loss helped correct the narrative on Richmond. Our model’s been low on them from the start, but it was interesting to see other bracketologies on Bracket Matrix join us in removing the Spiders from the field. They just haven’t done as much as one would think.
Saint Mary’s also dropped out after a brief stint in our projected bracket. The Gaels have averaged just 51 points over their last two games (against Colorado State and San Diego State). They’ve yielded 33 and 74. Some offensive concerns here can get overblown because of the deliberate pace, but there certainly seem to be issues scoring the ball on either end when the Gaels are involved. It’ll be interesting to see if they, BYU, or San Francisco can emerge with a second at-large bid for the WCC. At the moment, none are expected to individually, but all are close enough that it seems semi-likely at least one will pull it off.
And finally, Michigan State, as mentioned. The Spartans are expected to land as an NIT 2-seed at the moment, but the uncertainty margin’s wide, and it’s worth noting that we’d expect their overall record to wind up at exactly .500 if median expectations were met over the rest of the regular season. They could be back around the 8-line in no time. They could go the way of Kentucky very soon.
