Stu wrote about this in today’s NIT Notes, but to recap the Michigan State situation: They’re still in our NIT Bracketology today, and not in our updated NCAAT Bracketology. That might change overnight, since our model sometimes has a one-day lag as its proxies adjust to the real reactions of NET, SOR, and KPI. As it stands, Drake’s the expected last team in the field, the 49th team in the lineup, with a median seed of 48 and a mean seed of 47.89. Next up is Michigan State, with a median seed of 51 and a mean seed of 50.24 (the wider mean/median gap reflects the possibility MSU will go on a run this week in the Big Ten Tournament and render discussion of their bubbleship irrelevant).
That three-seed-line gap in the median seedings implies that even if our proxies were off last night by a little bit, Drake and Michigan State should stay on their current sides. Which just goes to say: Drake needs a lot of specific teams to lose. Michigan State needs to win.
Our movement from this morning’s update, in which nobody moved more than one seed line, which is why we aren’t listing movers up/down:
Moving In: Drexel (auto-bid), Norfolk State (auto-bid)
Drexel is the new CAA favorite after James Madison lost a weird one to Elon. I don’t know what role the officiating played in the upset, but it does sound like the Colonial Athletic Association has a problem on its hands there.
Norfolk State slides in ahead of NC A&T. Think what happened here was that because of yesterday’s higher accuracy/lower precision running of the model (we only ran one thousand simulations instead of ten thousand, but we didn’t have to use our proxies for KPI/NET/SOR), the lower precision resulted in NC A&T winning more simulations than Norfolk State. We don’t expect this to flip back, but the long and short of it is that the two are very close.
Moving Out: James Madison (auto-bid), North Carolina A&T (auto-bid)
One side effect of JMU falling out and Drexel climbing in is that it bumped Prairie View A&M one spot closer to not having to play in the First Four, and it bumped Grand Canyon out of First Four position. I have a vague recollection from a few years ago of some stories about how First Four teams don’t get the same revenue as other tournament teams, and while I’m not sure if that’s true or false (or somewhere in between), it’s pretty nice either way for those schools that climbed.
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We didn’t publish conference tournament probabilities the last few days. We’re resuming today, but do keep in mind: These don’t incorporate the probability of coronavirus-related cancelations. So take them with the appropriate uncertainty. The leagues in action today:
Colonial Athletic Association
Drexel: 29.5%
Northeastern: 28.4%
Hofstra: 28.0%
Elon: 14.1%
Tight one, but the Drexel/Northeastern winner will evidently be the favorite in the championship.
Horizon League
Cleveland State: 38.2%
Northern Kentucky: 25.6%
Oakland: 18.6%
Milwaukee: 17.6%
Feels like forever ago that the Horizon League tipped off.
Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference
Siena: 24.9%
Monmouth: 22.1%
St. Peter’s: 16.3%
Iona: 9.7%
Niagara: 9.4%
Marist: 6.8%
Canisius: 6.6%
Quinnipiac: 1.6%
Manhattan: 1.1%
Rider: 0.7%
Fairfield: 0.7%
Pretty open field, with a lot of intrigue surrounding Iona for a variety of reasons (Pitino, returning from Covid break, poor seeding because of so many missed games).
Southern Conference
UNC-Greensboro: 59.2%
Mercer: 40.8%
Can Wes Miller get his second tournament appearance at UNCG?
Summit League
South Dakota State: 40.0%
North Dakota State: 24.7%
Oral Roberts: 17.8%
South Dakota: 17.5%
South Dakota nearly won the regular season title here.
Sun Belt Conference
Georgia State: 67.5%
Appalachian State: 32.5%
It took a roundabout path, but the Sun Belt is Georgia State’s for the taking. (But will they take it?)
West Coast Conference
Gonzaga: 81.1%
BYU: 16.6%
Saint Mary’s: 1.7%
Pepperdine: 0.7%
Man. Gonzaga is so good.
