Joe’s Notes: UConn Faces a Terrible NCAA Tournament Path

This is not a particularly helpful graph.

It does, however, get us this table.

And this table gets us this graph.

And this graph—though our math is very imprecise here and not all that professional, as this is a blogging exercise and not anything too mathematically serious—is interesting.

What we’re looking at here is NCAA Tournament path, and we’re doing it in an inexact way. We took our model’s NCAA Tournament probabilities, took the kenpom ratings for every team, and flipped things around to get ourselves an “expected championship probability” that works in a linear way. It’s imperfect—our trend line does not pass through (10.0%, 10.0%) and it shows Houston as advantaged while the table shows Houston as disadvantaged—but if we combine the trendline and the table, we can see who has a good NCAA Tournament path and who has a bad one.

Good Path: Purdue, Tennessee, Arizona, Iowa State

It’s interesting to see Purdue and Tennessee both in this position. It’s interesting that Creighton also pops as positively advantaged on the table, though again, our method has a lean towards showing teams advantaged rather than disadvantaged, so that might be meaningless. Regardless: Purdue and Tennessee. What’s going on in the Midwest Region?

A lot of this is South Carolina and Kansas. Kansas is the worst 4-seed on paper, worse than all four 5-seeds. Some of this is probably still a reaction from kenpom to the Jayhawks losing so badly to Cincinnati without Hunter Dickinson and Kevin McCullar, but will those guys be back? Will they be back at full strength? South Carolina is the worst 6-seed on paper, worse than every other single-digit seed. Add in a strong 12-seed (McNeese) causing problems for Gonzaga and the worst 15-seed in the form of Saint Peter’s, and you’ve got a good region for the 1 and the 2. The problem for bracket-picking, of course, is that Purdue and Tennessee are both shown as advantaged. They have good paths, but that just leads to them being likelier than is natural to play one another.

Arizona’s good path is noteworthy, but again not all that unexpected. North Carolina is far and away the worst 1-seed on paper, and Baylor is seeded slightly better than kenpom would have them. Add in another weak 6-seed, Clemson, and the Wildcats are in a good spot. It probably also doesn’t hurt that they’re playing the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight in Los Angeles, should they get there, although that’s not something our model considers. This is one that might mean something.

Most shockingly…Iowa State?

The deal with Iowa State is mostly that their 7/10 matchup, Drake vs. Washington State, features the worst 7-seed and the worst 10-seed, again on paper. There might be some advantage, though, to UConn likely having to play Auburn and Illinois likely having to play BYU. The paths being tougher for UConn and Auburn, as we’ll outline in a moment, might be translating to a great situation for ISU, even if they got placed in the toughest region as measured by the sum of its parts. Again, the advantage is probably mostly coming from having a very good path to the Sweet Sixteen. Iowa State is much likelier than UNC to get out of the first weekend, and not just because kenpom tells us they’re the better team between those two. But the tough region might not exactly work the way we expect it to.

Bad Path: UConn, Auburn

I wonder a little if the reason our table shows nearly everyone as advantaged is that UConn and Auburn have such terrible respective paths, aimed at facing each other in the Sweet Sixteen. We don’t think the committee did anything wrong with this, to be clear. We wish the bracket was both selected and seeded based on metrics like WAB. But Auburn is better than their seed, which meant someone was going to get a terrible draw in addition to them. Pick UConn all you want, but this—and this is furthered by Iowa State being the best 2-seed and possessing a good path themselves—is a risky spot in the bracket for them to occupy.

I’m planning to have my bracket up on Thursday morning, if you’re interested. Too much NIT right now to get it done.

A Coup??

Jeff Passan dropped a big story last night, sharing that the MLB Players Association tried yesterday to oust Bruce Meyer, their deputy executive director. Our favorite line from the report:

Multiple high-powered agents backed (Harry) Marino’s candidacy, sources said, with the perception that Meyer, 62, was ideologically aligned with agent Scott Boras.

Now.

If agents are backing Marino simply to stick it to their competition, Boras, that’s not a good thing to do. But the fact this resonated with players is interesting, and might point to some dissatisfaction with the combative, all-or-nothing approach Boras and Meyer have both employed. In a refrain familiar to those who’ve been following the NIT opt-out situation, it seems some players might just want to play ball.

We don’t want to suggest that players should accept bad terms in the CBA in order to play, or anything of that sort. We don’t want to suggest that they should let themselves get shortchanged. But utility is different from money. Money is a contributor to utility, but the equation is broader.

Etc.

I don’t even know if the Bulls play tonight. Four other things:

• I think Stu will have more on Clemson suing the ACC, but we would like to remind everyone that unless we missed something coming out specifically today, we haven’t seen much reporting at all in the last few years indicating the Big Ten or SEC wants Clemson right now. That isn’t to say Clemson can’t sue and try to get themselves the option of joining another league (the Big 12 might even look appealing to them), but Clemson is in a bad geographic location for the Big Ten’s priorities, it’s not a big enough brand to move either league’s needle, and the SEC already has a presence in its area. North Carolina remains the best prize in the ACC by leaps and bounds. We’re not sure Miami isn’t better than FSU and Clemson as well. Virginia might even be up there, if they can just get competitive in football. Geography and the size of the brand and the respect the institution commands all do matter. Clemson needs someone to want them. Or, they need to be willing to swallow some pride and take a Washington/Oregon-esque pay cut. Maybe we’re missing something, but nothing is indicating to us that Clemson is a hot realignment commodity.
• The Major League Baseball season starts tonight! The Dodgers/Padres games should be great, the atmosphere should be cool, and the morning hour is perfect for them as the East Coast wakes up. People always say they want lead-ins to the March Madness games. Morning baseball on the TV is a delight. No big MLB previews now, though Stu will have his Joe Kelly preview up overnight. No MLB futures in our best bets until Friday at the earliest. Champ Week won this round.
• It’s going to be so easy to make too much out of Colorado State vs. Virginia. Is the Mountain West overrated? Is the Mountain West underseeded? Is Virginia bad, or do they just look it? Personally, I think inconsistency is the biggest Virginia problem. Their offensive floor is too low. With the early game, I like Howard over Wagner based on Howard winning two straight MEAC Tournaments. Single-elimination basketball is different, and that’s a really small sample, but it’s something.
• So much NIT coverage. Join the bracket challenge if you haven’t and you’re reading this on time. Read Stu’s preview of tonight’s games. Check out my bracket, if you’re interested. We’ll try to have some NIT futures bets up with tonight’s plays. Thanks for being here with us. Almost 1,000 entries to an NIT Bracket Challenge is crazy. You help us have a lot of fun.