Basketball only tonight:
The Bracketologies Are Live
To be honest, I haven’t gotten a chance to sift through these in too much detail, but we did fire up a very scaled-back version of our model today, and here’s its NIT Bracketology and NCAAT Bracketology, plus a few notes on how it works.
We’re hoping to have the full-scale model back up and running soon, but in the meantime, these will be a big reference point for us. And what they’re telling us, plus what the broader bracketological market is telling us, is that we all agree two teams are very, very good. Those teams?
Baylor Goes Down
One of the two lost last night, but while this certainly gives some hope for the rest of the country, Baylor’s still really darn good. More than anything, last night’s result highlighted just how good Texas Tech is. At full strength, you could make a case that the Red Raiders are closer to Kansas in quality than they are to Texas within the Big 12 hierarchy.
Auburn Holds On
Alabama gave Auburn a run at the end, but the Tigers held on, and to all those who don’t fancy Bruce Pearl…brace yourselves. On KenPom right now, Pearl’s team isn’t an underdog again until February 26th. Jabari Smith is first on a lot of NBA Draft big boards. And with the SEC as deep up top as it is, you’re going to see this team on TV a whole darn lot.
A Good Night for the Cyclones
Disappointing as it was to lose that way, it’s hard to not be happy with Iowa State after they took Kansas to the very narrowest definition of the wire last night in Lawrence. More to come on the Cyclones probably on Friday (now that we have the model, we can do a better job checking in), but the short version is that ISU’s capable of competing with the best teams in the country, and that’s pretty darn cool to be able to write, especially after we spent the offseason trying to game out ways to just make the NIT.
