Arkansas is riding high. The Hogs are up to a 3-seed in our latest bracketology, and that’s from a model that expects them to lose one more regular season game and fall short in the SEC Tournament Championship, things that, while statistically not all that cautious, do appear rather conservative assumptions considering Arkansas closes with LSU, South Carolina, and Texas A&M, and only one of those—South Carolina—comes on the road.
How high can the Hogs rise? Should they win out, one would imagine a 2-seed would be comfortably within reach—a startling surge from the same Eric Musselman who had so much success program-rebuilding at Nevada. Above them, though, is Alabama, and while Alabama’s trajectory is on the descent after three losses in their last seven games, the Tide are still a comfortably projected 2-seed, and imagine saying that after they lost to Stanford so badly in “Maui,” or to Clemson so impotently in Atlanta, or to Western Kentucky in such a shitshow in Tuscaloosa.
Together, the West Division foes have upended the power structure in the SEC, at least for a season. Kentucky, who even in their latest NIT year finished tied for second in the league, has been evicted. Florida, LSU, and Tennessee, all recent contenders, are being held at bay. The Southeastern Conference is led by two non-basketball schools coached by two of the most fun up-and-coming coaches in the game, neither of whom—at least for now—appears to be an NCAA compliance liability.
There are longevity questions to be asked (could Oats or Musselman get poached?), and it’s fair to say Kentucky will be back, but there’s plenty of reason to believe that for the next few years, if not longer, the SEC is going to have two additional contenders, because Oats is more than the Moreyball prophet chirping at Coach K from the wilderness, and Musselman is more than the keenly self-aware guy whose hormones the fates swapped out for caffeine and cocaine.
Each is a great coach.
And at least temporarily, they’re at the top of ladder in college basketball’s other southern power conference.
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Our model’s biggest movements this morning. No up/down, because no one moved more than one seed line while also staying in the field:
Moving In: Xavier
Back already. The Musketeers have an opportunity today when Creighton visits Cincinnati. They’re in the bid-thief seat, of which there is only one right now (though if UC-Santa Barbara wins again tonight their at-large candidacy may necessitate a second). How did they get back across the line? Well…
Moving Out: Richmond
We said yesterday that the Spiders were in good shape, expected to split their final two regular season games, lose in the A-10 semifinals, and narrowly make the field. They accomplished the first step in that quest, losing at Saint Louis, but they dropped out.
What gives, you ask?
That scenario described above was their previous median scenario, and it’s still attainable, and they’ll probably bounce back to it if they beat Saint Joe’s on Monday, which is likely. But there’s enough of a possibility of a loss to Saint Joe’s that the probability they both win that and get through their A-10 quarterfinal matchup, which well may be against Saint Louis (against whom they’d be underdogs again), is now below fifty percent. Beat Saint Joe’s, avoid a bad bracketing break, and the Spiders will either be back or directly on the bubble. But for now, they’re in NIT-land.
Conference Tournaments, Model Finalization Updates
We got the MEAC to almost-finalized yesterday (our designation for a conference, in our model, where we’ve wiped out all unrescheduled postponed games and locked in the tournament format, but something about the tournament—home-court advantage, seeding tiebreakers, reseeding—hasn’t been finished), meaning we’re halfway through, with the MAAC, ACC, Big West, Big 12, MWC, SWAC, Big East, Big Sky, C-USA, Southland, Pac-12, SEC, Big Ten, MAC, WAC, and AAC the remaining half in order of conference tournament start date.
We also finalized the formats in the A-East and Big South, so we have probabilities for those now, and they’re as follows:
America East
Vermont: 51.3%
UMBC: 41.2%
Hartford: 2.9%
New Hampshire: 1.6%
Stony Brook: 1.1%
UMass-Lowell: 0.9%
Albany: 0.9%
NJIT: 0.2%
Binghamton: 0.1%
UMBC has home court if they can keep it, and both UMBC and Vermont are already through to the semifinals, so the next two days—the first two rounds—are only really consequential for those involved.
Vermont’s underwhelmed this year relative to expectations, but even with that, they’re the narrow favorite. They may have split with UMBC in the regular season, and they may have failed to capture the league’s regular season crown, but they’re still a better team, even if they’re not as better as was expected.
Big South
Winthrop: 67.2%
Radford: 11.5%
Gardner-Webb: 7.4%
UNC-Asheville: 6.2%
Campbell: 5.2%
Longwood: 1.9%
High Point: 0.4%
Hampton: 0.1%
USC Upstate: 0.0%
Presbyterian: 0.0%
USC Upstate and Presbyterian did win in a combined seven of the 10,000 overnight simulations, so we’re saying there’s a chance. But the real picture here is that it’s Winthrop’s affair to lose. The Eagles have been the class of the conference all year. They’ve lost only once, and it was by just two points. The rest of the league is competitive with itself, but not with Winthrop. They’re a comfortable favorite, comparable to a team laying a touchdown in college football.
Of those 16 un-almost-finalized leagues, we’re hoping to get the lion’s share almost-finalized today and tomorrow, but we won’t make any promises on that for fear we won’t keep them. Busy time of year. Fun time of year. Have fun out there today.
