NIT Bracketology: February 19th, 2024

Our NIT Bracketology is updated through this weekend’s games. As always, it’s a prediction of where things will end up, not a reflection of where the “scoreboard” currently stands. Clarifications, thoughts, and how things look around the bubble:

First Four In, Last Four Out, Etc.

On the low side:

• Last Four In (from the cut line going upwards): St. Bonaventure, Richmond, North Texas, Bradley
• First Four Out (from the cut line going downwards): Miami (FL), Rutgers, Appalachian State, Louisiana Tech
• Next Eight (continuing downwards): Syracuse, Florida State, Yale, Georgia, Memphis, Boston College, George Mason, UNLV
• Five Maybes (wildcards, more on these in a minute): South Florida, Indiana, Cornell, Loyola, UAB
• Moving In: VCU, Richmond, St. Bonaventure
• Moving Out: Miami, Rutgers, Memphis

On the high side:

• Last Four In (from the cut line going downwards): Boise State, Seton Hall, Providence, Virginia
• First Four Out (from the cut line going upwards): Utah State, Colorado, Nevada, Nebraska
• Moving In: Butler, Boise State
• Moving Out: Nebraska, Colorado

North Texas, and the Five Maybes

The only team on our bottom bubble getting a whole lot of attention is North Texas. We understand the thought. The Mean Green are likeliest to finish just 16–14 against Division I competition. That’s not very good for a mid-major.

The last two years, the NIT committee’s selections and seedings have shown a strong correlation with NET and kenpom. Three years ago, the NIT had a 16-team field with an unknown number of Covid-related opt-outs. Four years ago, there was no NIT. Five years ago, the relevant criteria was very different, but with 2022 and 2023’s relevant criteria pretty consistent to each other and no relevant data from 2020 and 2021, our model is built heavily off of 2022 and 2023. North Texas has solid rankings in kenpom and NET. We expect that to matter.

If it doesn’t matter—if the committee pivots to caring more about résumé—our bracketology is going to be very inaccurate. So, we listed those Five Maybes above. Those five are teams with strong KPI and SOR rankings but weak NET and kenpom numbers. If the committee swings to the other end of the spectrum, we won’t be surprised to see those five make it, even if they’re all below UNLV (and a few other schools) on our current projected final seed list.

Virginia, Colorado

Our two biggest differences from Bracket Matrix (I would guess—I haven’t seen today’s Bracket Matrix update, if it’s up) are that we have Virginia in the NIT and Colorado out of it.

The biggest thing happening here is something we mentioned above: Our bracketology is predictive. Colorado is a good team with bad results. Virginia is a mediocre team with good results. We expect some regression from each down the stretch, in opposite directions. With that said, a couple notes on each résumé:

• Colorado’s only 1–5 in Q1 games right now, but they have a good chance of picking up a second Q1 win either at Oregon or in the Pac-12 Tournament. Combining those probabilities, it’s likelier than not that the Buffs get one more Q1 win. Will that be enough? I’m not sure. But 2–6 seems to be significantly better than 1–5 in the eyes of the committee.
• Our model doesn’t consider injuries, but Cody Williams did miss three of Colorado’s five losses—the road defeats to Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah. Again, this isn’t affecting our projection, but it makes us more bullish on our model re: the Buffs.
• Virginia is an underdog tonight at Virginia Tech. Virginia should be an underdog at home this weekend against UNC. Depending how those two games go, Virginia might be an underdog next week at Boston College. Boston College! Virginia escaped on Saturday, but they’ve been playing badly even as they’ve been getting better results.
• Virginia’s best wins on the season came on the road at Clemson and on a neutral court against Florida. They’re 4–2 against likely NCAAT teams, but they’ve got four losses to teams below the bubble, and more might be on the way. We don’t doubt Virginia can make the NCAA Tournament—we have them almost exactly on top of the bubble. We’re just pointing out that it’s very possible they could miss the tournament.

One thing we can’t mention enough: We have a bad track record on the NCAAT/NIT bubble. We expect our model to miss two to four teams on Selection Sunday, which is quite a lot by industry standards. We’re working on this, and we’re going to have an alternate bracketology down the stretch that’s not purely our model’s outputs, but please know that we are more confident in our model’s assessment of the NIT/CBI bubble than we are of its assessment of the NCAAT/NIT bubble.

The New Format

We don’t know yet which teams who would have received NIT Automatic Bids, under the old system, won’t receive them this year. So, we can’t tell you which bids are being taken from whom. What we can tell you, though, is all this stuff:

• The bottom cut line would probably be roughly six to eight spots higher right now under the old system, taking the following teams out of our bracketology: LSU, St. Bonaventure, Richmond, North Texas, Bradley, VCU, Kansas State, and UCF.
• The new automatic bid system is, in our current projection, taking first round home games away from Indiana State, Butler, Princeton, and Ohio State and giving them to Mississippi, UCF, Kansas State, and LSU.
• In an oddity, we have Seton Hall and Providence projected to take higher seeds than the Big East’s automatic bid recipients, St. John’s and Xavier. The NCAA Tournament selection committee sets the NIT’s 1-seeds, while NET awards the automatic bids. Right now, we’re projecting Seton Hall and Providence to be among those NCAAT First Four Out, but we’re projecting St. John’s and Xavier to finish with better NET rankings. This is weird, and mostly shows 1) how far the NCAAT criteria differs from NET and 2) how many teams the Big East has right around each other and right around the bubble.

The Missouri Valley Situation, and How We Treat Other Conference Tournament Favorites

The most confusing thing about our bracketology right now is that it’s showing all three MVC Tournament favorites in the NIT field. Surely, one will win it, right?

Yes. Our NCAA Tournament Bracketology shows Drake taking the bid. But:

• Drake is more likely to make the NIT than the NCAA Tournament.
• Indiana State is more likely to make the NIT than the NCAA Tournament.
• Bradley is more likely to make the NIT than the NCAA Tournament.

Our priorities with NIT Bracketology are to 1) accurately reflect where the cut lines are going to land and 2) show NIT-likely teams in the projected NIT field. Putting all three of Drake, Indiana State, and Bradley in this bracket accomplishes priority #2.

For priority #1—accurately reflecting where the cut lines are going to land—we look at every conference tournament favorite our model projects to land in NIT at-large territory and their probability of winning said conference tournament. Here’s today’s list:

Taking these percentages together, the likeliest number of these teams to lose in their respective conference tournaments is four. So, we put the four likeliest to lose—Drake, SMU, Princeton, and James Madison—in our bracket. This helps keep the bottom cut line in its likeliest position.

The Bid Thief Seat

As for the top cut line? We currently project two traditional bid thieves—non-tournament teams who win their conference tournament and take an at-large spot away from the collective bubble. At the moment, SMU is taking one of these spots—we have them narrow AAC Tournament favorites, with FAU taking an at-large NCAAT bid—but that leaves one more NCAAT Bid Thief. So, Boise State shows up in both our bracketologies. They’re in the Bid Thief Seat.