NIT Bracketology: Florida State Is Right On the Bubble

Our NIT Bracketology is updated through yesterday’s games, and there still isn’t a whole lot of movement. Today should be a bigger day.

We’re back to a situation of having 33 teams for 32 spots in everyone’s median simulation. A lot of favorites won the pigtail games yesterday, the expected number of bid thieves ticked back up to two, and our model again projects that the last team in the NCAA Tournament will be 45^th on the mythical master seed list, while holding the last team in the NIT at 83^rd. Unfortunately, there are 33 teams between those markers who aren’t conference tournament favorites. So, Florida State gets bumped out of today’s projection on a technicality. I suppose what that really goes to show is just how bubbly Florida State is.

No graphic again today. We’ll get one up tomorrow after the expected shuffle.

Last Four In, First Four Out, Etc.

On the low side:

• Last Four In (from the cut line going upwards): Duquesne, San Francisco, VCU, NC State
• First Four Out (from the cut line going downwards): Florida State, UMass, Minnesota, Boston College
• Others in the mix (>10% NIT chance, below NIT field, not in our field or in the First Four Out): Xavier, Maryland, Georgia, Penn State, George Mason

On the high side:

• Last Four In (from the cut line going downwards): St. John’s, New Mexico, Villanova, Wake Forest
• First Four Out (from the cut line going upwards): TCU, Mississippi State, Indiana State, Seton Hall
• Others in the mix (>10% NIT chance, above NIT field, not in our field or in the First Four Out): Virginia, Colorado State
• Two more (our model loves these teams’ NCAAT chances, but it’s an outlier compared to the consensus): Colorado, Texas A&M

As always, we account for bid thieves by looking at the median cut lines in our model’s simulations. Today, those remain 45^th and 83^rd, meaning if there was a master seed list covering both tournaments, the 45^th overall seed would be the last NCAAT at-large and the 83^rd seed would be the last NIT at-large.

Conference Tournament Favorites (Reverse Bid Thieves)

Given where those cut lines stand and how many teams sit between them, we don’t have any reverse bid thieves today. All conference tournament favorites who sit in NIT at-large territory are, in today’s bracketology, not in the NIT. More likely than not, this isn’t what happens, but our cut line is 83 and Florida State is the 83^rd team on our seed list, so there’s a good chance that whatever reverse bid thieves do happen are canceled out by current projected NIT at-larges playing their way into the NCAAT as automatic bids. For example: Princeton could lose in the Ivy League Tournament, but Richmond could win the A-10 Tournament.

The three conference tournament favorites in NIT at-large bid territory if they lose:

• Princeton
• Grand Canyon
• McNeese

Model Talk: The Uncertainty Margin

We want to stress every now and then that we expect to miss a few teams with this. It’s an imprecise exercise. If our probabilities are calibrated correctly, they should give a forecast on Sunday of exactly how many teams we think we’ll miss on, but even without a hard number, we want to say: We don’t expect our bracketology to be infallible. Even today, our bracketology has Duquesne in the field, but our model has the Dukes slightly more likely to miss the NIT than make it. The bracketology is a lineup of every team’s median final “rank” on a few different seed lists. The probabilities are probably a better source of information, even if they’re less fun to look at.

The Graveyard

As always, we want to talk about who’s losing what because of the change in the automatic bid rules. We think it’s important to track the real impact of the changes, or at least our closest estimate of that impact. So:

• Losing an automatic bid (teams who would have made it in last year’s format): High Point, Eastern Washington, Little Rock, Eastern Kentucky, Central Connecticut State
• Gaining a bid (teams we think are receiving those bids instead): Duquesne, San Francisco, VCU, NC State, UNLV
• Losing a home game (teams who would have been seeded and had the option to host last year): Memphis, Kansas State, Butler
• Gaining a home game (the teams picking up home games as replacements): Washington, Mississippi, LSU

Not all non-power conference teams are created equal. We believe strongly in the high-major/mid-major/low-major dichotomy (as opposed to calling teams only power conference schools and mid-majors). In total, then, what we have is this:

• Five NIT spots shifting away from low-majors. Four of those go to mid-majors. One goes to a high-major.
• One NIT home game shifting away from a mid-major (Memphis, at that). It goes to a high-major.

Note: Apologies for this, but we forgot Appalachian State was the regular season Sun Belt champion and have been including them among the teams gaining a bid. They are not gaining a bid. They are keeping it. We also incorrectly listed Merrimack as a regular season champion when they were not. Central Connecticut State won the NEC, for old automatic bid purposes, via the tiebreaker.

For the Archives