Our NIT Bracketology, NCAA Tournament Seed List, and NIT/NCAAT Probabilities are all updated to account for yesterday’s games. On the NIT Bracketology front, we had a few changes.
Moving In: San Diego State
Moving Out: Texas
With Texas’s win yesterday, our model now has the Longhorns making the NCAA Tournament. Notably, our model sees this coming at San Diego State’s expense rather than Ohio State’s. More on that below. But the bottom line is that our model thinks Texas is into the NCAA Tournament. It will still have them on the bubble if they lose to Texas A&M, and it’s higher on the Horns than the consensus, but for whatever it’s worth, our model likes Texas.
Moving In: Middle Tennessee
Moving Out: Liberty
Liberty also won yesterday, and that makes them more than 50% likely to win the Conference USA Tournament, with only two games left to win. If Liberty does win its conference tournament, Conference USA’s NIT exempt bid will most likely fall to Middle Tennessee.
Moving In: Colorado, Oklahoma State
Moving Up: TCU
Moving Out: Kansas State, UCF, Arizona State, Minnesota
We’ve gotten some indications from eliminated teams about whether they’ll play in the postseason, as well as whether they’ll pursue the NIT or the Crown if given the choice. Last night, we rounded those up.
Relevant here: Oklahoma State is looking to play in something. Jerome Tang thinks Kansas State is done. Bobby Hurley says Arizona State is playing in the Crown. Gabe Madsen indicated Utah is looking to play in the Crown. Cincinnati and UCF haven’t committed yet, as of the time I looked, but as the Big 12’s likely Crown automatic bids, they’re rumored to be contractually barred from playing in the NIT. Minnesota fired Ben Johnson last night and has an overall record below .500, which makes me believe the NIT won’t bother inviting them unless they somehow become in line for the Big Ten’s exempt bid.
All of this combines to put TCU in line for the Big 12’s NIT exempt bid, and to make Colorado and Oklahoma State both reasonable at-large candidates, provided the committee looks past what’ll likely be a 14–20 overall record from the Buffs. We saw 16–17 Xavier make the field last year, but that’s different from 14–20.
Moving In: Butler
Moving Down: Georgetown
In the Big East, Butler beat Providence and Georgetown lost to DePaul, making Butler the Big East’s NIT exempt bid leader. Georgetown should still get an at-large, though they’re bubbly and there might be some Crown complications.
Moving In: Northern Colorado
Northern Colorado wrapped up the automatic bid in the Big Sky. They, like Chattanooga (automatic) and Bradley (exempt), have confirmed they’ll play.
Ohio State: Two Games Over .500
Per Jim Root over at the New York Times, no one with a record only two games above .500 has ever received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. Ohio State has some great wins (three Q1A wins, six Q1 wins) and no bad losses, and they played a tough nonconference schedule. But they’re an easy team to exclude, and I’d personally guess the NCAA Tournament committee excludes them in part because of that ease. For what it’s worth, our model still likes their chances, but I’m not sure when the last time was we adjusted our model’s “proximity to .500” adjustment. It may have happened back when we were combining selection and seeding into one formula and mostly using that formula for the NIT as well. We are probably overdue to revisit that, and Ohio State will provide us a good data point.
So, we’ll do some digging today and see if anyone more credible than us has the Buckeyes in the field. If not, then tomorrow we’ll remove Ohio State from our Seed List, which we alter slightly from our model’s output to account for our model’s shortcomings. We’ll also update our NIT Bracketology, to account for Ohio State receiving the Big Ten’s first automatic bid to the Crown rather than either Nebraska or Northwestern. We’ll leave our probabilities intact, pure outputs from our model, and we’ll leave our NCAA Tournament Bracketology intact as well (once we get around to updating it).
Basically: If people are using the bracketology as an important source of information (NIT Bracketology, Seed List), we strive for accuracy. With the probabilities, we trust that those interested understand the complexities of the situation, presumably being probabilistic thinkers themselves. With NCAA Tournament Bracketology, we want to test our model.
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