Our NIT Bracketology is updated again, along with our NCAA Tournament Seed List. As was the case last time, we’re running our “lite” model, which is only half a model. Some subjective things to note:
Bid Thieves
Last time, we neglected to adjust the NCAAT/NIT cut line to account for bid thieves. We’ve corrected that this time, estimating there’ll be one bid thief in the average scenario. This pushes Nebraska into the CBC in our projection, which then pushes USC into the NIT and one team off the NIT bubble.
Favorites vs. The Field
We wrote last week about the Atlantic 10—how we put its three best teams in our NIT Bracketology despite those three being the likeliest A-10 Tournament champions. We refined our approach to that this week.
There are four conferences whose tournament favorite is in line for an NIT exempt bid if they lose. Those are the Atlantic 10, the Big West, Conference USA, and the Missouri Valley. We estimate two of those four conferences will see their favorite lose. Of those four favorites (VCU, UC San Diego, Liberty, and Drake), UCSD and Liberty are the biggest favorites, so we’ve kept them out while including VCU and Drake. Our full model takes a better approach to this, and we’re working on getting that up soon (hopefully by Monday). For now, this is how we’re squaring this particular circle.
Automatic Bids
A similar situation exists with NIT automatic bids. All nine of Akron, Arkansas State, Grand Canyon, High Point, Jacksonville State, Lipscomb, McNeese, Samford, and Yale are currently favored to win their regular season conference championship, not receive an NCAA Tournament at-large bid, and finish with rankings which make them eligible for an NIT automatic bid should they lose in their conference tournament.
With these, we estimate five will indeed lose their conference tournament. Last time, we estimated three, but upon reflection we think that was too conservative. Again, our full model will take a stronger approach to this (it’ll determine the median cut line on each end of the NIT field, then fill in gaps with as many automatic bids and bid thieves as is necessary), but for now, this is how we’re doing it.
The upshot of this approach is that we have High Point, Lipscomb, Yale, and McNeese out of the NIT field, since Yale and McNeese are the biggest conference tournament favorites and High Point and Lipscomb are the smallest regular season favorites. We also have two fewer spots available for NIT at-large bids compared to what we published on Friday, which shifts the NIT cut line another two slots in addition to the one slot it moved thanks to the bid thief change we talked about above.
First Eight Out
With all of that explained…our first eight out, in order:
- Kansas State
- Utah
- St. Bonaventure
- Bradley
- Florida State
- Providence
- Washington
- Butler
We should have the bracket updated again on Friday. Most likely, it’ll be with our lite model’s outputs again, but if that changes, we’ll be even more excited than you are.
