The Super Bowl? More like, “A Football Game That Is Similar in Scope to the NIT But Nowhere Near As Cool!”
Got ‘em.
We’ve got fresh NIT Bracketology heading into the weekend, and the weekend has fresh NIT Bracketology heading into us. You can see the field by clicking that link, but here’s what’s going on around the scene:
First Four Out: Colorado, Saint Louis, Hofstra, UNLV
Rocky Mountain high? Mississippi River high? Long Island high? Mojave Desert high? These teams are chasing it. And they’re pretty gosh darn close.
Next Four Out: Loyola Marymount, Toledo, St. John’s, Syracuse
LMU still stands for Loyola Marymount around here, even with the Lincoln Memorial Railsplitters making quite the impression the last time I traversed the Cumberland Gap (alright, too much geography, we’re cutting geography for today). The Lions made a statement last night, they’re in the mix, we’re keeping tabs on them. For everyone who came to this blog post looking for where Loyola Marymount lines up in the NIT picture, this is where they are.
Sub-.500 Projected: Oklahoma, Ohio State, Vanderbilt, Texas Tech, Nebraska, Others
Oklahoma and Ohio State would be in our projected field if they had the exact same team sheet and expectations they currently have but were somehow also expected to finish above .500. Vanderbilt, Texas Tech, and Nebraska would slot in somewhere in these two sections above. In other words, if any of the five get over .500, they’re probably with us. Unless they get way over .500, but that’s just unlikely.
Things to Say
Joe has asked me to share two things:
First, we’re getting a lot of questions comparing our bracketology to others or asking why a certain game didn’t change a certain team’s picture. Those are great questions, and we’re happy to answer them/have the discussion. One thing to highlight, though, is that our bracketology is predictive. It’s working with an expectation of future results. So it’s not “where they stand,” like Joe Lunardi’s or others around the internet. It’s where they’re expected to finish. Hopefully that helps clear things up if you’ve been confused and afraid to ask. (But ask! It is fun for us when you ask.)
Second, we’re trying to improve our model heading into this stretch run. We’ve been running “lite” mode, but on Monday we intend to switch to “bridge” mode if all goes well this weekend. Then, next Monday, we intend to switch to our full model, albeit with some assumed kinks left to be worked out (I am pushing to call this “Mark Gottfried” mode because of the kinks, but Joe is resisting). Things always change and we have a terrible track record of meeting our timelines around here, but that’s what’s on the radar.
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Godspeed. Enjoy going to a Super Bowl party and telling all your friends how much you love the NIT. Please tell us how that goes.
Toledo last year won a tough MAC regular season title and ended up playing the number one seed. No way they were an 8 seed.
Then there was the whole Virginia-St. Bonaventure thing. The Bonnies played a 4 seed in the first round (usually what a 5 seed would do) while Virginia played a 3 seed (usually reserved for a six seed) yet when they both advanced through to games to meet each other Virginia got to host. Why was this? Seems like they definitely wanted that game in the larger arena.
The best thing about the NIT was always that bigger name schools that had some struggles during the season could end up playing road games against top mid-majors that just didn’t win their conference tournament but now it looks as if they are taking that away to a large extent.
Will the NIT just seed teams one through four in each quadrant to slant it against the little guy their bracket again this year? Or will they do the right thing and seed all the teams?
They’ve said they’re only going to seed the top 16 and place the rest geographically again. I would guess that their reasoning is to lessen their own travel expenses (since I’m pretty sure the NCAA covers NIT travel) and create more compelling storylines in the first round, but that does come at the cost of lopsided competitive balance. Hurts some teams, helps others. I’m sure they aren’t doing it to slant anything against smaller brands, though, and it should help as many as it hurts.
https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2023-01-19/2023-nit-bracket-schedule-mens-tournament