There’s updated NIT Bracketology, and some are saying you should consult your cardiologist before envisioning the matchups. Pitt vs. Penn State. Georgetown vs. Rutgers. North Texas vs. TCU and San Francisco vs. Stanford in the potential second round. It’s a who’s–who of college basketball grit and greatness, and I’m honored to even be allowed to imagine the tournament such a bracket could bring.
A couple nerdy notes about our Lite Model and our Full Model. We’re still running the Lite model, and we think the Lite model might overrate the NCAA T*urnament Selection Committee’s impressions of UNC and SMU while underrating its impression of Nebraska. This has to do with things like Q1 win percentage and Q1 wins and how much the look of lost sadness on Fred Hoiberg’s face stirs one’s natural urge to embrace the good man. (Kidding about the Hoiberg part. There is no look–of–lost–sadness variable in either model.) Basically, when the full model arrives, it should be a little more in line with Bracket Matrix on these teams. If it isn’t, Joe Stunardi will step in and explain what’s happening so I can focus on the fun stuff, like this Georgetown/Butler race for the Big East’s NIT exempt bid.
Moving Out: North Carolina, Georgia, Butler, Minnesota
This is a gutting quartet. We love Mike White. We’re drawn to UNC like moths to a flame. We will always stand in solidarity with Butler. Goldy Gopher brings joy wherever he goes.
Hopefully the tide turns back around, but basically, we need to hope UNC doesn’t get another Q1 win (or two), that Georgia sues the NCAA for the right to pull an Al McGuire, that Butler moves back ahead of Georgetown in that tight tight tight Big East race, and that Minnesota starts bringing Goldy off the bench like they should have been doing this whole time. Refs hardly know how to ref humans. You’re telling me they can reign in a giant anthropomorphic gopher with a smile that’s cute as can be?
Moving In: Indiana, Wake Forest, South Carolina, Saint Joseph’s
And yet…what a quartet we have here as well. Our close friends Wake Forest. Onetime NIT dynasty South Carolina. Saint Joe’s, where The Hawk Will Never Die. Indiana, whom we are ready to forgive if they deliver the IU Hinkle Fieldhouse NIT Championship we dreamt of so fervently last winter.
The NCAA T*urnament is bad for a lot of reasons (forced labor, its association with the WW2 Axis Powers, etc.), but one is that it’s too large. It doesn’t make you appreciate the teams you have. We only get 32 in the NIT. We cherish those select few.
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More to come later today and over the weekend and over the next month and throughout the rest of time, or at least until I die and am replaced by N–AI–T Stu, a consciousness which might not have a soul but could well develop one from the emotional force of watching UC San Diego and Cal State–Northridge duke it out on a Thursday night in the northern reaches of L.A. What an evening we had together, folks. What a month we have ahead.
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