NIT Bracketology: San Francisco’s Got a Chance

Our NIT Bracketology is updated through last night, and we have an odd situation going on.

This is very in–the–weeds stuff, and if you just want to know what the NIT bracket might look like, or if you just want to know what each team’s probability is of making the NIT, please, go look at those. The short version of what happened after last night is that San Francisco and VCU moved back into our NIT Bracketology, bumping Indiana and Yale out. The longer version is this:

• VCU played well enough last night that our model pushed them back to the edge of the field. (I kind of think our model is overreacting to this, but the bottom line is that VCU didn’t lose much ground last night, if any.)
• Portland beating Loyola Marymount cleared San Francisco’s path enough to push them back to the edge of the field.
• LSU finishes below the cut line in their median scenario, but they’re the second-highest non-NCAAT team in the SEC, leaving them with an automatic bid.
• Yale finishes above the cut line in their median scenario, but they don’t in their median scenario in which they lose in the Ivy League Tournament, something they’ll have to do to make the NIT.

The end result is that we have 33 teams for 32 spots, given our criteria for how we build the bracket every time we build it. What we’ve done to rectify this is remove Yale, the least likely of these teams to make the field, but the long and short of it is that things are really tight around the NIT’s bottom cut line. Our model still says 82^nd is the median cut line on the mythical master seed list, and we have six teams with median final NIT selection ranks between 82 and 83.5. Those six occupy the 79^th-best through 84^th-best spots on our list. Little things matter a lot, and because teams jostle each other around within the simulations, it’s all very interconnected.

No graphic today, in the interests of time. Click on the link above if you want to see the bracket.

Last Four In, First Four Out, Etc.

On the low side:

• Last Four In (from the cut line going upwards): Duquesne, VCU, San Francisco, NC State
• First Four Out (from the cut line going downwards): Yale*, Indiana, Minnesota, St. Bonaventure
• Others in the mix (>10% NIT chance, below NIT field, not in our field or in the First Four Out): Xavier, Samford, Florida State, Rutgers, Georgia, UMass

On the high side:

• Last Four In (from the cut line going downwards): Virginia, St. John’s, Drake, Wake Forest
• First Four Out (from the cut line going upwards): Texas A&M, Seton Hall, TCU, Indiana State
• Others in the mix (>10% NIT chance, above NIT field, not in our field or in the First Four Out): Villanova, New Mexico, Saint Mary’s, Mississippi State, Florida Atlantic, Oklahoma

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 82^nd, 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 82^nd 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 82 and Duquesne is the 82^nd team on our seed list (83^rd today, actually, but…we covered this above), 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: If we get JMU, we’ll probably lose App State. If we get Princeton, we’ll probably lose Yale. If we get McNeese, maybe we lose Richmond.

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

• Princeton
• Grand Canyon
• James Madison
• McNeese

Model Talk: VCU

A quick explanation on why VCU could improve with a good loss, even this late in the year:

1. The NIT committee seems to care about NET and kenpom.
2. By improving their kenpom rating, VCU also improved our model’s perception of how they’ll perform in the A-10 Tournament.

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