NIT Bracketology: The Bubble Packs Are Tight

Our NIT Bracketology is updated to account for last night’s games, and the field is tight at the top.

We talk about the Ripple Effect a lot on here, the phenomenon where our model runs its simulations overnight, doesn’t receive NET, KPI, and SOR updates until morning, and thereby sometimes shows teams moving a few seed lines despite not playing. We don’t love this about our model, but our reverse engineered versions of NET, KPI, and SOR are not good enough to avoid it. It’s the best we can offer this year. Texas A&M? Yesterday, they were projecting to be the first team out of the NCAA Tournament in our model’s eyes. Today, they’re projecting to be the fourth-to-last team in.

Again, we wish this wasn’t the case, but we do want to say something on behalf of our model. Yesterday, our model had the Aggies 62.9% likely to make the NCAA Tournament field. Today, after receiving those NET, KPI, and SOR updates and seeing Colorado win and Utah lose, it has the Aggies 65.9% likely. That’s a tiny change. It was also enough to move A&M four spots up the seed list.

Part of what’s going on, then—part of what makes the Ripple Effect as significant as it is—is that teams are really tightly bunched around the bubble. Here’s the NCAAT/NIT bubble, in our model’s eyes. Keep in mind that the likeliest final cut line is 45^th on the mythical master seed list.

Six teams, all projecting to finish with résumés (in their individual median scenarios) within two spots of each other on the list.

So, our apologies, but our model is going to flip-flop on some of these bubble teams over the next ten days. That’s also going to happen on the NIT/CBI bubble, where NC State moves in over San Francisco despite nothing of obvious consequence happening last night or the night before involving either of those teams.

Last Four In, First Four Out, Etc.

On the low side:

• Last Four In (from the cut line going upwards): Duquesne, NC State, Indiana, Yale
• First Four Out (from the cut line going downwards): San Francisco, VCU, 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, Georgia, Rutgers, UMass

On the high side:

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

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.

*Apologies. Xavier was omitted by mistake in a previous version of this post. They exist in a weird special case where they have a decent chance at an automatic bid, a good chance at an at-large bid if they finish .500 or better, but a current projection of a sub-.500 median finish.

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, 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: Texas A&M, Colorado, Washington, Xavier

We’ve written plenty about Texas A&M and Colorado over the last week or two, so we won’t relitigate the entirety of their situations here, but a quick word on each.

Our model is very, very confident Colorado will make the NCAA Tournament field after last night’s win in Eugene. It has that more than 90% likely. That seems too high, given many bracketologies don’t include the Buffaloes at all just yet and Bart Torvik’s TourneyCast™ only has them at 78.8%. Still, our model and Bart’s agree that Colorado’s more likely to make the NCAA Tournament than miss it. They play Oregon State tomorrow in Corvallis. They’ll be the 3-seed in the Pac-12 Tournament, possibly playing Utah in their first game. At the moment, that would be another Q1 game. If it isn’t Utah, it might be UCLA, an opponent likely followed by Washington State—another Q1 game, and a team safely in the tournament. Our model isn’t projecting Colorado to win their next three in a row, but the probability of that happening is high enough and comes with enough good wins that Colorado’s in a very good position.

Texas A&M is a weirder one. TourneyCast only has the Aggies 20.1% likely to make the field. I think this is a combination of our model not considering conference tiebreakers (which makes A&M’s SEC Tournament path less advantageous) and the fact A&M has a really weird résumé. Six Q1 wins is a lot. A 10–9 Q1/Q2 record is very good. And yet A&M’s broader numbers aren’t great, thanks to those four Q3 losses. Thankfully for our model, they have a coin flip game coming up at Mississippi tomorrow. If they win, they’ll be in the thick of the bubble race in the narrative. If they lose, our model will probably take them out of the NCAA Tournament and render the point moot unless they go on a deeper SEC Tournament run. We’ll keep monitoring, and we’ll keep putting our best guess on our subjective seed list.

In the other noteworthy results last night (for bubble purposes—there was plenty of news away from the bubble), Utah lost at Oregon State and Washington won in Pullman. Utah’s loss pulls the Utes off the bubble, at least for now, and safely into the NIT. Washington’s win, combined with Oregon’s loss, leaves Washington ahead of Oregon in NET. This pushes Washington into the Pac-12’s second NIT automatic bid and pushes Oregon into an at-large bid. Meanwhile, because Texas A&M moving out of our model’s NIT Bracketology pushed St. John’s back down into it, St. John’s took Xavier’s NIT automatic bid while LSU took the one previously occupied by A&M. The result included no net movement around the NIT/CBI cut line (LSU replaced Xavier in a 1-for-1 swap), but it illustrates how fickle that cut line is. If Xavier and LSU both get pushed out of automatic bid position, the cut line will probably be looser than 82^nd, especially if Washington takes a bad loss from here or Oregon grabs a big win (the Ducks host Utah tomorrow). If Xavier, LSU, and Washington all do get automatic bids, the result could be a tighter cut line. There’s a lot going on with the automatic bids right now.

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