NIT Bracketology: Tuesday, March 5th

Not a lot of action last night, so no changes to our NIT bracket aside from Ohio State and Virginia Tech swapping seed lines as our model got more information on how the ratings systems reacted to Ohio State’s win on Sunday. On the NCAAT side, we got the AP Poll, which shuffled seeding around a bit, but nothing major there either.

Last Four In, First Four Out, Etc.

On the low side:

• Last Four In (from the cut line going upwards): Yale, Loyola Chicago, Washington, Maryland
• First Four Out (from the cut line going downwards): San Francisco, UNLV, LSU, NC State
• Others in the mix (>10% NIT chance, below NIT field, not in our field or in the First Four Out): Florida State, Rutgers, UMass, Indiana, Miami (FL), Duquesne, Georgia

On the high side:

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

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 for 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’re including one conference tournament favorite in our NIT Bracketology out of the four who occupy NIT at-large territory. That conference tournament favorite is James Madison, the likeliest of the four to wind up in the NIT.

Including James Madison and Appalachian State at the same time is unrealistic. It’s roughly 70% likely one of the two makes the NCAA Tournament. But each is individually likelier to play in the NIT than the NCAAT, and it’s likely there’s at least one instance of a reverse bid thief—someone who loses their conference tournament and lands in the NIT. Again, JMU is the likeliest team to do this. Here are the four:

• Princeton
• Grand Canyon
• James Madison
• McNeese

Where We’re an Outlier

Here’s how our model views the territory around the NCAAT/NIT cut line, compared to how Bracket Matrix views it. This isn’t exactly how Bracket Matrix works, but it’s my best guess at the average view of the bubble across the industry.

Three categories, based off of this:

• Agree (within two seed lines): Virginia, New Mexico, Wake Forest, Utah, Drake, Iowa, Pitt
• Auto-bid, so we don’t really know: Indiana State
• Significant disagreements: Seton Hall, Colorado, TCU, Villanova, Texas A&M, St. John’s, Providence

We’ve written a lot about Seton Hall and Colorado lately, and we just gave those two the full treatment yesterday, so we’ll spend our energies elsewhere today. I will say: It makes me more confident in our model’s ultimate result to see Seton Hall so close to the Bracket Matrix cut line, especially with opinions very mixed on which five of the nine non-Indiana State teams around the Matrix cut line to include. I will also say: The NCAA Tournament selection committee determines the NIT 1-seeds, based on selection criteria (not seeding criteria). The NIT selection committee seeds everybody else, based on seeding criteria and automatic bids. So, Seton Hall is less likely to get an NIT 2-seed than they are an NIT 1-seed or an NIT 3-seed.

With Providence, I’m surprised the industry is so high on them. I wouldn’t think anyone would have Providence in the current NCAAT field. But, they’re out of the field on the Matrix aggregate, so again, we’ll move on. I feel similarly about St. John’s and Villanova, whom both we and the Matrix have in the NCAA Tournament, and Texas A&M, whom both we and the Matrix have out of the NCAA Tournament.

That leaves TCU, whom our model somewhat shockingly labels as the last team in the NCAA Tournament.

Our model does give the Horned Frogs a 64% chance of making the NCAA Tournament, which is rather high. It isn’t all that worried about TCU, and that’s even with a median scenario in which TCU loses one of its next two games—at West Virginia and home against UCF. Still, it’s possible our model will show TCU right on the bubble or potentially even out of the NCAA Tournament as Selection Sunday draws closer, so we want to make clear: We don’t trust our model’s assessment of TCU.

This is the crux of our distrust of our model regarding Seton Hall, too, but the short version is: Q1A wins. The longer version is that we didn’t figure out a way this year to make our model account for how the committee views a team’s best wins, and we think it consequently underrates teams with great ones. Especially multiple great ones. Seton Hall? Beat UConn and Marquette. TCU? Beat Houston, and took down Baylor on the road.

If TCU loses both these next two, maybe they’re in trouble, but we aren’t as worried about Jamie Dixon’s team as our model is.

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