Our NIT Bracketology, NIT probabilities, and NCAA Tournament Bracketology are all updated. Here’s what changed in the NIT with yesterday’s games, plus news on Nebraska and a little bit of model talk.
Moving In: Penn State
Moving Out: Minnesota
Moving Up: Iowa
More on the Cornhuskers in a moment, but the immediate impact of their loss yesterday was to push them into the College Basketball Crown, Penn State into the NIT, and Minnesota out of the NIT. It also pushed Xavier into the NCAA Tournament in our projection, but with Butler filling Xavier’s Crown spot and Butler below yesterday’s NIT field, that didn’t change anything for our bracket.
Penn State outranks Iowa in NET, but Iowa wins in KNIT—the average of the seven team sheet rankings. That gives Iowa the Big Ten’s exempt bid and the accompanying first round home game. Penn State gets in as an at-large.
Moving Up: San Francisco
Moving Down: Santa Clara
Pepperdine is wreaking havoc on WCC NIT hopefuls, and while Santa Clara’s still definitely getting an invitation, it no longer looks like they’ll host in the first round. San Francisco now leads the Broncos in KNIT, and our model projects it will stay that way.
Will Nebraska Play in the NIT?
After yesterday’s loss to Iowa, Nebraska is not making the NCAA Tournament. Right now, they’re in line for an automatic bid to the College Basketball Crown, holding one of the two best NET rankings of the Big Ten’s non-NCAA Tournament teams. This isn’t ideal for the Huskers. Because the Crown starts so late, Nebraska would have to spend three whole weeks idle before playing their first Crown game. They’d also have to travel to Las Vegas. Play in the NIT, and Nebraska will probably take that Big Ten exempt bid and host in at least the first two rounds, if not the first three.
Reporting holds that the Big Ten’s Fox Sports contract says the Big Ten will send two teams to the Crown as automatic bids, and that if either or both of those teams decline the Crown, they can’t play in the NIT. We’re skeptical that an attempt to play in the NIT would actually provoke litigation—besides the non-stop commercials, Fox Sports doesn’t seem to be putting very much support or thought into the Crown—but recognizing that these schools have a relationship with Fox Sports and accepting the claim at face value, what Nebraska needs is one more non-NCAA Tournament team from the Big Ten to move ahead of them in the NET rankings, and for Northwestern to stay ahead of them. Candidates to fill that space include:
- Ohio State, who by losing to Iowa in its Big Ten Tournament opener could play its way out of the NCAA Tournament. Ohio State is far ahead of Nebraska in the NET.
- Iowa, who currently sits six spots behind Nebraska in the NET. We don’t know how big a gap those six spots constitute (not every gap is the same size), but it might take more than just an upset of Ohio State to push Iowa past Nebraska.
- Indiana, who sits seven spots ahead of Nebraska in the NET but could miss the NCAA Tournament with a loss to Oregon and some help, either from bid thieves or the committee. Given how little Nebraska dropped after yesterday’s loss, we can guess that there’s enough space in that portion of the NET for Indiana to lose badly and still stay ahead of Nebraska. We don’t know for sure, though.
- USC and Rutgers, 12 and 17 spots behind Nebraska in the NET, respectively. We doubt either could really pass the Huskers, but the winner of their opening round game will face Purdue in the second round, so there’s at least some degree of upside.
Penn State is four spots behind Nebraska in the NET. Teams do move around based on the results of their opponents, but it’s hard to believe the pair could move far enough in one week to push the Nittany Lions in front, especially because the pair shares so many common opponents.
Northwestern plays Minnesota in its Big Ten Tournament opener and should then face Wisconsin in the second round. There’s some risk of the Wildcats falling past Nebraska in the NET with a bad performance.
Selfishly, as an NIT blog, we’d love to have Nebraska in the field. Great fanbase, fun team, good coach. But the deck’s probably stacked against that happening. For what it’s worth, our understanding based on reporting and rumors is that it was the Big Ten athletic directors who decided, possibly through a vote, to align with the Crown. We don’t know how much each AD involved their basketball program in that decision.
Model Talk: Opt-Out Changes and WAB
Our model currently has the same bubble teams as Bracket Matrix in the NCAA Tournament field, so we’re not currently worried about being embarrassingly wrong on one of those. We’re waiting until tomorrow to start worrying about our model’s NCAA Tournament seedings, because our model will make some use of today’s AP Poll in constructing its final projections. In the meantime, then, two things:
First, we realized the NCAA is using a different version of WAB than Bart Torvik’s. The NCAA appears to be calculating its own, and we presume it’s based on NET. We plan to post about this later today, but it’s a small change. Nothing major shifted in our model because of the pivot.
Second, we simplified how our model handles that legal portion of Crown opt-outs. We now have a blanket 95% probability that a Crown automatic bid who prefers the NIT will indeed be banned from the NIT, and a 10% probability that a secondary Crown automatic bid (a team invited to replace an auto-bid team who declines) will be banned from the NIT. Previously, we were allowing these same probabilities to vary by team within a single simulation. This doesn’t make sense. Either those lines in the contract exist or they don’t, and either they’ll be enforced or they won’t.
We’re of course monitoring all statements from coaches and administrations on whether or not their teams will play postseason basketball. Through last night, the list of relevant teams eliminated from their conference tournaments looks like this:
- Nebraska: Fred Hoiberg said the Cornhuskers will play some form of postseason basketball.
- Penn State: Mike Rhoades declined to address the NIT and Crown last week.
- Bradley: The Braves are in line for the Missouri Valley Conference’s NIT exempt bid, which comes with a first round home game. We have no reason to believe they’ll decline.
- Chattanooga: The Mocs have earned an automatic NIT bid. We have no reason to believe they’ll decline.
- Santa Clara: Our model projects a 100% chance the Broncos receive an NIT at-large invitation. We have no reason to believe they’ll decline.
For previews of today’s games, check our NIT Leverage update later this afternoon. For another look at the bubble, we’ll also have an NIT Bubble Watch update shortly.
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