It was a busy week for Iowa. The Hawkeyes didn’t leave Iowa City, but they made the most of their stay, sending home UNC, Iowa State, and Northern Illinois with ease. Luka Garza & Co. averaged 101 points across the six-day stretch and won by double-digits in each game, implicitly stating that yes, this team is good enough offensively to make up for an only-decent defensive capability. No, NIU isn’t much. No, Iowa State isn’t good this year. No, UNC isn’t exactly a power at the moment. But it was a dominant week, enough to vault the Hawkeyes into KenPom’s top five, and it got them enough space from the rest of their league that we can now comfortably call Iowa the favorite in a conference that had been using a placeholder for that title (Wisconsin, mathematically). Now, time to prove they deserve such praise, with Gonzaga up next and conference play the whole way out from there.
Here’s what else changed as our bracketology updated today:
Biggest Movers: Rutgers (Up), Missouri (Up), Duke (Down), Xavier (Up), Virginia Tech (Down), Maryland (Down)
Rrrrrrutgahs basketball.
The Scarlet Knights walked all over Maryland in the second half last night in College Park, opening conference games with a statement. It’s hard to call anyone safe in the Big Ten, given how many league games are played, but Rutgers is in the safer half and sits rather clearly above that cut line that excludes the bottom six.
Below the cut line now is Maryland, who in addition to the Rutgers loss got pulverized by Clemson since we saw them last. Last year’s conference title share is already fading.
Our model hasn’t been too high on Illinois, but results against the Illini were responsible for a big jump from Mizzou and a swift fall from Duke. The former is suddenly among the contenders in the SEC. The latter’s playing badly and getting chirped heading into tomorrow’s trip to South Bend. Duke’s conference schedule opens favorably—in their first seven games, they only play two projected tournament teams: Florida State and Virginia Tech. On the one hand, that cushion could give them space to figure things out. On the other, if they lose one of the other five games, it’s going to be a bad look. Is there a universe in which Duke opts out in a few weeks, citing the coronavirus? Just asking.
While we’re in the ACC, Virginia Tech took an uppercut and a half from Penn State last Tuesday. We’ll get to the Nittany Lions, but it was bad news for the Hokies, who undid a lot of the climbing they’d done.
And finally, Xavier. The Musketeers finished nonconference play (as currently scheduled) 7-0, cleaning their plate with a 99-point effort against Oklahoma. Big East opponents should offer a reality check, but at the same time, Villanova and Creighton are the only teams in that conference clearly better than the Sooners.
Entering the Field: Oklahoma State, Syracuse, Mississippi, Penn State, Marshall (auto-bid), Murray State (auto-bid), Mount St. Mary’s (auto-bid)
Per my namesake, there’s a “stay” on Oklahoma State’s postseason ban, so they join our ranks on the six-line. Elsewhere, Syracuse and Mississippi slide across the cut line, while Penn State leapfrogs our projected NIT on the back of that Virginia Tech win and an impressive Sunday showing in Ann Arbor. The rest of those moving in are automatic bids, but it’s worth noting Marshall, who’ve quietly impressed through their limited play so far and are now projected as more likely than early-season-trendy Western Kentucky to win the Conference USA tournament.
Exiting the Field: Arizona State, UConn, Alabama, SMU, Western Kentucky (auto-bid), Belmont (auto-bid), St. Francis-Pennsylvania (auto-bid)
With regard to Arizona State: It’s possible the committee will look back on that San Diego State loss and forgive it if the Sun Devils are on the bubble, given the absences. But as has often been the case in Bobby Hurley’s Tempe tenure, the Forks are anything but safe.
UConn has yet to lose, so their slide out of the field was just a product of movement around them. The same is true for SMU. Alabama struggled to score against Clemson, and while that loss is a fine loss, our model didn’t know at this time last week how good Clemson was, so the Tide had been expected to have a better shot in that one. As much as we wish we could claim to have some artificial intelligence machine that picked up an NCAA conspiracy to punish Nate Oats, this is unfortunately merely par for the course.
Bid Thieves
In lieu of a more broader section of other notes, let’s talk about bid thieves, because the AAC dropping to a one-bid league helped push our cut line down a peg, to where we now have a median projection of three bid thieves, which means three teams from our NCAAT Bracketology are also appearing in our NIT Bracketology.
It’s too early to concern oneself with bid thieves, given how tight the pack is once you get out of the first few seed lines, but it’s good to remember they’re there. They’re lurking, and the absence of a second team from the AAC, A-10, or WCC—all leagues with at least one projected NIT at-large bid at the moment, meaning at least one team good enough to give the favorite a fight (the MWC also is a one-bid league at the moment, and while there isn’t an NIT team there at the moment, that’d be a hard tournament for SDSU to win as things stand)—puts us in a place where we should probably assume there’ll be a few surprises.
Again, long way out, but it’s on the horizon.
