A Look At the Bubble

As we enter the last week of the regular season for the major conferences and about half of the mid-majors start conference tournament play the contenders have separated themselves from the pack. There are still a lot of teams on the bubble, thanks in large part to teams either lacking quality wins or having some big-time negatives on their resumes. Here’s a look at approximately where things stand right now, at least in my eyes.

There is a big debate right now with how the top seeds will fall. One thing is for sure, the top two overall seeds are locked up.

  

  One way or another, Kentucky and Syracuse will be the top teams in the tournament. They both have only 1 loss so far this year, with Kentucky falling on a last-second shot to Indiana and Syracuse losing to Notre Dame.

The other two #1 seeds are up for grabs right now between Kansas, Duke, Michigan State, and North Carolina. Missouri and Ohio State were contenders for the top line, but have dropped off in the last few weeks. As things stand right now, I think if any of the 3 conferences (Big Ten, Big XII, ACC) have the same team win both the regular season and the conference tournament, that team will definitely get a #1 seed. Kansas clinched the Big XII regular season crown, which gives them a slight edge right now. Duke has head-to-head wins over Kansas, Michigan State, and North Carolina (though will have a rematch against the Tar Heels for the outright ACC Championship on Saturday). Therefore, by my estimation, the other two #1 seeds right now are…

Additionally, I have 12 teams that “Should be in” barring some kind of epic collapse: Notre Dame, San Diego St, Virginia, UConn, Purdue, Kansas St, New Mexico, Alabama, West Virginia, Seton Hall, Iowa St, California.

Given Cal’s loss to Colorado, Washington is now the Pac-12 leader and I think the committee will have a hard time not putting the regular season Pac-12 champ in the tournament, so for now I think they are in the “Should Be In” category. If Washington drops a game somewhere and Cal wins the Pac-12, Washington heads right back to the bubble.

There are 19 conference champions that probably won’t get an At-Large bid, though cases like Long Beach St, Iona, Oral Roberts, Belmont and Middle Tennessee could make things interesting if they don’t win their tournaments.

So then we come down to the “Last 4 In”/”First 4 Out” discussion. The 8 teams I was left with at this point were: Arizona, BYU, Colorado St, St Louis, South Florida, Texas, VCU, Xavier.

Of this group, Texas had the most Top 50 wins (3) which gave them an advantage and moved them to the top of the “Last 4 In” group. USF is a paltry 1-7 vs the Top 50 with their best win over Seton Hall, whose RPI is 44, so not really a convincing Top 50 win at that.

  

USF’s best road win was over Pitt (RPI 97) and that was their only Top 100 road win. They also lost to VCU, which moved VCU up on my board. USF got dropped to the bottom of my “First 4 Out” category.

That left me with 4 teams fighting over 2 spots: Arizona, BYU, St Louis, Texas.

It might be surprising that St Louis has dropped this far, but their overall resume is really sparse on quality wins. They have no Top 50 wins and their best wins are over St Joe’s and Washington. The Billikins also have losses to Loyola Marymount (RPI 114) and an inexcusable loss to 6-23 Rhode Island (RPI 251).

BYU has a very similar resume with a 5-5 record against the Top 100 (St Louis was 5-4). However, BYU has a Top 50 win over Gonzaga. BYU also has 2 100+ losses, one of which was also to Loyola Marymount. However, what separated them from St Louis was their other loss was to Utah St (RPI 154). BYU has a better win and a less bad worst loss than St Louis, which gave them the edge.

This put BYU in the field, as they were better than both VCU and St Louis. I figured I should analyze Arizona next, because if they were better than BYU, I wouldn’t need to look at VCU vs St Louis as they would both be out.

Arizona’s also had 1 Top 50 Win (at Cal, RPI 36). Arizona is 4-8 against the Top 100 (as opposed to BYU’s 5-5) but their wins are better. Arizona’s best 2 wins (Cal and New Mexico St, RPI 71) were on the road (as opposed to BYU, whose only Top 100 non-home win is a neutral site win over Nevada). On top of the better wins, Arizona only has 1 loss to a team with an RPI over 100 (at UCLA, RPI 131). While Arizona’s computer numbers aren’t as good as BYUs, they have a better slate of Top 100 wins and less losses to teams with 100+ RPIs. This was enough for me to put Arizona over BYU, knocking VCU and St Louis from contention.