Bubble Tracker week of February 24 | Page 2 | Syracusefan.com

Bubble Tracker week of February 24

Clemson, ND and NC State hurt the most besides FSU. Feel like they were gifts to our opponents. FSU game we caught them sleeping and they woke back up. Not sure it was as much putting them away as they wrangled the game back from us.

At 19-9 without FSU we would be in great shape too.

Agree - those games that we lost to what I consider our "peer group" this year bother me the most and will ultimately cost us if we come up short.
 
Last edited:
UVA is 47 in KenPom, only 4 spots Ahead of us. So they still need to do a lot

No doubt. With that said as a quad 1 win it's high value. The kicker is if they are top 15-20 from a media perspective it might get us into that conversation a bit more as having a signature win. Attention never hurt anyone when trying to be relevant. As an SU fan it hurts to even think that way...
 
Quite simply, win next three and hope you have a great run in ACCT and sneak in three wins there.

Then hope for attrition above us.

At Clemson and at Florida State are two big misses, unfortunately.

If we win our next 6 games we would not need attrition.
How much further I wonder does UVA need to climb for that to be our signature win? At 20-7 if they can beat Duke at home I'm guessing they are soundly back in the top 25. If they win out and end up 23-7 finishing with wins vs Duke and Ville then they go top 15 maybe even hover around top 10 again. Now I don't see them anything of that sort but from a numbers game that would have to then sit as our signature win.

They are currently a 9 seed on the matrix. I would think they would have to get to at least a 6 seed for a road win to be considered top notch.

Virginia has the remaining schedule to make a big move up the seedings. They have Duke and Louisville at home, and a Q2 road win opportunity.

3-0 would be tough for them, but if they did, they would be a top 6 seed and a signature win for us.
 
If we win our next 6 games we would not need attrition.


They are currently a 9 seed on the matrix. I would think they would have to get to at least a 6 seed for a road win to be considered top notch.

Virginia has the remaining schedule to make a big move up the seedings. They have Duke and Louisville at home, and a Q2 road win opportunity.

3-0 would be tough for them, but if they did, they would be a top 6 seed and a signature win for us.

I'm not sure it guarantees anything but I will be rooting them to win out for sure.
 
If we won the next 6 games and reached the ACC final, I don't think we would need atttrition.

If we could get the Pitt Sidibe for 6 games straight we absolutely could make this happen.
 
The Pac-12 is actually going to get more bids than I thought at the beginning of the year and that is without Washington.
Oregon, Arizona, Colorado are locks.
Arizona State is a should be in and close to lock.

UCLA, USC, and Stanford are all on the bubble ahead of us.

We need to make the ACCT Finals to be a bubble team and I still don't think we will get in unless we win the ACCT.
 
The Pac-12 is actually going to get more bids than I thought at the beginning of the year and that is without Washington.
Oregon, Arizona, Colorado are locks.
Arizona State is a should be in and close to lock.

UCLA, USC, and Stanford are all on the bubble ahead of us.

We need to make the ACCT Finals to be a bubble team and I still don't think we will get in unless we win the ACCT.

Not that surprised by Pac 12 seeds. They were the #4 conference in OOC play, so the seeds are lining up as expected as we entered January.

The ACC and SEC struggled in OOC (#5 and #6) , and the middle of the pack teams in both conferences are in similar situations. Can't get Q1 and Q2 wins as easily as the Pac-12 teams.

I respectfully disagree that we miss if we make the ACC final. But that is a scenario that is still far too unlikely and too far away to really win or lose the discussion.
 
If we had won one of the games we blew (VaTech, ND, NC State, Clemson) and put away FSU, I’d feel we’d be fairly comfortably in. That’s put us 18-10, 11-6 in the ACC with 6 or 7 road wins including a top 20 road win.

That’s how close we are
Frankly, an incredible job by JB this year.
 
Not that surprised by Pac 12 seeds. They were the #4 conference in OOC play, so the seeds are lining up as expected as we entered January.

The ACC and SEC struggled in OOC (#5 and #6) , and the middle of the pack teams in both conferences are in similar situations. Can't get Q1 and Q2 wins as easily as the Pac-12 teams.

I respectfully disagree that we miss if we make the ACC final. But that is a scenario that is still far too unlikely and too far away to really win or lose the discussion.
It's cool I just don't think we have the wins to justify an at-large unless we beat Virginia and one the top 3.

It isn't fair to these midmajors who don't get all these conference games against good teams. We need quality wins. Road wins over VPI/ND/Pitt/GT/UVA are nice but only one of those teams is in the field and its a weaker team in the field as well. If we beat Clemson on the road and ND/VPI at home okay I could see us on the bubble.
 
I have a post below I had made on December 16th predicting the # of seeds by conference (in red font below). I made the following predictions of seeds by conference:

Big Ten - 9 (LY = 8)
Big 12 - 6 (LY - 6)
ACC - 6 (LY = 7)
Pac-12 - 6 (LY - 3)
Big East - 5 (LY -4)
SEC - 4 (LY-7)
AAC - 3 (LY - 4)

I was not that far off based on current matrix.
BIG 10 - One more than expected
BIG 12 - One less than expected
ACC- One or two less than expected.
Pac-12 - Predicted they would have 6.
Big East - This was my big miss - but as a conference they must have done well between December 16th and December 30.
SEC - 4 as expected

Really just too high on the ACC, and a little low on the Big East. I suspect the ACC struggled a little in the last two weeks of out of conference play.


----------------------

While Conference RPI is not the best tool, I don't have many other conference rankings on hand, and it still correlates well to predictions even in the NET era.

You certainly can't predict individual teams, but schools that will dominate the # of seeds and top 5 seed lines. is possible to assess by now. And this year it will be the Big 10 and the Big 12, who were both very strong last year as well.

1576527154972.png





The big movers from the last couple of years is as follows:
The Pac 12 is comfortably up and will move up from 3 seeds, to a best guess of 6 seeds.
The SEC is way way down. They were 7 seeds last year, but I think they go to 4 or 5.
The ACC is down a fair bit as well -- they had seven last year, but I see the SEC taking a bigger hit.
The AAC had 4 bids last year, but has fell from #6 to #8 in conference rankings.


Last year 39 bids went to the top 7 conferences. This is my prediction for this year, assuming the same mix of bracket busters. I also don't think there will be a massive shift in teams outside of these conferences getting at large based on last year.

Big Ten - 9 (LY = 8)
Big 12 - 6 (LY - 6)
ACC - 6 (LY = 7)
Pac-12 - 6 (LY - 3)
Big East - 5 (LY -4)
SEC - 4 (LY-7)
AAC - 3 (LY - 4)
 
There are a number of you that have talked about if we had just won 2 more gmaes and I think that is a fair assessment. I think any 2 wins against anybody would have put us in the discussion by now - either just above, or just below depending on the who and where.

Our ugliest stat is not the Q1 wins. Certain other teams that are just in don't have that much better.
It is our Q1+Q2 record which is an abysmal 5-11, which really compares poorly to the others on the table I have attached in earlier posts on this thread.

Any two wins would have made that 7-9... which looks a heck of a lot better than 5-11.
 
Updated through the weekday games. Overall the bubble played well in the first set of games this week.
Above the line went 6-2, 2 Q1 Wins, no bad losses.
Below the line went 5-3, although no Q1 wins.

With their loss to UNC, NC St has fell out and Stanford has moved in per the matrix.

1582948104368.png
 
Saturday Schedule

12:00 - NC St (-8) vs Q3 Pitt
12:00 - Providence (+7) at Q1 Villanova
3:30 - Miss St (-1) at Q2 Missouri
4:00 - Oklahoma (+8) at Q1 West Virginia
6:00 - Arkansas (+1) at Q2 Georgia
6:00 - Richmond (12.0) at Q3 UMass
8:00 - USC (-3.5) vs Q2 Arizona St
8:00 - Memphis (-5) vs Q3 Tulane
8:30 - Alabama (-5) vs Q2 South Carolina
10:00 - Utah St (-7) at Q2 New Mexico
10:00 - UCLA (+3) vs Q1 Arizona.

I have added UCLA to the watch. After a Q2 win on Thursday, they are now on 14 of 79 brackets (17%). On older brackets from before yesterday they are on 0 of 19.

Alabama and Memphis are really just hanging on at this point after losing their first game of the week.

Mostly Q2 games tomorrow. Three Q1 opportunities are all dogs. UCLA through has the best chance as they are a 3 point dog, Longer shots would be Providence and Oklahoma, but those would also be more "marquee" victories.

After their Q1 wins earlier this week, USC and Oklahoma would move very close to near lock status with a follow up win tomorrow.
 
A new team on the watch is UCLA. Their resume is all over the place. Somewhat similar to Providence. They are benefiting from a deeper conference but played like poop in the OOC.

They were on 17% of the brackets submitted today. What stands out for them is their NET of 76, which is by far the worse of a team on the bubble. But we know about getting in with an RPI in the 70's.

UCLA really accomplished nothing OOC.
- They loss 6 games OOC, with the biggest win being NET 112 UNLV.
- They lost at home to NET 267 Cal St Fullerton who is 8-18. That actually surpasses Providence's loss to NET 288 Long Beach St on a neutral court as perhaps the worst loss by a tourney team the pass 5 years (if they get in)

But they have managed to go 11-5 in the metric friendly P-12 this year.
5 Q1 Wins -- beating Colorado twice and Arizona once is the core. But where the confernence depth helps them is that Washington and Oregon St are considered Q1 road games.

To me it's not overly impressive, but it just shows how much better the Pac-12 is than the ACC in metrics this year. )I could provide a link to those who mocked my assertion at the end of December... This stuff is all very clear at the end of December... it's no mystery at that point which conferences will have its middle of the pack teams benefit and which ones will not)
 
we just need to keep winning and see how things shape up by acc tourney time.
 
Providence up by 12 at Nova at the half. Would be a massive road win.

Providence showing what the difference is playing in a good league and a mediocre league.


As bad as you think Syracuse was, they did not have any bad losses OOC. Providence had 4, including 2 Q4 losses. They were in a much bigger hole at the beginning of January.

They are 10-6 in the Big East (if they win) and are now well in, not yet locked.. Syracuse goes 12-8 in the ACC (assuming we win the next 3) and we still have serious work to do..
 
Pitt up 44=42 against NC St.

A Q3 loss is not something NC St can afford. That would give them four Q3 losses.

Here is a strange quirk if they lose:

5-3 vs Q1
3-4 vs Q3

There seems to be more resumes this year than in prior years with teams with lots of good (+Q1 wins) but lots of bad. (Providence, NC St, Cincy, UCLA)
 
Texas is going to be back on the bubble line after their big road win today at Texas Tech.

4th Q1 win
5 road wins
6-11 Q1+Q2
no bad losses
64 Net

Their resume was a little better than us entering today (but had many similar characteristics) but now the 2 extra Q1 wins after today, gives them a fair gap.
 
Providence completes the significant win at Villanova.
Pitt survives.
Texas rises up again with a Q1 road win, and will be one of the top two or three out by Monday.

If I was a team closer to the bubble line like Georgetown, I would be worried about the amount of general positive happening on the bubble so far this week while they lost.
 
That settles it for us. Will still continue to do this from a national perspective.

The bubble continues its extremely strong day so far:

Oklahoma gets strong Q1 road win over West Virginia, (they were 8 point dogs). That makes it two Q1 wins for them this week, and they are getting close to lock status.

Miss St with solid Q2 win at Missouri.

So far the bubble is 4-0 today in terms of the games today, and really 5-0 if you include Texas who going to be on the bubble line with their Q1 win today at Texas Tech.

When Georgetown loses Sunday they may be close to done with all this happening.
 
Historically I’m optimistic from a Syracuse perspective l, but I’m with jncuse here...

We either need to win the ACCT, or get to the ACCT title game.

If we win out including a Duke/FSU/Ville win then lose on Friday in the ACCT we could hope for a prayer but even then it’d be tough.

Stings the one year we can win on the road, we struggle at home and have no wins out of conference.

I think most here expect us to win our last 2 regular season games and go 1-1 in the ACCT which puts us at 19-14 overall. Respectable but clearly below the cut line
 
Some other games from today.

1583038582358.png


Arkansas was the 3rd team out entering today per the matrix so any loss to a weaker team hurts. (this was a Q2 loss). They are running out of time now. I think the question to ask with Arkansas is how was a 6-9 team in the very weak SEC in as of now on 29% of the brackets entering today.

There case entering today
#41 in the NET which is very good
5-10 on Q1/Q2 which is bad, (now 5-11)
4 road wins which is OK
0 bad losses which is OK.

To be honest I did not see them in at all, but obviously many did. To me those that had them in were overrating the importance of their NET.
1583038636126.png

About 5% of people still had them in today after losing earlier this week.
Their resume is very similar to Arkansas. Very modest after a good NET of 39.
We will see how important the NET is this year for getting a team in -- because that is their entire case.
2 bad losses
Only 1 Q1 win
7 Q2 wins is nice but their Q1+Q2 record was still just 7-11 entering today, so I have no clue why someone would have had them in.


1583038850079.png


USC may have locked it up with this.


1583038743720.png


Richmond was the first team out entering today. This is really a nothing game -- the win does nothing except avoiding a bad loss. The margin may help their NET get above 50 which may help the optics.
 
Providence is a lock.

We have to win our tournament which isn’t happening.
 
1583039620858.png


Too little, too late for Memphis.

1583039749844.png


Crucial loss for Utah State. Utah St. They were somewhere between 4th and 6th last in, but they don't get that many Q2 opportunities. So a Q2 loss hurts them perhaps more than others.

They did beat LSU and Florida. I would keep them in.

1583040557864.png


Despite their record Arizona is NET 11, so this was a Q1 win.
They were fourth team out before today per the matrix. I would suspect on next Monday's matrix they would be the first team out, barely behind Utah St.

UCLA as mentioned above was horrible OOC (6 losses with multiple really bad losses), but the PAC-12 being solid helped them recover.
 
Providence is a lock.

We have to win our tournament which isn’t happening.

I don't think Providence is a lock. That would imply they can finish 0-3 and finish 17-15 and be comfortably in.
They need to win at least one more game. Can't lose the next two at home vs Xavier and Depaul.

That being said, I think they will be fine since I don't expect them to go 0-3.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
167,144
Messages
4,682,945
Members
5,901
Latest member
CarlsbergMD

Online statistics

Members online
134
Guests online
1,180
Total visitors
1,314


Top Bottom