Bubble Watch - Week from Feb 20th to Feb 26th

[jdubs30]

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10 seed, but an empty 10 seed. A bad loss would put them in the same class as Monmouth, San Diego St, Valpo above.

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Temple is last team in oer matrix (but it is due to a flaw that only occurs once on the matrix). Most people have UConn as an at large, and many people put the league leader (Temple) as the auto, but not as an at large. But since UConn has more mentions in brackets. they get the Auto and Temple has enough mentions to get in as an at- large.

The biggest worry in the AAC is a team like this or Houston winning the AAC tourney, turning this into a 3 bid league.

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Wisconsin is up to a 9 seed now.

Could AAC steal 4? Temple, UConn, Cincy, Houston are the semis in the AACT, then Houston over Temple in the title game. Depending how those 4 teams close, we could see all 4 in.

Wisconsin is essentially int he same boat as us then. 10 losses, 9 seed, in a home game (even though Pitt is way better than Illinois); a loss for them should be more damaging than our loss was yesterday.

I can't believe our RPI dropped to 55...that's a solid 10 spots, but I guess it makes sense

 

[jdubs30]

- Yesterday's loss did indeed hurt quite a bit. But you are overrating what we need to do to get in the tourney. A win yesterday would have made us near lock, needing only to beat NC St.

- 2007 had 65 teams. This year we effectively have 70 teams making the tourney since Louisville and SMU are out. It makes it a lot easier

- You are focusing way too much on the individual RPI as the determining factor of who gets in. The individual RPI is important in that it is a "Take a look at my resume" number. If you are in the 60's (or maybe above 65 this year as they need to get 70 teams essentially) it may stop the committee from taking a full look at you. But our RPI will be good enough for them to look at our entire resume. And we do well in that because we have a number of top 50 (or tourney/bubble teams) and only one bad loss.

-. Here is our projected RPI with (using the RPI wizard on rpiforecast)
Win over NC St only -- 62
Win over NC st and Florida St - 46

That is the impact of a road win on RPI when so many teams are bunched in the middle.

- 10-8 is a lock in this for this tourney. That RPI, with top 50 wins, and only one bad loss, would be more than fine.

9-9 (without a bad loss in the ACC) is the sweat number, and I still think we have decent chances in that scenario.

Good post. I think it's easy for people to focus on just us, but if you look across the whole landscape there are plenty of schools in our spot. We are in a position where we just have to hold course, other schools need big time wins and help.

Curious jn -- in the bizarre scenario where we win @UNC, but lose to NC State and @FSU, where does that put us? 9-9 in conference, 19 wins overall. But we'd have wins @Duke, @UNC, and ND in conference. Would you still be sweating?

 

[ascalice]

St Johns and Seton Hall are tied at 55 with 2:50 to go in the 2nd half.

 

[orangenirvana]

Seton Hall wins by 1. That was the worst final two minutes of basketball I've ever seen.

 

[jncuse]

Could AAC steal 4? Temple, UConn, Cincy, Houston are the semis in the AACT, then Houston over Temple in the title game. Depending how those 4 teams close, we could see all 4 in.

I guess its possible, but seemingly unlikely. The AAC also has a chance at just 1. Temple is still a ways away from getting an at large. And I don't remember last year, but I remember in 2014 the committee seemed a little unkind to the AAC.

 

[jncuse]

Would have been nice to see St. John's win that one, but they are hard to rely on.,

 

[pearl31]

at least Mich lost - although Maryland did almost all they could to give it away - Trimble still not playing well

 

[jncuse]

Basically an uneventful day (in terms of end results).

Most bubble teams were fairly nice sized favourites and won --- but several struggled for a while despite being large favourites (Monmouth, Seton Hall, Tulsa, Wisconsin).

Biggest positive win was Temple getting a nice road win vs a top 100 team in Houston.

 

[jncuse]

No bubble impacting games on Monday.

However, in terms of games for the top 3 seed lines, there are two very nice games on Big Monday -- 4 top 13 teams playing.

 

[Toga]

I swear I thought the title said Bubbie watch. Oy.

 

[Knicks411]

Coach was quoted in the Seth Davis interview, "This year, there will be 10 or so teams with 10 or 11 losses on selection Sunday, and only 4 of the 10 will get in." We are headed for at least 12 before then, with losses at UNC and 1 in the ACCT. So if he is expecting 11 losses to be bubble territory, what does that say about perhaps 13? When was the last time a 13 loss team received an at large bid? Shaky potatoes...

Last year there were 6.

 

[Knicks411]

I did say I would start to worry a little if we lost to Pitt, so here we are...

With the way FSU is playing recently, that game is becoming more and more a game we have a solid chance at winning. If we win 2 more games (ACCT included) I'll feel pretty comfortable on selection sunday. Even just 1 and I think we'll be able to get there, but a potential ACC first round loss, depending on the opponent, could be a killer.

 

[RandygoCuse]

I did say I would start to worry a little if we lost to Pitt, so here we are...

With the way FSU is playing recently, that game is becoming more and more a game we have a solid chance at winning. If we win 2 more games (ACCT included) I'll feel pretty comfortable on selection sunday. Even just 1 and I think we'll be able to get there, but a potential ACC first round loss, depending on the opponent, could be a killer.

Supposed to be a weak bubble this year (I feel like they've been saying this every year, the talent has been spread as thin as ever). We still have a shot with one, but it'll be tight.

 

[Knicks411]

Supposed to be a weak bubble this year (I feel like they've been saying this every year, the talent has been spread as thin as ever). We still have a shot with one, but it'll be tight.

With one, I think a lot of the issue is who does the loss come to in the ACCT. If we finish 1-2 we probably won't get seeded in a spot to lose to someone like B C or Va tech, so I think we'd be ok? But it'd be super tight.

I'm going to remain optimistic and say we get State on Saturday, plus either @FSU or the ACCT first round

 

[pearl31]

Palm and Lunardi updated brackets this morning:
Palm has SU a 9 (down one line)
Lunardi has SU a 10 (down one line) and one of the last 4 byes

 

[RandygoCuse]

Palm and Lunardi updated brackets this morning:
Palm has SU a 9 (down one line)
Lunardi has SU a 10 (down one line) and one of the last 4 byes

Surprised Lunardi gave us a bye.

 

[Knicks411]

Palm and Lunardi updated brackets this morning:
Palm has SU a 9 (down one line)
Lunardi has SU a 10 (down one line) and one of the last 4 byes

Pitt took our spot in BK too...

 

[CorduroyG]

Id rather be a 10 than 8/9, could pitt loss be blessing in disguise??

 

[jncuse]

Last year there were 6.

Thanks for the info -- I would think that number is at least doubled this year.

6 teams currently in at 10 losses
4 teams with nine losses (And they will lose at least one game in the tourney if they aer at large)
7 teams with 8 losses (And some will lose a regular season, and almost all will lose a conference tourney game)

 

[pearl31]

Pitt took our spot in BK too...

Pitt will lose some more games, as will we, so we'll have to wait and see how things shake out

 

[jncuse]

Id rather be a 10 than 8/9, could pitt loss be blessing in disguise??

In my experience in reviewing seedings as they are announced is that while they generally have done a good job with the in/out, the 8th to 12th line in recent years appears to be sometimes totally random. So we can end up anywhere.

 

[pearl31]

In my experience in reviewing seedings as they are announced is that while they generally have done a good job with the in/out, the 8th to 12th line in recent years appears to be sometimes totally random. So we can end up anywhere.

especially in the last few years with them basing so much on geography... it's become apparent the committee is willing to play loosey goosey with seed lines to get more teams closer to "home"

 

[Knicks411]

In my experience in reviewing seedings as they are announced is that while they generally have done a good job with the in/out, the 8th to 12th line in recent years appears to be sometimes totally random. So we can end up anywhere.

Would agree 100% with this; I bet there is someone on the consensus last 4 in that's like an 8 or somehting.

 

[RandygoCuse]

especially in the last few years with them basing so much on geography... it's become apparent the committee is willing to play loosey goosey with seed lines to get more teams closer to "home"

Which leads to the question - would you rather move one seed down and be closer to home (let's say close enough to get significant crowd support) or have the higher seed with a closer to neutral crowd?

 

[Chris02M]

With one, I think a lot of the issue is who does the loss come to in the ACCT. If we finish 1-2 we probably won't get seeded in a spot to lose to someone like B C or Va tech, so I think we'd be ok? But it'd be super tight.

I'm going to remain optimistic and say we get State on Saturday, plus either @FSU or the ACCT first round

think va tech is going to be our opponent in 8-9 game in acc tourney