The Scoring Problem

While I love men's college basketball as much as ever, I've noticed a lot of grumbling about the sport over the past couple of years.  There has been a noticeable trend of decreased scoring that seems to have a lot of people up in arms.  While I think the panic about this is overblown, it is undeniable that scoring has been trending downwards for a while, reaching a 3-point era low of 67.5 points per team per game this past season: 

It's east to identify many reasons for this (less experienced players playing major minutes, more teams willing to play at slow tempos, better focus on transition defense), but I'm not going to dig into those in this post.  Rather, I'd like to talk briefly about my opinions on a few methods that could potentially increase scoring.  I will split those methods up into bad ideas and good ideas.  The ideas that I like are not necessarily motivated by a desire for higher scoring (the decrease in scoring isn't so dramatic that I care, and I rather like defense anyway), but a desire for an even better product.

One Bad Idea

1. Shrinking the shot clock

A lot of people have made the call for shortening the college game's 35 second shot clock.  This would undeniably increase the number of possessions per game as well as the number of shots.  However, I have a number of issues with this:

- While we would get a lot more shots, there is no guarantee that scoring would increase at the same rate.  Shortening the clock may lead to more rushed looks and bad shots.  The final score would reflect the effort to increase scoring, but it may be more ugly getting there.

- We would see less variance among teams.  Currently, we can see a massive difference in tempos in tournament matchups such as Ole Miss-Wisconsin, Florida-Northwestern State, and of course, Georgetown-FGCU.  Part of the fun of such clashes in style is seeing which team is able to dictate tempo, and how the other team is able to adjust.  If we shrink the shot clock, the variance between tempos will shrink and we will likely see less offensive diversity.

- There's a fundamental difference between the high scoring teams of 20 years ago and today's teams.  In today's game, there is a focus on transition defense that has steadily grown over the years.  Watch almost any game today and you will see a majority of offensive players clear out after a shot is taken.  Since ultra-quick transition buckets are tougher to come by, we likely won't ever see a return to the extremely high pace of teams like Loyola Marymount.

Putting all this together, I'm not sure that changing the shot clock is going to change the game for the better.  Sure, it will probably add a couple points to the final score, but we need to consider much more than that when making a decision like this.

Two Good Ideas

1. Expanding the no-charge semi-circle

In last weekend's Ohio State-Iowa State contest, the second-most talked about play of the game was this charge that Aaron Craft drew in the closing minutes (1:15 mark of the video):



There was a lot of consternation afterwards about how Craft's foot was hovering above the line, which meant that the play should have been called as a block.  Most reasonable voices have pointed out how ridiculous it is to expect a ref to be able to make that discerning of a call at game speed, so I'm not going to argue about that.  What I am going to argue about is my opinion that he was still too close to the bucket for a charge to be called.  By the time Aaron Craft slid fully into place, Will Clyburn already had his left foot in the lane on his way to score a basket.  In the interest of seeing more points scored, the NCAA should probably allow buckets like that to stand.

The easiest way to swing the balance in favor of the offense would be to adopt the NBA-size semi-circle.  The NCAA has used a 3-foot radius semi-circle for the past season.  The NBA, on the other hand, uses a larger 4-foot radius semi-circle.  Making this change would change a lot of charge calls into foul calls, which should increase scoring.  The secondary and even more desirable outcome of this would be less defensive focus on taking charges and more focus on denying the penetration in the first place.

2. Changing the balance on block-charges

While I hope the NCAA adopts the above change, I don't even find it to be the most salient point stemming from Craft's charge.  To me, the bigger story about that play was that Aaron Craft was able to rush across the lane at the last possible second and still draw a foul.  Clyburn was already well on his way to the basket when Craft got in position.  If this was a one-off call, I wouldn't make a big deal out of it, but calls like this have been common all season long (just listen to Jay Bilas announce a game...any game).  I love a good defensive team, but many of these charge calls go beyond playing good defense into the realm of "sneakiness."  Instead of encouraging good anticipation and defensive positioning, the current implementation of the charge rule incentivizes trying to beat an offender to a spot.  More than anything, I think placing special emphasis on discouraging swooping in for the charge would be an offseason maneuver that would both increase scoring and make the game a little better.

Friday Tourney Live Blog: Go Jays! Go Irish!

11:00 PM

Quote of the night from Ad: "If only we still had Dragicevich."  Never thought I'd hear that.

9:50 PM

Wow.

For the second time in the last five years, Georgetown got run off the court by a significantly lower seed.  FGCU got undeniably hot, but they almost made a handful of plays that were more impressive than anything Georgetown did all night.  I don't know if their performance tops the 1997 Coppin State squad for the best 15-seed of all time, but it is at the very least close.  Neither SDSU or Oklahoma are particularly great, so I would give the Eagles a decent chance of playing until next weekend.

I forget where I heard it from, but I heard a theory a few years ago about JTIII that I'm getting closer and closer to believing.  He's a great coach with a unique system that he implements well with the top talent that he recruits.  However, if a team comes at him with something challenging then he seems to have trouble adjusting.  Georgetown pretty consistently had trouble creating scoring opportunities out of the half-court offense and looked dynamic when they ran the floor, but they never emphasized the fast break and as a result came up several three point buckets short.  It's entirely possible that the Hoyas have just been unlucky to run into a few buzzsaws over the years, but at this point we have to start wondering about JTIII's ability to live up to his father's reputation.

Now, GO IRISH!

7:45 PM

In between ridiculous Aaron Craft plays, I thought I would rank the announcing duos/trios:

#8: Kevin Harlan/Reggie Miller/Len Elmore - I've already discussed this, but I don't like these guys.  It's a shame too, because this used to be Gus Johnson's crew.  Gus isn't perfect like they hype surrounding him would have you believe, but March Madness was his literal forte.

#7: Spero Dedes/Doug Gottlieb - I like Gottlieb more than I dislike him, but he talks way too much.  Once he gets settled in to announcing a little more, I think he could be an asset, but he's just a mess right now.

#6: Tim Brando/Mike Gminski - Meh.

#5: Ian Eagle/Jim Spanarkel - Slightly less meh.

#4: Marv Albert/Steve Kerr - I like these two a lot, but their lack of college experience hurts a bit, especially with Kerr.

#3: Brian Anderson/Dan Bonner - I'm probably a little biased towards Anderson from my time in Wisconsin (in a good way), but I do objectively like this crew.  Anderson is a great jack of all trades.

#2: Jim Nantz/Clark Kellogg - Nantz clearly doesn't watch a ton of college basketball either, but he's so skilled at play by play duties that I don't think it matters.  Kellogg isn't an all time great by any measure, but he's been an improvement over Billy Packer.  These guys handle the big moments with aplomb.

#1: Verne Lundquist/Bill Raftery - Verne seems to be losing a step, but this crew still wins by a mile.  Raftery combines personality and expertise so well, and the two share a great camaraderie.

7:15 PM

So Greg McDermott now has the same number of tournament wins at Creighton as Dana Altman does, except he did it in a quarter of the time.  There's a lot of mitigating factors in there (Creighton's budget is higher now, Dana didn't have his progeny in tow, etc...), but I'm pleased with the job he's done.

I got back from a food run with about 6 minutes left in the Illinois-Colorado game.  Colorado didn't score until there was 16 seconds left.  So that went poorly for them.

This Georgetown-FGCU is an interesting test of the hypothesis I laid out earlier.  Georgetown has a similar profile to Pitt and Wisconsin in that they are a defense-first team that plays at a very slow tempo.  FGCU isn't quite the test that the other saw, but it'll be interesting to follow the Hoyas to see if they can buck the trend.  The committee did no favors putting Florida in their half of the bracket, so we probably shouldn't be expecting an Elite Eight run anyway.  Georgetown would have the best player in that potential matchup, but that's about the only advantage they would have.

They really shouldn't have Kevin Harlan and Marv Albert announce on the same day.  It's too confusing.  Also Kevin Harlan is terrible.

4:00 PM

Creighton goes into the half up 5.  Here are some halftime thoughts:

-  Well, that was far from flawless, but Creighton was at least able to show that their shooting prowess translates to games against mediocre Big East teams (12 for 19 shooting from the field).  Grant Gibbs was pretty much worthless (0 points, 1 assist, 4 turnovers, 2 fouls), but everyone else brought something to the table offensively.  The defense gave up a few too many open looks on the perimeter, but they mostly seemed to be trying to avoid doing stupid things like getting into foul trouble.  On that front, they succeeded well only committing three fouls.  Cincinnati had only three layups and no dunks, which confirms the hypothesis that this is the rare super-athletic jump shooting team.

- Echenique is getting some good opportunities down low largely because Cincinnati isn't bringing a help defender when he posts up.  The nice thing about being such a good shooting team is that it frees up guys like Echenique.  Hopefully, he can keep it up.

- Fun fact:  Ethan Wragge is 77 for 173 from three on the season.  He is also 5 for 11 from two.  Announcers never fail to mention this imbalance, but it's so fascinating that I can't help but repeat it.

- I've always disliked Reggie Miller as an announcer, and he's doing nothing to change that today.  He said a lot of dumb things during the first half, but the worst was his assertion that Creighton would see more physical play when they moved to the Big East.  Yes, there will undoubtedly be more athletes in the Big East, but the Valley is as physical of a conference as there is in basketball (This is in large part because Valley refs seem to enjoy inflicting pain on others).  I enjoy the pairing of Steve Kerr and Marv Albert, but in general I don't like bringing NBA people in to announce/commentate on the tournament.

2:50 PM

One last tweet before Creighton tips:

@eamonnbrennan FWIW, team with better AdjO is 14/18 so far (using pre-tourney kenpom stats). Team with better AdjD is 9/18.
— Josh Whiteside (@RookTakesPwn) March 22, 2013

This tweet is far from a conclusive statement, but it points to a theory I've had for a while.  We've seen strong defensive programs like Wisconsin and Pitt underperform in the tournament a lot.  I had always written it off to random variation in the past, but I'm starting to think that defense might "peak" a bit in the regular season.  That is, it's a lot easier to try harder on defense in the tournament than it is to improve one's offense.  Wisconsin and Pitt are often two of the best teams during the regular season, so it might be hard for them to raise their games in the tourney.  Maybe I'll look into this more in the offseason.

2:40 PM

Wisconsin: 7-30 on threes, 8-28 on twos.  Ole Miss wasn't much better, but they were better enough.  My previous analysis was probably a little off.  The fact that Wisconsin was playing at their speed and only winning by six left the window wide open for Ole Miss to pull off the upset.  So we've now had three 5-seeds lose and the other one win by the largest margin ever for a 5-seed.  Madness indeed.

Time to gear up for the Jays.  I'll post at the half.

2:00 PM

Wisconsin has the fourth slowest tempo of all the teams in the tournament, while Ole Miss has the second fastest.  That Wisconsin has been able to dictate the flow of the game makes me feel confident in their chances the rest of the way.

Interesting fact I learned when looking up the numbers for that last paragraph:  The three slowest tempos in the tourney are Pitt, ND, and Georgetown.  It's not like the entire Big East is like that, as Villanova and Louisville play much faster, but it's interesting that a clump of teams like that come from a power conference.  If you look a little further up the list, Florida plays at the 5th slowest tempo of all tourney teams.  I don't necessarily think this means that there's some sort of correlation between success and slow tempos since there are a lot of terrible non-tourney teams in between those five, but it's interesting at the very least.

1:15 PM

Text from Fro: "Wisconsin is easily the most frustrating team to watch."  Yes, yes they are.

Not even counting his personality, Marshall Henderson is a fascinating player.  His 35% average from long range is good but not great, but he's an incredibly efficient player because that's pretty much all he does.  His turnover rate is a low 13.3% and he's great when he gets to the line (88%).  I still don't like the matchup for him, but Henderson is such a wildcard that I wouldn't put the upset past him.  It helps that he has teammate Reginald Buckner making a bunch of insanely good plays down low.

I've talked about Florida a lot the last week, but I want to take a moment to recognize their opponent today, Northwestern State.  You'll undoubtedly hear the announcers talk about how they lead the nation in scoring.  While they appear to be a fine offensive team, a lot of stat that can be attributed to their weak conference and their fastest in the nation tempo (they average almost 73 possessions per game).  As someone who always rooted for those ridiculous VMI teams to make the tourney, I'm excited to see what a team like this can do.  It's too bad they got such a tough draw.

12:00 PM

Let's do this again.  Today shouldn't be as "sexy" of a day of basketball, but my two teams will be in action, so it will definitely be a more nerve-wracking day.  First, a couple quick thoughts about last night:

- I didn't post much last night for two reasons.  One, I had a pretty significant post-Chipotle lull where I didn't feel like doing anything.  Two, I spent a large portion of the evening simply in awe of Colorado State's offensive dominance.  That sort of performance is the kind you expect (but don't always get) from five senior starters.  I was a little nervous that the Rams' rebounding dominance would shrink against the athletic front line of Missouri, but instead they had probably their best game of the year on the glass (43% of offensive boards and 91% of defensive boards).  Some slight imperfections, such as their 14 turnovers, don't bode well for an opponent as ruthless as Louisville, but for one night the Rams showed that there is some truly great basketball being played out west.

- Gonzaga held on for the win, but 1-seeds that struggle in their opener tend not to do too well later on in the tournament.  10 of the 13 1-seeds to beat the 16 by less than 10 failed to reach the Final Four.  The regular rate of 1-seeds winning their region is less than 50%, so that isn't the most shocking stat in the world.  Additionally, simply measuring final point spread isn't the best way to measure the closeness of a game.  Still, I would be concerned if I were a Gonzaga fan.

And now, on to today:

- There's a lot of angles to the Creighton-Cincinnati game.  As a Creighton fan, I have pored over every single one of them.  On the plus side is the fact that Creighton is just a better team than Cincinnati (21 spots higher in Sagarin, 23 spots higher in Pomeroy, and 37 spots better in LRMC).  Another positive is the fact that the Irish, who are similarly an all-offense team, beat Cincinnati twice during the regular season.  Rationally, I feel about as confident as I can in the Jays' chances given the situation at hand.

Of course there are also reasons, both rational and irrational, to doubt their chances.  Creighton may be the best shooting team in the nation, but Cincinnati counters with the 9th best eFG% defense (just 43%), which suggests that they may be able to effectively counter Creighton's biggest strength.  Also, we saw a prime example yesterday of how teams with superior athleticism can have an advantage over smaller, more efficient teams with Memphis' win over St. Mary's.  Creighton does have Echenique to counter that, but they are still clearly less athletic overall.

In the end, Creighton finds itself up against a bit of a bizarro team.  Cincinnati is one of the most physical teams in the nation and sports a lot of size all across the court.  Then on offense, they shoot threes over 37% of the time, which is well above the national average.  That unusual combination of methods of attack may very well match up poorly against the Jays.  I know the Jays have the ability to outplay the Bearcats, but they're going to have to be really careful not to fall into the traps that I know Mick Cronin will have set for them.

- We get to see a lot of 2-seed action today, with all four of them facing off against their first round opponents.  We don't have quite the likelihood of seeing upsets on this line as we did on the 3 and 4 lines, but Pomeroy still gives us a 34% chance of seeing at least one of them fall.  If you can only choose one of them to watch, pick the Ohio State-Iona matchup, which features the best 15-seed and arguably the best 2-seed.

- Florida starts their run at a title today.  They will probably be the SEC's last bullet unless Marshall Henderson works some magic, but it's a hell of a bullet to have.  Even though nerds like me are picking them to win it all, it's important to remember that they're probably going to lose a close game at some point.  Still, I like their chances of making it out of their region.  The South has the weakest 1-seed, 2-seed, and 6-seed, so a lot less stands in their way to Atlanta than one would typically expect.

Thursday Tourney Live Blog: Don't Stop the PAARTAAY

Since I'm home watching basketball for the next two days, I thought I would try my hand at liveblogging the festivities.  If I feel the format works for me and if y'all seem to enjoy it, then maybe I'll make a habit out of this.  If not, then it will have been a fun experiment.  Here goes nothing.

6:30 PM

I am loving Southern's offensive strategy today.  They're up against a great offense, so they really have to have the mindset of keeping up with them to a degree.  Since they're a good shooting team from long range (36.4%, good for 65th in the nation), I like that over half of their shots have been from three (20 out of 38 shots).  Their only hope in such a lopsided matchup is to have a ridiculously hot day, and they're well on their way.

5:50 PM

And of course, Marquette goes 3 for 3 from three in the closing minutes to pull off the one point win.  Something something about this being the reason they play the games.

The play that really set up the end game was Davidson's possession when they were up 3 with one minute left. De'Mon Brooks rolled to the rim and got a pass for an uncontested lay-up with roughly 20 seconds left on the shot clock.  Some might question Davidson rushing their shot given the final outcome, but I still think it was the right call.  Shooting quickly does give the opponent more time to realistically hit more buckets, but the basket did give Davidson the all-important two possession lead.  If you can get a good look when the game is still on the line, you should almost always take the shot.

I haven't seen the Pitbull commercial yet today.  Experiment dead.  Boooo.

5:00 PM

St. Mary's valliant effort just came up short against Memphis.  There's really only one stat that is needed to explain this one: Memphis - 12 blocks, St Mary's - none.  St. Mary's was the better offensive squad over the course of the year, even when adjusted for level of opponent, but they just  couldn't execute their game against one of the most physical teams in the nation.  I think the argument that "March is about matchups" is overused, but there do seem to be occasions like this where it rings true.  Of course, if Dellavadova would have made that last basket this would all be irrelevant, so this could just be another lazy post-hoc rationalization.  In truth, reality is probably somewhere in between.

I was happy to see Wichita play to the best of their ability and do what they couldn't do in last year's tourney: Win a game.  It helped that Pitt didn't really seem to show up.  The one Panther that looked strong was freshman Steven Adams (especially on the glass), but as Doug Gottlieb was saying during the game Jamie Dixon didn't play him enough.  I hope Dixon doesn't flee to USC as he fits the Pitt program quite well.  It will be too bad if this is how his tenure with the Panthers end.

The announcers in the Davidson-Marquette game just shared a great stat: Of all the teams in the tournament, Marquette is the worst three point shooting team (30.1%, which is good for 317th in the nation).  If they can't play lockdown defense in the coming minutes, they're probably not going to be able to pull off a last minute rally like St. Mary's almost did.

3:00 PM

As I love this Billiken team, I've been watching almost the whole first half of the STL-NMSU game.  Some halftime observations:

- The Aggies did not hit a single jump shot or free throw.  All 16 of their points came on lay-ups, tip-ins and dunks.  They may need a little more variety in their offense if they're going to stay in this game.

- Dwayne Evans is winning the matchup down low by a wide margin.  His 16 points are tying NMSU all by himself largely because he's not afraid to go directly after the Aggies giant Sim Bhullar.  Normally, a foot difference between players means the bigger player is going to dominate (duh), but this matchup is showing that there's a lot more to basketball than height.  Dwayne Evans has been the MVP of a top-ten team for the last two months, and he's showing why in San Jose.

- It's good to see Cody Ellis getting his shot back.  After a dreadful February, he had a good week in Brooklyn and has two threes in the first half of this game.  If the Billikens are going to make a deep run, they'll need his shooting touch.

1:30 PM

Brad Stevens mentions Bucknell's amazing field goal defense in his halftime interview (4th in the nation in eFG% with 42.6%).  My entire Twitter feed swooned all at once.  Here's a good article about Drew Cannon, the MBA that Brad Stevens hired to run the numbers, who I am assuming influenced that quote.  Maybe I should have tried to make friends with Mike Brey last year.

12:50 PM

Valpo started off the first game of the day in MANTAMAN, but then switched to a panic-zone after the first media time-out.  It didn't really help as Michigan State has gotten 7 offensive rebounds on 16 opportunities and has also found enough holes to hit some threes.  Sparty is playing pretty well early.

Meanwhile, the Marquette pod has started with an early lead for Butler.  It took almost four minutes for Bucknell to take something other than a 15 foot jumper on offense, but they are playing good enough defense to make up for that.  Every team from this quartet has better than a 15% chance of advancing to the Sweet Sixteen.  I'm betting this game comes down to the wire.

11:45 AM

The most fun scenario I've come upon in the tourney simulator so far is the Midwest bracket turning into an impromptu Metro Conference tournament.  The (not that incredibly improbable) Sweet Sixteen matchups would see two-thirds of the charter members face off with Louisville facing Saint Louis and Memphis taking on Cincinnati.  I hope this doesn't happen because it would mean that Creighton will have lost in the first round, but it would still be a fun consolation prize.

The wackiest Final Four team I've seen thus far is 12-seed Oregon making it out of the hardest bracket in the tourney.  I'm betting that won't happen.

11:00 AM

The first slate of games is about to get underway.  I am excited.  I am so excited that I just spent the last half hour simulating the tournament dozens of times.  Here are some thoughts on the afternoon games in no particular order:

- If I had to pick only one of the next two days to watch basketball, and didn't care about ND or the Jays, then I would most certainly choose today.*  Today features two 1-seed pods and three each of 3-seed and 4-seed pods, which means that all of the 2-seeds play tomorrow.  Pods featuring 2 seeds tend to be the most boring since there aren't a lot of 15 over 2 upsets (except for last year, of course), and the 2 vs. 7/10 matchup tends not to hold the gravity of the 1 vs. 8/9.  Thus, we get to see a bunch of very even matchups and some legitimate chances for big upsets.

*Insert Sophie's Choice joke here.

- Most commentators seem to be taking it for granted that we'll get to see Pitt challenge Gonzaga in the second round.*  While they are correct that Pitt is ridiculously underseeded as a 8, Wichita State is no scrub.  For one, I don't think Pitt has as complete of a player on their team as Carl Hall.  I also think Malcolm Armstead matches up quite well with Tray Woodall (I saw Armstead almost single handedly lead the Shockers to a Valley title in person, so I might be biased).  Of course, quoting individual matchups against Pitt is a bit of a disservice since Pitt is one of the best "better than the sum of its parts" teams, but it's still something to consider.  I would still favor Pitt in this matchup, but it should be interesting to see if Gregg Marshall has something up his sleeve.

*I'm still going with the first and second round nomenclature in my blog, because the alternative is just too confusing.  And stupid.

- I was going to write something about the upset potential in the 3-14 games this afternoon, but then I realized that the bigger story was just how terrible of a job the committe did in seeding the automatic qualifiers.  The 16-seeds are fine, since they seem to be the six worst teams, but here's the non-wildcard 13-15 seeds ordered by their Pomeroy ratings (they're also roughly in the same order in LRMC, althought that model is way more in love with NW State):

60: 14-seed Davidson
65: 14-seed Valpo
81: 13-seed New Mexico State
93: 15-seed Iona
101: 13-seed South Dakota State
106: 14-seed Harvard
122: 15-seed Florida Gulf Coast
127: 15-seed Pacific
128: 14-seed Northwestern State
133: 13-seed Montana
143: 15-seed Albany

When you combine some of these misfires along with problems with the higher seeds (Marquette being a 3), you get a situation where 14-seeds almost have a better probability of winning at least one game than the 13 seeds do.  I used Pomeroy's log5 analysis of the tourney to find the odds of such things happening.  There is a 61% chance of a 13-seed winning a game and a not much lower 58% chance of a 14-seed winning a game.  If it wasn't for the 3-seed outlier Florida, then the 14 line would have a much better chance of winning a game.  I hope the committee spends a little more time on this in the future.

- For the third straight year, my bracket might benefit from a play-in game winner that I didn't actually pick.  Two years ago I thought USC would beat Georgetown in the first round only to see VCU do it and win points for me instead.  Last year, I picked Cal to upset Temple, only for South Florida to advance to the round of 32.  This year, I had picked MTSU as my sweet sixteen surprise, but that will obviously not be happening.  Regardless, I still like St. Mary's as a likely upset pick over Memphis today and the Spartans on Saturday.  The Tigers just don't have anyone as good as Matthew Dellavadova and the Spartans have some serious point guard issues that leads me not to trust them for a deep run.

- Finally, I will be conducting a rigorous study today on the effects of combining Bud Light and Pitbull.  My hypothesis is that the volume of "Don't stop the Party" commercials will be positively correlated to my willingness to continue partying.  I will measure my willingness to party by asking myself how much I would like to take a shot every time the ad plays and recording the results.  I will control for my environment by changing the lock to the apartment so Ad can't get in when she returns from work.  Sorry wife, it's science.

Bracket Thoughts

Because of the way the calendar ended up this year, it's been 53 weeks since we last saw an NCAA tournament field unveiled.  So you could say I was a little excited about today.  Let's talk about it.

The majority of stats mentioned in this post come from kenpom.com.  I finally broke down and got the membership to dig into the really nerdy stuff, so you'll be getting twenty dollars worth of stats thrown into the mix. Enjoy.

The Lack of Bubble Drama

Normally there is a great deal of consternation about the teams that fall on either side of the bubble, but this time I think the committee did an exceptionally good job on this front.  You could make coherent arguments for Virginia or Iowa instead of say, La Salle (I would at least), but there were no major injustices.  Given that the committee selected four non-BCS teams to the last four spots, it's clear that they're starting to get over the stigma of playing in a small conference, which is good.  Instead, the clear message that we get is that you need to schedule agressively in the non-conference.  In addition to the aforementioned Cavs and Hawkeyes, other bubble victims such as Maryland sported awful non-conference strengths of schedule that were likely the anchor that kept their profile out of the tournament.  I don't necessarily like the emphasis placed on this because it's clear that at least some of those teams are among the 37 best at large teams, and thus deserve a bid.  However, this criteria shouldn't be news to coaches and athletic directors.  Non-conference SOS has been a point of emphasis at least since Jim Boeheim was whining about it a decade ago, so schools know what they need to do to make it to the dance.  If you don't schedule up in non-conference play, then your margin for error in conference is much smaller.

A Brief Discussion of Mid Majors

Last year was a banner year for those from the smaller conferences.  Not only did most of the best mid-majors get through their conference tournaments, but some were also able to do some damage in the big dance.  The success of Ohio, Lehigh, and Norfolk State (as well as close calls from UNC-Asheville, among others) showed that the gap between haves and have-nots is getting narrower, which is a great for the depth of the sport.

Unfortunately, the first part of last years recipe (getting the best teams into the tourney) hasn't gone according to plan.  This doesn't necessarily mean there won't be some great games in the first round, but it does severly weaken the opportunity for memorable upsets.  Relative stalwarts such as Middle Tennessee (32 in KenPom's ratings), Denver (38), Stony Brook (59), Stephen F Austin (75), and Weber State (93) all suffered defeat in their conference tournaments.  Other than Middle Tennessee, those teams will not get the chance to make their mark in March.*  All that said, there are still a number of small conference teams with good chances to get wins (hello again, Belmont), but the loss of so many good teams during Championship Fortnight makes each of the lower seed lines a little bit weaker.

*And then if you want to get really crazy, there was also this bracket.

This scenario often leads to the debate about whether or not conferences should use tournaments to decide their champions.  It seems obvious that the longer grind of the regular season is less likely to produce a truly fluky champion, and popular opinion seems to agree.  However, you can easily make the point that regular season championships aren't that more telling than tournament championships, if at all.  To take the most recent example possible, the Big Ten regular season crown was literally decided by a ball rolling on the rim.  Because of these typically thin margins between the leaders of most conferences, there probably isn't ever going to be one answer to this problem.  Luckily, I don't think the system is all that broken.  The conference tournaments are both extremely fun and inclusive of almost every team, and upsets and other excitement does still happen in the main tournament.

Now, let's break down the individual regions:

EAST

Let's lead off with an easy bracket.  This is neither a particularly strong bracket nor a super weak bracket.  The 1-seed Indiana is a very good team with one of the best offensive units we've seen in recent years.  They should be relatively strong favorites to advance to Atlanta, but danger lurks in even the most straightforward bracket.  I don't know if there is a particular matchup that will give Indiana problems since they have a number of different ways to attack their opponents, but there's plenty here to test them.  NC State's offense, Syracuse's zone, UNLV's size, and Miami's seniority could all potentially trip up the Hoosiers. 

Best first round matchup:  Butler vs. Bucknell

This is as even of a 6-11 game as you'll see.  The advanced metrics are split, with Sagarin and Pomeroy favoring Butler by a little, while LRMC has Bucknell a full 13 spots ahead of the Bulldogs.  Butler made a lot of noise in their non-conference play by winning games late against Gonzaga, Indiana, and Marquette.  However, they sputtered during A-10 play, outscoring their opponents by only 0.05 points per possesion (5th in the league).  Mike Muscala will obviously need to have a big day to pull the "upset," especially since he draws a matchup with veteran center Andrew Smith.  I would tend to favor Butler because I fully believe that Brad Stevens knows magic, but I can easily see this game going either way.

Best potential matchup:  Indiana vs. Miami

It feels like cheating to just pick the top two teams as the best potential matchup, but this would be too good of a regional final to pass up.  Much like every college basketball fan, I have a crush on Victor Oladipo, but Miami's Kenny Kadji brings a lot of the same qualities and Shane Larkin plays the point as smartly as anyone in the country.  The deciding factor would likely be the tempo of the game.  If Miami can slow down the pace enough, then they'd have a really good chance of pulling the upset.

The pick for Atlanta: Indiana

As much as I'd like to see Jim Larranaga make another run to the Final Four, I just can't pick against Indiana.  They don't always play defense as well as they probably could (especially on the perimeter where they are a pedestrian 164th in 3PA%), but they still are the team to beat in the East.


MIDWEST

The good news for Louisville is that they got the #1 overall seed.  The bad news is that the Midwest is probably the toughest bracket in the tournament.  This is a pretty similar set-up to 2009 when Kansas got stuck with an incredibly hard bracket and lost in the second round to a badly underseeded Northern Iowa squad.  In spite of this, I still don't think you should abandon Louisville in your bracket pool if that's who you liked going into today.  Their defense will play against anyone, and Peyton Siva has finally taken his level of play to a point where you can trust him not to mess everything up (career-high offensvie rating of 105.7, which still isn't great, but at least it's not bad).

As a Creighton fan, I'm pretty happy with the 7-seed.  You can argue based on advanced metrics that they should be higher (they're all the way up at 8th in LRMC), but given the smattering of bad losses I can't really form an amazing case for them.  For whatever their faults may be (cough, cough...defense) they shoot the ball amazingly well.  A nation-best 42.1% from three and second-best 56.4% from two makes them the best shooting team in the country.  Doug McDermott rightfully gets all the love, but make sure to enjoy the quiet grace of Grant Gibbs in what will likely be his final few games in a Creighton uniform.

Best first round matchup:  Colorado State vs. Missouri

It seems to be an annual tradition now that one of the 8-9 matchups features a pair of teams that probably should have been higher.  Pomeroy has both teams in the top 25, which suggests that they probably should have both been in the 5 or 6-seed range based on pure efficiency.  Non-conference SOS again seems to be the culprit as neither team ranked in the top 150.

Colorado State in particular is an interesting team.  They fit the same basic profile as ND and Creighton do in that they tend towards the all-offense, no-defense end of the spectrum. However, there is one large differentiator: The Rams might be the reboundiest team of all time. Not only do they grab 76.7% of all available defensive boards (best in the nation), but they also get 41.8% of all offensive boards (they clearly slack off here as that's only good for second in the nation). You may think that these stats tend to be highly correlated, but that's not always the case. Having this level of dominance on both ends of the glass is actually quite rare. A big part of the reason for this is Senior forward Pierce Hornung who averages over 9 rebounds a game despite being 6'5" (and keep in mind that the Mountain West is not an undersized conference in the least).

BONUS: Best actual first round matchup:  Middle Tennessee vs. St. Mary's

This is the best matchup in the illustrious history of the "first round".  Both teams are top 32 teams in Pomeroy's ratings (meaning they are roughly third-round quality) and top 20(!) teams in LRMC.  If you get TruTV, then you'll get to see the classic struggle between a great offensive team (St. Mary's is 16th in eFG%) and a superb defensive unit (MTU forces turnovers 24% of the time).  Hopefully the quality of this game will convince the "haters" that teams like these belong in the tournament.

Best potential matchup:  Louisville vs. St. Louis

Also known as There Will be Turnovers starring Rick Pitino as Daniel Plainview and the Billiken mascot as Eli Sunday.  It's enitrely possible that these are the two most ferocious half-court defenses in America, so this is bound to be a treat even though it may not be the most aesthetically pleasing game. 

Notre Dame and Creighton are still my teams, but I don't think there's been a team I've liked any more this year than St. Louis. They play with the same caution and smarts on offense as the Jays and Irish, but they also care about that whole defense thing as well (7th in adjusted D). Their ability to maintain, if not improve their level of play since the passing of Rick Majerus is a fantastic tribute to him, as well as to the character of the team. While the team is very unified as a defense-first outift, everyone brings something a little different to the table. Kwamain Mitchell provides veteran leadership and isn't afraid to take a few contested threes a game (which is fine because he makes a lot of them). Jordair Jett is a tank of a guard* who has some of the best defensive ball skills I've ever seen.  The bigs, Rob Loe and Cody Ellis, run the pick and pop relentlessly looking for three point looks until opposing forwards get sick of chasing them. Finally, team MVP Dwayne Evans does a little bit of everything, leading the team in scoring, rebounds, and blocks in spite of being 6'5". I don't know if the team will be able to score enough to beat everyone in their path, but I still wouldn't be shocked to see them end up in Atlanta.

*You might say he's thick with a capital th.

The pick for Atlanta:  Louisville

You could pretty easily sell me on any of the top 4 seeds in this region, but when in doubt, I'll stick with the most complete team in the Cardinals.  Duke remains a massive wildcard in the bottom half of this bracket since they've only lost once at full strength, but I'm still going to lean towards the team that almost beat the Blue Devils without Gorgui Dieng at their disposal.


SOUTH

I wouldn't call the South a weak bracket per se, but the top two seeds did lose to TCU and South Florida while 4-seed Michigan dropped a game to Penn State.  Of course, all of the top seeds are very good teams, but they all seem to have special abilities to lose games they really shouldn't.  Still, seven of the teams in this bracket have won a title in the last 30 years, so if it's pedigree you're interested in you couldn't do any better than this. 

Best first round matchup:  Michigan vs. South Dakota State

None of the matchups here really stand out, so I chose the one with the most dynamic guard play.  I don't think the Jackrabbits will be able to play enough defense to keep up with Michigan, but it should be fun to see Nate Wolters try to keep up on the other end.  Of course, Michigan did lose in a somewhat similar matchup in a 4-13 game last year, so that's probably somewhere in the back of their minds.

Best potential matchup:  Florida vs. VCU

Because of their style of play, I don't think there is a team with as wide of a range of likely potential outcomes in this tournament as VCU. In spite of the success of their "Havoc" approach to the full court press, their defensive efficiency checks in at a unremarkable 44th. While they create turnovers at a higher rate than anyone else in the nation (28.7% of possesions, more than a full percentage point above Louisville), there's nothing else they do particularly well on the defensive end. Furthermore, when their offense sputters they get fewer opportunities to set up the press and force those turnovers (see the first half of their game at Saint Louis in February). If this team can continue to play good offense and then rattle their opponents, they are an extremely legitimate Final Four threat. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see them lose in the first round either.  VCU does get some relatively favorable matchups (Akron is missing their point guard, Michigan doesn't play defense, Kansas might as well be missing their point guards), so this matchup is entirely possible.

The pick for Atlanta:  Florida

This Florida team feels a lot like the 2006 title squad, but maybe even better.  Sure, there isn't a pair of NBA prospects that can match what they had in Noah and Horford, but this team is deeper than that team and has had better results.  They just completed the most dominant conference stretch in recent memory, and you can make a pretty good case that they're the best team in the nation.  The computers are gaga for the Gators as Florida is ranked #1 in Pomeroy and LRMC and #2 in BPI and Sagarin.  It's not all sunshine in Gainesville, though. The most common complaint about Florida is that they can't win close games.  While it is true that they are 0-6 in single digit games, results in close games don't appear to be particularly predictive of future results.  I am a little concerned about their lack of a go-to scorer in such situations, but to keep that in perspective, that is a much smaller worry than I have about any other team in the tournament.


WEST

The West is a very strange bracket.  In fact, it might be the strangest bracket I've ever seen.  The top four seeds are good but not great*, while many of the lower seeds are incredibly strong for where they are in the bracket.  If you were to order the teams by how they appear in Pomeroy's ratings, they would look like this:

1 Gonzaga
2 Ohio State
8 Pitt
5 Wisconsin
3 New Mexico
6 Arizona
4 Kansas State
7 Notre Dame

In the end, those are all top 32 teams, so they all "deserve" top eight seeds.  They're just ordered in a very strange way.

*This isn't a knock on Gonzaga.  Gonzaga is very good and worthy of a 1-seed.  They're 2nd in LRMC, and are probably somewhere between the 3rd and 6th best team in the nation.  All that said, they're below average quality for a 1-seed.

Notre Dame is probably pretty close to where they should be with a 7-seed.  They've shown the ability to play defense (holding Pitt to 41 points at Pitt!), but they've also shown the ability to not care about defense whatsoever.  I'm a little nervous about the matchup against Iowa State.  Iowa State is not a particulrly great team, but 44% of their shots attempts are of the three point variety, which is the most of all teams in the tournament by almost 3%.  ND has been decent at preventing threes this season, but I still don't quite trust the team to make it as hard on the Cyclones as they should.  In the end, we have as a good of a path to the Sweet Sixteen as I could reasonably ask for, but I'm still going to be stressed out about it all week.

Best first round matchup:  Arizona vs. Belmont

There's a lot of good choices here, but I'll pick the game that features Belmont's third try to slay a giant in March.  They failed in their attempts the last two years against Wisconsin and Georgetown, but two bad results shouldn't be cause to lose faith.  The Bruins are probably not as complete of a team as they were the last two seasons, but they're the best shooting team not named Creighton thanks to veteran guards Ian Clark and Kerron Johnson.  In spite of their slump, Arizona is still quite good, but they are vulnerable enough to make this a near coin flip.

Best potential matchup:  Gonzaga vs. Pitt or Gonzaga vs. Wisconsin

The committe rewarded Gonzaga for their fantastic season with a 1-seed, but that is where the favors stopped.  If the Bulldogs don't make the Elite Eight, the likely culprit will be a very difficult road instead of Gonzaga being "exposed" as a "fraud."  I don't actually think Pitt is a top 10 team like the efficiency metrics say they are, but they're still clearly underseeded as an 8.  On the other hand, I do think Wisconsin is a top 10 team which happens to have the tools necessary to stop Gonzaga.  Ryan Evans, Jared Berggren, and Mike Bruesewitz form a formidable front line defense that should be able to combat Olynyk and Harris to some degree.  At the same time, Wisconsin allows less than a 25% 3PA% which is good enough for the top ten nationally in that metric.  Even though this isn't Bo Ryan's sexiest squad*, this might just be his best chance to reach his first Final Four.

*Bo Ryan's squads are never sexy, so that's saying a lot.

The pick for Atlanta:  Ohio State

Ohio State is a very weirdly put together team, but they play great defense and find themselves in the much easier half of the bracket.  I don't love this pick, but I don't really know what else to do.  Ironically, that last sentence is what every OSU fan says when they first start cheering for the team.*

*I pay for the school now with my taxes, so I'm allowed to take a shot like this at least once a year without retribution.


FINAL FOUR

I don't like that my two favorite teams to win the tournament, Florida and Indiana, reside in the same half of the bracket.  This makes me want to consider Louisville for the title, since I think they'll draw an easier semi-final opponent.  All that said, trying to pick precisely who will matchup against whom three weeks from now is a bit of a fool's errand, so I'll keep it simple and go with Florida.  Early returns show that Florida is only being picked to win it all in about 1 in 40 brackets, so I like "investing" in a team that seems to be undervalued.

As far as picking what I would like to happen in the tournament, I won't be able to pick an ND-Creighton title game because they're both on the "left" side of the bracket.  In fact, all six of my favorite teams this year (ND, Creighton, Saint Louis, Wisconsin, Colorado State, and Wichita State) reside on that half of the bracket.  Thus, my pick will be extra bizarre this year, as I will be officially rooting for Notre Dame to beat Florida Gulf Coast in the final.  Don't let me down Eagles.