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.
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