Had some time this afternoon to put out an
updated bracket after last night's games. Usually, I wait for Thursday games but it's mostly Pac-12 tonight so shouldn't affect things too much.
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- I moved ISU up to #7, Baylor up to #8, and Kansas up to #9 over Marquette. Maybe I'm overreacting and perhaps the committee will place less weight on last two Marquette losses without Kolek, but their computer metrics have dipped a bit. 17th in KPI, 9th in SOR. 14th in both BPI and Kenpom.
- ISU rooting interests for the weekend should be Texas Tech to beat Baylor, Villanova to beat Creighton, Xavier to beat Marquette, and then whomever wins Duke/UNC, we want the other one (or someone else entirely) to win the ACC Tourney. If Duke beats UNC and wins ACC Tourney, I could see them passing us. If UNC wins both, no chance of us catching them (I'm not sure there is anyway to be honest). If we had to pick one to win both, it's UNC.
- I won't tell anyone how to root in KU vs. Houston as far as weighing seeding vs. conference title share. That's a "to each their own" situation.
- Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, and TCU are all hovering around that 7-8-9-10 seed line. Might create for some complicated bracketing if Big 12 has one 1-seed in Houston and two 2-seeds.
- Sunday could very well decide if state of Iowa gets 3 teams into the field or just 1 with MVC final and Iowa hosting Illinois. I don't know how Big 10 tournament bracket is looking as far as opening round matchups, but if I'm Iowa, I'd want a challenging first game (think Michigan State, Nebraska, Northwestern). Chance to get a good win or no chance for a bad loss.
Related to some of the chatter in here about NCSOS, I've built a simple little regression model to help me in seeding teams when I build my bracket. So I've looked at one-to-one simple correlation for metrics on the committee teamsheets to what the final seed list was for the 2022 and 2023 tournaments. NCSOS typically doesn't correlate to a team's spot on the seed list. Not saying that couldn't change this year with new committee members, but in the past, I think it has factored in more for deciding who those final at-large spots are moreso than it does for seeding teams safely in the field.
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