None. You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home Field Apparel. Welcome back to. Crimson cast Galen Clavier joining you. It is Sunday morning, March 16th. It is tournament reveal day as we are about what, 8 hours or so? Roughly 7 hours from finding out who's going to be in the field
who's. Not a lot of intrigue this year if you're an Indiana fan, as in addition to the coaching search that everybody's been following, you've got this big question mark about whether Indiana's going to get into the tournament or not. And we're going to dive right in to talking about that. And what I want to do 'cause I know a lot of you've got some questions, is talk through where I think the conversation is at with all of this.
Talk through where everything has set up in terms of of the decision making process the committee's going to have to go through. And then figure out like, how do they go through the process of actually getting all these teams in the field? If you believe the messages that come from the selection committee representatives like Dan Gavitt yesterday was talking about this on CBS, They didn't even have all the at large teams set as of yesterday morning.
So that means there's a lot of debate over a very small number of teams, whether or not they're in the field. And I think ultimately this is where we got to be a little bit cautious because we don't know what exactly is going to happen in terms of what the committee decides. And I'm going to talk about some of the trends and things like that, that we've seen at least over the course of the last 12 hours in terms of the discourse around the brackets.
But I want you all to understand first and foremost that the discourse around the brackets is not the same as the actual brackets. And what I mean by that is this. It's kind of like the IU coaching surge in a way. We have a lot of people talking about what they think is going to happen or what they're hearing rumored is going to happen with the coaching search. The people that we're not hearing from, other people actually engaged in the coaching search. Bracketology's not a lot
different. I'm going to give you my opinions. You'll you've seen opinions from other places as far as who they think's going to get into the field and in what order. Ultimately, the biggest challenge in this whole process is not looking at the rules and based upon what the rules say and what the committee says that they're going to do, saying well, here's the teams that are
going to be in the field. Based on that, it's trying to guess what the committee is going to do, which always means compromises. It always means that you might value 1 stat over another, and that might be important to you, and it might be important to a member of the committee, but it might not actually matter that much in terms of what actually happens. Because you're going to get 12 voices in there, all of whom have different ideas about what's important in this process.
So just wanted to set that expectation ahead of time. Most of you who have been along for the ride with us know all of those things already. First of all, just a quick reminder were brought to you by Home Field Apparel. Your place to go for the finest in college fashions, softest fabrics, coolest designs, the place to go if you're a college basketball fan. And already some great stuff out from Home Field Apparel over the course of the last couple of
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Subscribe it's free. We'd love to have you in the community Anyway, let's dive in and let's let's just I'm going to give you where my bracket is at right now and then I'm going to walk you through the thought process that I had to get to that level of things and. I'm going to say.
Right off the bat, it is very possible that what I come up with here is not going to be the ultimate decision, but this is how I'm analyzing it. I'm going to show you all the metrics and everything that we're looking at that led me to this point, and then we can talk about what the implications are. There's a couple of bid thief possibilities today. We'll talk through that as well. So let me go ahead and get this called up for those of you that are watching along.
And again, if you're listening to this, you may want to consider switching over to Spotify because you've got video enabled there, whereas we don't have that with Apple Podcast, unfortunately. All right. So we had a bunch of changes in terms of who the auto bids were. And obviously we've got some things squared away now in terms of we know St. John's won the Big East, we know Houston won the Big 12. I've got Michigan in right now as the the prohibitive. Or the the.
The probable favorite for the Big 10, these things only matter in terms of we have your auto bids and we have your at larges and obviously those two things have to reconcile with each other looking at the at large selections. Don't worry too much about the order here. And for those of you who who can't necessarily see, I'm going to try to zoom in a little bit. Are at large selections right now. My last four in the field are Vanderbilt, San Diego State, Texas and North Carolina.
And I'm going to try to walk you through why I feel like those are going to be the last four teams.
Hoping internally that I'm wrong and that the criteria that the committee will use will be different and it'll actually allow for IU to be in IU. Right now I have as the first team out and I think that it's important to remember that, you know, they've been kind of floating around this area for the last week or so. So when you start off going back to say a week ago after that Ohio State win, I think Indiana was about the 15 in and then they've kind of fallen back
largely because other teams have won some games. We had a, a couple of bid thieves, including the, the Colorado State getting in. So now we find ourselves in a spot where we've got kind of a last four. So I want to walk through and look at some of the different teams that we're looking at here. So let me let me call up Vanderbilt 1st.
I'm going to go through Vanderbilt and San Diego State really quickly because I, I do think that they have a better argument to get in. Vanderbilt has gotten progressively weaker. So if you look at Vanderbilt right now, Vanderbilt with a net of 48. I'm going to zoom in a little bit more so you guys can see this. Vanderbilt right now, a net of 48, they're 37th and wins against bubble. They've got a fairly decent resume overall.
Where they really shine at this point is they've got wins against Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas A&M, Mizzou, Ole Miss. That's five teams that are very solidly not just in the field, but all of those teams are right now, at least for me at the five seed line or above. You've got a win against Texas, who you're directly competing for a bid with. And then you've got a couple of other wins sprinkled in there that that are quad 2 but aren't necessarily that great.
You look down the list, they've they have no losses below quad 2. Vanderbilt's less impressive once you dig into their resume than I think everybody thought at first glance. But they've got enough here, I think and the, and the quality of wins is enough that I think they're going to be in good shape.
I am a little bit interested to see if there's a big debate over Vanderbilt because I do think when you look at their resume, they've they've, it doesn't compare as quality wise as you might hope if you're a Vanderbilt fan. Let's go to the next team, San Diego State.
So San Diego State, of course, losing in the Mountain West Conference tournament and there's actually a lot to not like about San Diego State, but the things that I think stick out for them are a their strength of schedule in the non conference was one of the best in the country. They'd go out and challenge themselves. Their overall strength of schedule 64th. They have one kind of unfortunate loss to UNLV that's a Tier 3, but beating Houston at.
On a neutral floor, beating Creighton on a neutral floor. And then, you know, they, they have a win over Boise State, actually have two wins over Boise State, a team that they're directly in competition with. They beat UC San Diego, one of the very few teams to do that this year.
They beat New Mexico. And you know, I, I look at all of that and I say, I don't think that they're going to be a team that struggles to get in. I think of the committee will look at them and say, we think you did enough overall with all of this 9 wins away from home as well certainly helps. So now we get into the the last few and this is where there's really, in my opinion, A5 team race for two remaining spots.
So I'm going to start off with the the teams that are right now in my field and I'm going to try to explain why they're there. I'm going to start with the one that's going to be the most controversial, which is North Carolina. I am not advocating for North Carolina to get in. And as Caleb points out, let me see if I can call up his comment here. Bracket matrix right now has 26 brackets out of 102 with UNC in the field. We got another comment here. Texas and UNC are non starters.
Texas pathetic conference record and UNC 1 and 12 and quad one. All right, so I'm going to tackle both of those 'cause I think that they're they're both valid arguments. But this is where you can't just look at one or two pieces of evidence. You also have to unfortunately, I think consider some of the political ramifications. And this is where when you just in my history, in my historical opinion, when you look at the way that the brackets have been
laid out in the. Past you do see a bit of an outsized influence whenever you've got an athletic director on the committee. So North Carolina is a bit of a tough case because as has been pointed out there one in 12 in quad ones and you got UCLA, while still a quad one win out of the top 25 in the NET. You the wins that North Carolina's got are not impressive. North Carolina has one win against the the perspective
field and that's against UCLA. They have a couple of wins against teams that are right on the fringes, Dayton, Wake Forest, SMU. They have, they have the one kind of bad loss by one point to Stanford. I don't think they're going to get punished too much for that. Where I think North Carolina's argument largely lies is that they have ten wins away from home. They are their net is 36 and that is one of the primary sorting mechanisms. Their their predictives are very
good. Their predictives Their BP is top 25, Kemp Poms 33. I realize I'm kind of out on an island with North Carolina and I hope I'm wrong. I don't think North Carolina deserves to be in the field. I really honestly do not. But I will be surprised if they're not in the field simply because I have seen with with an athletic director, especially as the committee chair, I've seen it happen before and I think the argument will be made well. North Carolina was one of the best teams in a power
conference. They won 22 games on the season. And they are a Top 40 team in the NET, and they are, in some cases 10 to 15 spots ahead of other teams in the NET, which is supposed to be the metric that the NCAA is using to figure out who the teams that are most deserving to get into the field are. So when Chad says in the chat UNC and over IU as akin to your pot about Painter as a coaching hire option, are you feeling OK recently? Yes, I'm feeling fine. I'm just saying this is this is
where. As I've looked at this. It's hard for me to shake the ghosts of some previous selections past where a team like this has gotten it, Noah says. Wasn't UNC left out two years ago when they were on the bubble? Sure they were. I think this is a different scenario, all things considered, largely because that year there were teams that had clearly better resumes. And I think the problem with North Carolina, with Texas, with Indiana, is that most of them have bad overall resumes.
There's not a lot there to clearly say this team is in the field. So I look at North Carolina and and even though, as Caleb points out, Gavitt said, the predictives aren't as important as who you beat. That's true. But they also are using the net to try to figure out exactly who's going to to be in the
field. It doesn't mean that the net is the end all be all, but the predictives are baked into the net and you have a North Carolina team that played the 5th toughest non conference strength of schedule played a lot of those teams tough. I just have, again, not arguing for North Carolina, but I can see the arguments in the conference room being, well, they've shown the potential of doing this and they've come really close on a bunch of occasions. And they also won 22 games.
So again, I hope I'm wrong. I really don't want North Carolina in the field. I think it would illustrate a kind of a cynicism about the selection process that is deserved because we've seen it enough times. But hopefully we're sitting here and and listening to North Carolina complain about being in the NIT when the evening arrives here today. Let's go to the other team, which I also have in the field, which is Texas.
So Texas is an an odd mix. And this is where, if you're going to argue that North Carolina's not in the field because of the lack of winds, I don't know what the argument would be for Texas not being or Texas not not being in the field under that same scenario, given the plethora of winds that they have. They are 19 and 15. They are 6 and 12 in, in, in terms of their record against the SEC. The SEC was also the best conference in the country this year.
And it's not like Texas didn't pick up some impressive wins along the way in the SEC. And you look down the list, and this is where like, look at who Texas has beaten. They've beaten Kentucky, they've beaten Texas A&M on a neutral floor. They wanted Mississippi State. They beat Missouri, they beat Texas A&M again. They won out of Oklahoma, they won on a neutral court against Vanderbilt a little bit ago. That's seven wins against teams
in the field right now. Their net is 39, which is better than a couple of the teams that we're about to look at. Their predictives are fine. They're they average out to be about a 42 and their overall strength of schedule was 16th. So this is where when the committee says over and over again, we don't look at conference records, Texas is kind of the the test case or maybe test case is the wrong word. But it's like the prototype case for why they don't overlook at conference records.
Because you know, when you get right down to it, Texas played a really tough schedule. And you know, you go through and and look at overall, you know, set up with the schedule. You know, Texas had a lot of games that other teams in the SEC didn't necessarily have to deal with. They they had to go to Texas A&M. They had to go to Florida, they had to go to Vanderbilt. You know, they went to Mississippi State and one, they went to Oklahoma and one. So again, I look at all of this
and I say to myself. When you look at Texas's overall marks, I'm I'm again, I don't know that they necessarily deserve to be in, but here we are. Now let's look at Indiana. Indiana's right next to Texas. And the problem for Indiana, I think at this point, and This is why ultimately I don't have them in, is that at this stage, Indiana's got two wins against teams in the field.
And as we've heard on a lot of different podcasts talking about bracketology over the course of the last couple of of days, the only reason Indiana's even in the conversation is that one win that they had at Michigan State. Very good win, tremendous win. But if you look at Indiana overall, I don't see the impressiveness in the resume. They don't have the close but didn't quite get the job done numbers that North Carolina has. Indiana's net is 54 N Carolina's is 36.
Indiana's only won five games away from home. North Carolina's won double that. You know, Indiana's got the same number of quad one and two wins that North Carolina has. And I think part of the problem is that Indiana would not even be sweating this right now if Ohio State hadn't tripped over themselves on the way to the finish line. Because you figure like 2 of Indiana's 5 best wins are against an Ohio State team that's not going to be in the field.
And you know, you look at Penn State, Penn State, the two wins against Penn State, Penn State's not going to be anywhere close to the field either. Penn State didn't even make the
Big 10 tournament. So I look at all of that and even though Indiana doesn't have any sub quad won losses, to me, you look at this Indiana team and you say, well, they have 3 fewer wins than North Carolina and they have a net that's 18 spots worse than North Carolina. And they won half the games away from home and they only have one more win against the tournament
team the North Carolina has. This is where I look at this and I say, if it's down to Indiana and North Carolina for the final spot, I think the committee's going to choose North Carolina. I don't think they should. But I think the argument that Indiana has about the quad one wins kind of resonates in an empty fashion when you look at the fact that right now only two of the teams they've beaten are going to be in the field.
So again, hope I'm wrong. And I think we're most bracketologists are looking at this is they're saying, well, at least Indiana has four quad one wins and at least Indiana doesn't have any bad losses. But ultimately as I look through this, when I think about how the committee might be evaluating this, I don't think, I don't think that you can emphasize quality wins and net both at the same time.
And in the balance between the two, would you rather select a team that is going to demonstrate through predictives and through the net that it can play with the best teams in the country versus an Indiana team that doesn't have those those quantitative measures and that's reflected in their net ranking and really only has one more win of quality over what North Carolina has? Patrick says counter argument. The fact that UN CS guy in the chair, will there be a push
against him showing favoritism? This is always where you would think that that would be the case. But what we've seen over time is that, you know, there's always this this, you know that the NCAA and I believe that they do this, but they'll say, well, anytime somebody's in a vote that's talking about their team or team that they're connected with, whether it's an athletic director or whether it's a conference commissioner, they have to leave the room.
I'm sure that happens. But again, I've been doing this for a long time. I've seen it over and over again where it almost feels like the rest of the committee gives that person's team extra deference. It's it's a wild set of things that happens over time and they kind of get buried in the shuffle. And then the committee chair always comes out and says, I wasn't in the room or, you know, says that person wasn't in the room.
The committee looked at it and really decided as a group that these metrics were a bit better than those metrics. And that's why that team got in. A lot of time they never even get asked about it because most of the time when they're being questioned by CBS or whomever, they're not being interrogated in terms of the numbers necessarily, and they'll always give vague answers on these things.
So I've actually found the opposite happens, Patrick, where they tend to give extra deference to the person's team that's on the committee. And just because the bracketologists have circled around this and said, well, North Carolina doesn't have an argument to be in, we've seen multiple instances historically where the opposite has been decided upon by the committee. So again, would be happily wrong
on this. When you look at Indiana, you also have to look at Xavier, which is our fourth team in the mix. Xavier is kind of like a supercharged North Carolina in a way.
And to be honest with you, I think if the committee's not going to put North Carolina in, they may end up putting Xavier in instead of North Carolina as opposed to putting Indiana in instead of North Carolina. So you look at Xavier, 21 wins, which is better than Indiana and almost as good as North Carolina. Their Nets not as good, the 45th in the net, North Carolina's 36th. Their predictives average around 40. Their KPI, which is one of the resume numbers is pretty bad.
But again, you know, going through and looking at it, they remind me a little bit of of a hybrid of Texas and North Carolina. They have a win against Marquette, who's not only solidly in the field, they have a win against UConn. They have a win against Creighton. So they have three wins against teams that are going to be in the field as opposed to Indiana's two and North Carolina's one. They have a strength of schedule of 60. They have six wins in rodent neutral sites.
That's kind of a Ding against them, but it's still better than Indiana by one. And then they the really only thing dragging them down is they have the two Rd. losses in Tier 2. So I went back and forth about, you know, Xavier, North Carolina, Xavier, Texas, Xavier, Indiana, all of these teams in a mix. I have Xavier as the first team out in my field right now.
Let's go to Boise State. And and this is where, you know, I said on Twitter the other day that there really isn't an argument for Boise State over Indiana. So there there are a couple of small arguments and I will I will make them here for the sake of discussing the argumentation. Boise's got wins against Saint Mary's on a neutral court, Clemson, New Mexico, Utah State, New Mexico again and San Diego State. That's six teams that are going
to be in the field. Their net is 44, which is again, not as good as North Carolina, about the same as Xavier and better than Indiana, also worse than Texas. Strength to schedule 79, which is fine. Their resume and their predictives are both around 50. What really drags Boise State down and where I think they don't have an argument is they have a tier three loss and a
Tier 4 loss. And I don't know how you can reconcile those with the fact that essentially, you know, if you look at their wins in conference, most of the wins that they're they're putting forward are wins against teams that are right on the bubble in the Mountain West. Like all those Mountain West teams are clustered between essentially like a nine seed and the play in games. So they're in the field, yes, but these are not as impressive as some of the other ones you see.
And I think they get cancelled out by the bad losses that Boise State is a crew. They do have eleven wins away from home, which I think is laudable. And you know, if the committee were to look at this and say, well, we want to reward you because you won 23 games against Division One opponents and you didn't lose 15 games like Texas, I could see an argument being made there potentially. But I think ultimately they will get left out of the shuffle.
So that's the five teams that I've got in the mix for those last three spots. Would I be shocked to see Indiana and Xavier instead of Texas and North Carolina? No, not at all. Would I be shocked to see Boise State and Indiana in in place of like a North Carolina and a Texas? I'd be a little surprised if Boise State was in that mix, but I wouldn't be shocked. I don't think there's another team right now that's really in competition for those final two spots.
I just have a sense looking at what all we're, you know, what all we're seeing in the mix here from a data perspective. I just, I just had this sneaking suspicion they're going to opt for Texas and they're not going to allow, you know, the season to end with so few ACC teams in the NCAA tournament. That's again, hope I'm wrong, hope that North Carolina is in the NIT where they belong. But that's the rationale that I've got for why we're doing things the way we're doing
things. So let me look, let's go over and look at the seed list and kind of see where we landed with everything on that front. And I'm going to zoom in a little bit more here so we can see. So right now, I've actually bumped Houston up to the number one overall seed. And there were reports yesterday that they've actually requested the West region, which is an interesting one. I can see why they would do
that. I think if I was Houston, I'd rather play in San Francisco than play in Indianapolis simply because there's a lot better chance of running into a team that's got a homecourt advantage in Indianapolis than there is in San Francisco. I've got Auburn as the two overall, I've got Duke as the three overall, and then I think Florida has definitely demonstrated that they're a one seed, so I've got them as the 4th overall.
Tennessee, Alabama, Michigan State, St. John's. I think the two lines pretty straightforward and then my three line is Texas Tech, Iowa State, Kentucky, Maryland and then the to round out the protected seeds, Wisconsin, Clemson, Arizona and Michigan. That's a, that's a really tough one. I could see Michigan being as high as a four. I could see them being as low as a six.
That's one of those teams that's it's really hard to predict where they're going to land in the mix because, again, they are one of those teams that has a resume that's big on wins, but their predictives aren't particularly good. And so I could see the predictives dragging their seating down into the five range or maybe even the six range. But then on the flip side, you've got a team that, you know, was, you know, right near the top of the Big 10 and is in
the Big 10 title game today. So nothing would surprise me on that front. If you go down the list, you've got Vanderbilt, San Diego State, Texas and North Carolina basically straddling the 1112 line. I've got VCU right now ahead of West Virginia. West Virginia is my last buy team. And then you got Oklahoma, Arkansas, Utah State, New Mexico, Georgia, Baylor, UConn. That's that next grouping of at large teams going up. I think UC San Diego it was, it was wise of them to win last night.
I think it would have been tight for them to get into the field if they hadn't gotten the auto bid. But they picked that up last night against UC Irvine. I don't think UC Irvine gets in. I don't see the argument for
that. Colorado State gets in with the auto bid for the Mountain West. They're twelve seed Drake's 12 seed Liberty wins in Conference USA last night and then Mcnee's of course in the Southland. That rounds out the twelves When we look at bid Steelers is that there's really only two things to look at today. One of them is going to be the the final of the Atlantic 10. Always feels like they're in the mix. You've got George Mason and
you've got VCU. You know VCU, when you look at them, they're they're to me a little bit of a supercharged North Carolina in that they've got 26 wins. They've got twelve wins away from home. Their strength of schedule though is 133. Their resume numbers are fairly good. Their predictives are great. Like their predictives all essentially equate to to them being a top thirty team. But they really don't have a lot of wins. Like they they beat Colorado State on a neutral floor.
That's an auto bid team and then they've got nothing else of note. They also have a a quad four loss to Seton Hall. Now. I think the overall quality of their resume and their metrics puts them in a position where they could potentially make the
tournament if they lose today. But I'm having a hard time reconciling the idea that if VCU loses to George Mason today that they would automatically get in. You know, we've talked about how the committee really does appreciate, as I think they should, teams that win a lot of games.
And it's not like VCU strike. The schedule is awful, but again, I'm looking at VCU in North Carolina and I'm saying to myself, if you're going to argue that VCU should get in, North Carolina's essentially got a very similar resume with a few fewer victories and a much better strength of schedule. The other one that we need to keep an eye on is in the American Conference and it's Memphis versus UAB. So Memphis is going to get in and Memphis has a, a, a bevy of,
I think pretty good wins. Their metrics are really bad. It's fascinating. Like their predictives are essentially very similar to Indiana's. But Memphis has the, the 4th toughest strength of schedule in the country. They beat Michigan State, they won at Clemson, they beat Mizzou, they beat Ole Miss, they beat UConn. You know, they've, they've, they've done what they need to do on that front.
And you know, they have a couple of questionable losses in Tier 3, but they've more than made-up for that. UAB obviously is not going to get in without winning the auto bid as they don't really have a lot on their on their resume.
They've got 2 quad 4 losses. So you know, that's the nightmare scenario would be UAB coming out and defeating Memphis because that would, I think unless Indiana is 2 teams into the field, I think that at that point that would kill them off in terms of their overall placement within things. So that's all you really have to worry about today. The rest of the games that are going on aren't really going to
affect a whole lot. You know, by the time Tennessee, Florida starts and Wisconsin and Michigan starts, you know, Tennessee, Florida's at 1:00 today, Wisconsin, Michigan's at 3:30, by the time those games get going, the committee will have already made decisions about that level of the bracket.
In fact, you know, as as much as we're talking right now about things, realistically speaking in, you know, as of this morning, the committee has already selected the field in terms of what teams are going to be in. They've probably already seated and scrubbed the first 3 or 4 lines. So today is not really a day that's going to decide a whole lot in terms of seeding or
getting into the field. The one exception being they will have created some contingency brackets in case Memphis loses in the American Championship game. And then depending on how they feel about BCU, they probably created a contingency bracket for that as well. And you know, that's where it gets a little bit complicated if you're the committee, because that UAB Memphis game doesn't
start until 3:00. And so they'll, they will almost certainly the way that their procedures work, they will end up with a bracket or two brackets probably by that point, they'll, they'll get George Mason, VCU out of the way. They'll, they'll know what's going on with that by about 3:00. But then they'll have two parallel brackets going and they will probably have to create
both of those. And then depending on what happens in that Memphis game, whichever 1 is accurate to those results will be the one that they put forward to CBS and and show us when we get down to the actual show at what what 6:00 today looking at how all of this happens within the placement structure. So I think some of you have seen this board before. The way that all this works is your number one overall seed is Houston. They selected the West region. They would go to Wichita for
their first round game. Auburn, S Region will be in Lexington, and then Duke in the East and I got Florida going to the Midwest. If indeed Houston goes to the West, that then requires us to separate the SEC teams from each other. So normally Tennessee through an S curve approach would go to the Midwest, but they can't because you got to keep Florida and Tennessee separate. So Tennessee goes to the East and then Alabama would normally there go to the Midwest. They can't do that.
They can't go to the South, so they have to go to the West opposite Houston. And then that slots Michigan State into the Indianapolis region, which is beneficial for them. And then Saint John's goes South and ends up being paired across from Auburn. And then you go continue down the S curve. Texas Tech ends up in the east, You've got Iowa State in the South, you've got Kentucky in the Midwest, and Maryland has to get shipped out West. And then Wisconsin in the South
is the four seed. You've got Clemson in the West again to keep them away from Duke. Arizona goes to the Midwest and Wisconsin goes to the South. So that's how I've got it. Looking at this stage. The two play in games, 11 seed games at this point and you from there you kind of have to account for a bunch of different things. You have to account for you.
You don't want to have conference rematches prior to rounds two or three really prior to the Elite 8 if you can avoid it, unless the teams have only played once. You want to avoid regular season rematches, which gets really hard with some of these teams this year because a lot of them played each other like it. It feels like Gonzaga played everybody and Memphis played everybody so it was 8 nines.
That makes it very difficult to like find good spots for them to go. You also have to account for BYU who has to go into both a sub regional that plays Thursday, Saturday and a regional that plays Thursday, Saturday, which means they have to go either east or West cause Newark and San Francisco are the only two regions that play Thursday, Saturday. And then they have to be in one of those Thursday, Saturday, 1st and second round sites, which is
that's Denver, Lexington, Providence or Wichita. So all these things have to be factored in and that's why the committee's gonna have to do a lot of work ahead of time because it's not just about sliding in UAB, moving Memphis down a spot and then going from there. It's also about, well, if you put UAB in, it upsets a lot of the the math in terms of who's played each other and where everybody lands. So as I look back, I wanted to make sure I want, I had everybody's questions that they
asked. We had a lot of talk from people about the coaching search. We're not going to talk coaching search right now. We will talk about it tomorrow or tonight, but not right now. Let's see. I wanted to go and check X and see if we had any questions there. Looks like no we well we had a couple of questions here. So yeah, the Pumpkin Spice reserve asked are we out of Memphis or VCU lose. So I would say yes, but I've already got us out right now
barely. Again, I could see right now I would going back to my board here, I would still have Xavier in ahead of Indiana. If you were going to take North Carolina out. I'm going to think about that a lot more. I still think the North Carolina is going to get in, but I might change my mind before my final bracket. Noah asked his IU in. I again, you got my answer with that. And Brody Brooks said my last four are UNC, Texas, Xavier and IU as long as VCU and Memphis win.
And my only question there is, well, are you leaving out Mountain West teams? Are you leaving out Vanderbilt? Like, I don't know how those could be your last four in unless, unless there's something that I'm missing in terms of teams that you don't think you're going to be in elsewhere. So anyway, there's a lot of question marks today and it's really fascinating. I'm going to stop sharing here. You know, Ross noted that fan Duolod Swan and I use favor
overnight, which is true. Now, one of two reasons why that might be the case. Either A, there's a leak in the committee to the gambling markets that seems unlikely, not impossible, but unlikely, or Vegas is looking at the probabilities from the bracketologist. And as someone pointed out earlier, a lot of brackets have decided I use going to be in. And in fact, you know, these are these are not just fringe brackets.
You know, a lot of people who get the brackets right every year do have Indiana in. So as an Indiana fan, if you're sitting here thinking, you know, what's what's my route to hope and you're watching this and you're like, well crap, Crimson cast doesn't have IU in right now. I will freely admit I could be wrong. The rest of the bracketologist that have said Indiana's going
to be in could be right. As I look at it though, I'm just having a hard time reconciling it with the numbers because if you're going to take a case that one set of metrics or another is important, Indiana kind of fails in a head to head with several different teams on those. If you're taking it holistically, I think Indiana loses in a bunch of those matchups as well. So that's kind of the scene at this stage. And I think ultimately, you know, we, we'll need to keep an eye on the VCU game.
I I don't know that that's necessarily going to to be a case where if VCU loses that they would necessarily even get in as an at. Large it's possible. The Big 1 is going to be UAB Memphis, so we're going to have to be hanging on at least until 5:00 to really get a sense of what to expect when the final reveal happens. So anyway, wanted to keep this one relatively short as there's still a lot of basketball to be played today. We're probably not going to hear a whole lot.
There normally is something that pops on the CBS show for the the first game that they do, they'll have the committee chair back in. So I would be sure to watch that Atlantic 10 game and watch the halftime show 'cause they may have some updates. They normally will doubt. They won't tell you what's going on there with that and then, you know, but they'll allude to things and the illusions are the things that we need to be paying attention to.
Jeff notes DraftKings had IU at plus 245, which for those who are not familiar with gambling parlance, means Indiana would not be favored to get in. Plus 245 would mean you're kind of a 2 to one chance that you're not getting in. That got quickly taken down. Xavier was plus 300, no, And that got taken down. I think Jeff makes a good point. The DraftKings realized they put very public friendly odds. I do think there's arguments for Indiana.
Like I said, I'll just be surprised if it ends up working out for everyone. Anyway, Ryan popped up, said happy Sunday morning. And Ryan, I hate to tell you this, but we're wrapping this up right now, but this, this was about a 40 minute show. Please feel free and go back and watch the whole thing. Leave some comments and
questions. Again, just to reiterate from the beginning, my final four teams in Vanderbilt, San Diego State, Texas, North Carolina. I hope I am wrong that North Carolina's in. I hope I'm wrong that Texas is in. I wouldn't be shocked even if San Diego State wasn't in the field. Like as much as I think overall they'll be fine, I do see an argument for them to be out of the field. So it's it's very unsettled right now.
In terms of this last grouping. I think even Delphi Bracketology noted that there was a lot of debate there because there were not clear best teams amongst the group that we were trying to decide the last few bids from. Question here, if we're out, do
we play in the NIT or the Crown? I think given the coaching change and given the fact that the portal opens on the 24th of March and the Crown doesn't start till the 31st of March, my my guess would be that no, Indiana would not be taking part in either of those tournaments. And even even if, as Russell points out, the Crown is in Vegas and players get paid like what you're whatever you're going to get paid in the crown is not going to be as important as what you're going to get paid
in NIL elsewhere. And if you have to enter the portal and save yourself, like do you really want to endanger your market value or endanger the interest of other teams?
If you go and play in a frankly meaningless tournament and get injured, I think a lot of players are going to be looking at that and saying that in no way, shape or form is that worth it. To me, that might mean that we've got brand names in Vegas for the crown that end up having the walk ONS playing for them or little used players. I, I don't think the crown thing was thought all the way through and it certainly wasn't reconciled with the NCAA's rules
on the transfer portal dates. We'll see I I could be wrong again, but I'm having a hard time seeing how this is going to reconcile given that the schools are on the hook for the crown, but the players are not and there's no contractual obligations that you play in anything. So another good argument for changing the system. Anyway, we're going to go wrap things up. I'll be back on Twitter throughout the course of the
day. We'll be on the back home network discord and talking about things as well. So folks, it'll be a fascinating ride. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens throughout the course of the day and we'll see what happens without you. Hopefully we see them in the field when it's revealed at 6:00 for Crimson Cast. I'm Galen Clavio, thanks to our presenting sponsor, Home Field Apparel. We'll catch you folks. On the flip side, stay never daunted, bring back the Bison. So everybody.