You're listening to the back home network, presented by home field apparel. Welcome back to the bracket racket, folks, Galen caviar joining, you just solo this
time. We'll have Zack back on a future episode but wanted to do a Q&A essentially invited you all to send in questions that you had about Bracketology things that you wish you knew about the process or that you're confused by. But having anybody to ask, I will be the first to admit that Bracketology in general is a pretty confusing thing and it's actually I think gotten more
confusing. And over the course of time largely because they keep adding things to consider and also, because of a big reason, which we'll talk about here shortly on the podcast. First of all, just a reminder that the bracket racket was part of the back home network. We pop up on the Crimson cast feed so you'll get plenty of men's and women's basketball podcast.
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apparel.com use the code home. Get 15% off your first order again. Home field apparel.com. All right. A'ight, let's jump in to sum over all questions. First of all, I want to talk through a little bit. What we saw yesterday as the committee revealed, its top 16 overall teams in the NCAA tournament. This is something the committee added several years ago. And its really, I think been one of the nice things that the committee has done.
I've had my complaints about the committee and the way that they do business, but this was actually a really cool thing that they added and Really helps us to get an insight into what their overall thinking is because it used to be that we had no clue what the committee was thinking until the day of the tournament. And so a lot of guesswork went into just trying to figure out as people tried to predict brackets. Like what does the committee think is important in a given year?
Because one of the things I think is important for people to realize is that those criteria tend to change sometimes incrementally and sometimes by big Leaps and Bounds between years and and some of that. That there's actually a question, we've got that came in from folks, this was actually from Craig Davis, it's a great thing to start with.
Why does The Selection committee each year, seemingly change what they prioritize when seating teams and it's a great question by Craig because if you've paid attention, you'll note that it is different every year and in some cases you'll see a preference for how many games did teams win against tournament bound. Sometimes it's how well did a team play in Road and neutral environment so away from home
because that's important. Obviously since the tournament is not played on a team's home court, sometimes it's their resume, their overall strength of record or how they show up in kpi, which is one of the metrics that's used to to measure essentially, how well a team performed against the record that they played against and how good that that schedule was in the first place. Sometimes they'll put more predictive. Two things.
And by that, we mean, the things like be Pi, which is ESPN's proprietary metric can pom Sager in these are all what we call predictive metrics, because they take what a team has done. And they try to calculate a power score essentially that can be applied to that team's games against other teams. And so, there's all these different metrics and I used to factor other things in as well. They would factor in how, well, a team did in their last 10 games leading into the
tournament. They've officially stopped. King at that. I have a sneaking suspicion. They unofficially. Look at it a little bit. But the reason why it changes year-to-year Craig to answer the question, finally is a, the committee changes every year. The committee is comprised of 10 individuals that are drawn from the different areas of division. One college basketball.
It's almost always either conference Commissioners or athletic directors at individual schools, but each of those groups or each of those individuals, Represents a group. So you normally have a plurality of people on the committee that come from, what we would, you know, call power conferences.
And so they're of course, you're talking about like the Big Ten or the ACC or the SEC and, you know, that is normally, you know, an interesting thing to look at because the membership changes every year people, Belen and cycle out. And it's not always the same people like this year. When you look at the committee, I'll kind of run through who everybody is. You've got Action. It's 12. Now, not 10, my mistake.
So from the power conferences, you've got Jamie Pollard who's the Iowa State athletic director, and he will serve until 2024. So until next year, you've got Bubba Cunningham who's the North Carolina athletic director, he's served for 20 25. Then you've got three new members from the power conferences, Minnesota's athletic director Mark coil Arizona's athletic director Dave, he key and then Alabama's athletic director, Greg burn,
Then you've got representatives from the non power conferences so you've got the Sun Belt, commissioner Keith Gil, you've got Barry Collier who's the butler athletic director and, you know, while Butler is technically in the Big East which is of course, a power basketball conference. Excuse me. Well, yes, they're not in football. There's no football Big East. So, they actually belong to kind of a different category of
division. One Elsewhere on the committee, you've got the Samford athletic director, the Big Sky commissioner The swac commissioner, who's the vice chairman, the Atlantic 10 commissioner and then the chairman this year is Chris Reynolds, who of course is an IU Alum, but is also the athletic director for Bradley University, which is in the Missouri Valley, which again is a non football
playing Division, 1 conference. So you put all those together, And what you find is a mix of people and they rotate on and off and new. Two, people will take their place based upon their classification. Now that's probably more back story than you needed, but ultimately what that means is that perspectives change a little bit every year because you're dealing with a different
group of people. And, you know, there's always been some question about how much, how objective can those those groups of people be really in terms of judging teams and, you know, No, everybody claims that there's complete objectivity but there's really no complete objectivity. And anything related to sports you're going to be to some degree influenced by the bias is related to what you're watching.
And in the case of someone like Chris Reynolds who obviously knows basketball very well, what he would probably see as being important, might be a little bit different from what somebody else on the committee might see is important. And what happens through this process is that there's a voting process Everything. There's a voting process on adding teams to the overall consideration field.
There's a voting process on which teams actually make it in as at large has and it's a ballot system where a lot of compromises end up being made. So, I give you all of that because when you go back and you look at what happened yesterday in the reveal, what we saw was and I've seen people criticizing this online, there's not a tremendous amount of consistency
in terms of what the committee. He seems to be preferring, you know, you've got a team like Indiana who was 13th out of the 16 teams that were listed, and many people didn't have them in the top 16. And there were a lot of questions, like, how did Indiana get ranked that high? How are they higher than Connecticut? How are they higher than Creighton? And some of that is going to be due to committee balance and and compromise, essentially where Indiana probably to some degree
represents. A bit of a platonic ideal between Two primary areas that we generally try to judge teams in and those two are how is their record against teams that they played. And then how are their predictive statistics in terms of what, how good we think they are compared to everybody else. So what do you think about it that way? It kind of makes sense. And it's probably a good thing for Indiana because Indiana, when you look at their overall resume, it's actually pretty
balanced. It's not so heavy, like Yukons in. Addictive rankings and it's also not so heavy on resume that they have to rely on that entirely. So, you know, I think that that gives us a bit of a clue about what the committee's going to be looking for this time around. And and I think that that idea of teams that have some kind of a balance between, how well they've performed thus far.
And how well they're projected to perform later on is going to be something that really weighs on the committee pretty heavily and that's Again, I think it's good for Indiana. I think it's good for a few teams that have a nice balance
between those two. I think Kansas State a team that's ahead of Indiana has kind of got the same sort of benefit being given to them so that could shift a little bit and a lot of this is really dependent on how the overall field looks by the time you get ready to actually go in and start seeding the field there and getting teams placed in the field and that week leading into the selection show.
The other thing that I really noticed Oh, and this is something I think that's going to be a key element. Moving forward for this year is how did your team compete against the other teams that are currently under consideration to be in the field? And this is where Indiana
actually fares very well. Especially compared to a team like Creighton. If you look at Indiana right now with the teams that I've got in the field, they are 11 and 8 against that board of teams Creighton right now, despite being projected to be better than Indiana in terms of power numbers. Actually has a worst record against teams that are going to be in the field.
You're talking about Creighton right now six and seven against teams in the field and that is a really important thing to keep in mind because it's not just about the quads. The quads are important to a degree and I'm going to talk about the quads in a little bit, but it's about who you actually
beat in the quads. So, you know, when you look at Indiana, they've got sick squad, one wins right now, and five of those wins are against Teams that are essentially locks to make the NCAA tournament Purdue at Xavier at Illinois. Illinois at home, Rutgers at home. And then the one that isn't in that mix is at Michigan. You look at Creighton who's had a great run there, you know, there, I think one game out of first place in the Big East of
their wins against quad. One teams, only three of the four that they've got are against teams that right now are likely to be in the NCAA tournament home against Connecticut. Neutral Court, win against Arkansas and then a home win against Xavier. So, again, it's not just about the, you know, the, the raw numbers it's about who are the teams that you're beating and how do they sit within the larger perspective of the NCAA tournament draw. So Craig, I hope that answers
that question. It's again, it's a complicated process and a lot of what a committee will decide to focus on will be a little bit different from the previous year, and then it'll be different again. The next year, it's one of the Things that makes Bracketology as much fun to do as it is because you're kind of trying to aim at a moving, Target to some degree and it can be
frustrating. And a lot of people Express frustration after the reveal yesterday because it doesn't match either what the thing looked like last year or what, their perception of what it should look like is, but that's how the process goes. Let's dive in and talk. Some other questions that we got here. There were some good ones. We had a couple of questions from one of the private chats that Time in. So this is a really good question.
Overall, why do they have the first weekend games in random places? Like, why are quote unquote East rounds in Sacramento? So on and so forth. That's an excellent question. And a lot of it really comes
down to a decision. The NCAA made, I want to say it was probably somewhere between 10 and 15 years ago where they decided that it would make sense to uncouple the first and second round sites from the regional sites with the idea that It would make it easier on teams to travel and for the top seeded teams to have fans, be able to go see them and buy tickets. And you know, this is a process that I think has probably gotten more complicated than it needed to get.
If you go all the way back to the 80s and the 90s and the early 2000s in the NCAA tournament, it used to be that they would say, Hey you know Midwest Regional the regional finals, going to be In Kansas City, and the first and second round matchups are going to be in Des Moines and Indianapolis. And so if you were a one seed, you were going to get placed in
the Indianapolis region. And so with the 16 8 and 9 that would be kind of that sub-regional and then the other sub Regional would probably be in Des Moines.
And so you would end up playing first and second round games with the four seed in the 13 and the 5 in the 12 deciding to uncouple that meant that You could be in the eat in the Midwest region and play your first and second round games in a non Midwest, City with the idea that that would be more favorable to whoever the top seeds were. So let's use this here as an example. This year there are for regionals, the East Regional is going to be held in New York City at Madison Square Garden.
The Midwest regionals going to be in Kansas City. The south regional is going to be in Louisville, which I know
confuses. A lot of people because they don't like Louisville, distant, scream, South, but according to the way the NCAA Has the country the you know, because Kentucky's in the SEC and because Louisville's in the ACC Kentucky's considered part of the South, where is Indiana's considered part of the Midwest. Go figure and in the west regionals in Las Vegas. So those are your for regionals and then the way that it works is there are eight first and
second round sites. And these were all chosen like four or five years ago, stadiums. And, and their hosts have to bid on them. And so the eight regionals that you've got this year actually They were still doing it the old way, would correspond very well to the sites, you know, the Regionals that they would feed
into. So for instance you've got the eight sites this year, our Albany Birmingham Columbus Denver Des Moines, Greensboro Orlando and Sacramento so if we were doing it in like the traditional style it's pretty obvious like Sacramento would feed into the West Regional and Denver would feed into the West Regional probably and then in the South. It would almost certainly be Birmingham and Orlando in the East.
It would be Greensboro and Albany, and then in the midwest, it would be Columbus and Des Moines. But the way that it works now is it actually allows, let's take a team like Kansas Kansas right now is under strong consideration to be a one seed and Kansas is probably not going to get the number one seed in the Midwest region. Unless Houston, loses a couple of games.
So Kansas right now in my most recent bracket, I have them in the west region, they get placed there, but then after they get placed in the west region because there were 1 seed, you go through, and you look at, what would be the most advantageous, Geographic spot to put Kansas in. So right now, I have them third in my pecking order of Alabama first Houston, second Kansas third, Purdue forth.
So let's take those four and do a little exercise with it Alabama gets because they're the Over one overall seed, they get the top geographical geographically, friendly, pick of regional, which for them, would be the South Region, which is going to be held in Louisville and then they would get the top pick for friendliest first, and second round geographical match up with. And these are almost always done just exclusively by driving distance.
So Alabama would be in the south regional in Louisville and then their first and second round would clearly be in Birmingham because birmingham's only what an hour. Way from from Tuscaloosa. So Alabama gets there first and second round matchups in Birmingham and that means that the 16 see the eighth seed in the nine seed will also feed into that Birmingham, first, and second round matchup Houston.
As the second actually could gets kind of screwed this year because they are is not a closed first and second round spot. So we first start with Houston with the regional that they would go in and because they get the second pick, they get Kansas City, which is the Ed West Regional even though it would be more convenient to put Kansas there, because Kansas is much closer. Huston gets priority because they're ahead of Kansas in the pecking order.
So Houston gets Kansas City in the Midwest region and then we have to put them in a first and second round matchup and believe it or not the closest from a driving distance perspective for Houston is Birmingham. So we put Houston in the Birmingham first and second round. And that means that in the midwest, again, the 8 9 and 16 s
will be potted with them. That site under this scenario then Kansas goes to the next most likely Geographic or next, most friendly geographical spot from a driving distance. And that is neither of these are friendly because you're picking between Las Vegas and New York City.
Las Vegas is slightly closer than New York City and I think at this point, it would be likely that Kansas would get that west region their first and second round, they get third pick, they would get the one, that's the closest to them geographically. In this case that's Des Moines and which is not that terribly far away from Lawrence. And so they would play their first and second round matchups in Des Moines, and then they would get their Regional
provided. They made it past the first and second round in Las Vegas. And then Purdue is the fourth would get the last Regional, which in this case is the East, which is New York City, and then they would get the closest geographical site for first and second round, which is Columbus Ohio. So, that's how Purdue ends up in Columbus. Routing into New York city. So hopefully that answers. That question.
It is it is again, kind of a complicated process in terms of trying to figure out how all of it works because you're dealing with a bunch of different things and you really kind of have to know the distances and what the home regions are and things like that for each of these individual teams. But once you get that down, it becomes a little bit easier to figure out, you know. Would it be simpler if they just said, hey first and second round in the East are going to be
played in these two cities? It would be easier to And but wouldn't be as convenient for the fans of those teams that get placed. Because like in this case, you know, Kansas actually gets penalized for going out west because that instead of being able to play in Des Moines, which is only about three four hours away. Instead they're having to play in either Denver which is further away or Sacramento, which is much further away. So there is a reason for it to happen.
A similar question that we got asked from JD Gabby. What is Protected about seeds 1 through 4 and with IU basketball specifically what's the best-case first weekend location? Assuming they land somewhere, 3, 4 5 or 6 in terms of seating. So let me take the first question first because you hear this term a lot and it's not really well described ever. What is it?
Protected seed the idea behind the protected seeds is fairly simple as that you want to place teams in a spot where they're not going to be geographically disadvantaged when they play another team. That first and second round. And so, what that means is essentially you will accommodate those teams by trying to put them in a spot where they're going to, you know, not just, you know, if they can get a benefit of playing close to their home, great.
But you also don't want to put them in a spot where for instance like let's say, you know, this is kind of an off example, but like let's say Kansas is, you know, playing in Des Moines as the one seed. Let's say Iowa was an eight seed. You wouldn't put that Them there. Because that would be disadvantageous to Kansas having to travel to Des Moines and playing Iowa team, that's basically just driving an hour and a half, and we'll have essentially a home crowd.
So, that's really where the protection works. It's this idea that for the top four seeds in each region, we want to give them as much of an advantage as we can, and not give them a disadvantage in terms of who they have to play in the second game, or sometimes, even in the first
game. So, when you work through, this is where kind of the drafting system ends up helping I mentioned like Alabama is the number one Houston is the number two they get as close to a protected setup as they can and for Alabama and Alabama has case. They're getting essentially a game that's like right in their backyard. You start going through and I'll just let me just rattle through like, where I placed each of the
teams. In my most updated bracket, this was based off the ncaa's reveal, and then also the games that happened yesterday. So, Texas would be the fifth overall team they'd be the First to seed. So we would look at them and we and this is where bracketing rule start to come in and it really does get complicated here. The goal is to try to keep the Region's balanced in terms of the overall rating of the top
four teams in the region. So the idea is you don't want like all the best ones seeds, all the best to seeds, all the best. Three seeds, all the best for seeds in the same region. You would split those up as much as you could. You're also trying to keep the top. Three teams in each conference away from each other. As much as you can as among the
top four seeds. So Texas is, this is an interesting case, like with Texas, the best spot for them to go actually ends up being in the Midwest region and it makes the region a little bit unbalanced because it means that you've got the second best one seed and the best to seat now in the same region, according to the way that we've ranked things. So we have to basically accommodate for that a little bit later on Iran by placing some week or three and four
seeds if we can. But it works out perfectly because you've got Houston, who's in the American and you've got Texas in the Big 12, they're not in the same conference, so we've managed to avoid any conflicts. There are six, overall is Arizona. Arizona gets popped into the West. It's their natural geographical home. There are Pac-12 school and they're not facing off against another Pac-12 school. You know, we wouldn't want to put Kansas and Texas in the same spot because they're in the
same. Region, you're trying to avoid that as much as possible. In this case, you've got Kansas able to face off against Arizona. That's the third overall team in the sixth overall. TEAM Arizona gets placed in Denver because that's the closest geographical spot for them. Our seventh team overall is Baylor and again we're putting Baylor in a spot where they're not matching up against another
big 12 team as the one seat. So, in this case, they go to the South to take on Alabama and then UCLA and Zip being kind of the odd team out, they get moved to the East and they get to play in Sacramento in the first and second round. But now we've got the weakest one seat in the weakest two seed in the East. So we need to compensate for that a little bit. Fortunately, our ninth overall team with the results that happened yesterday.
Is Virginia and Virginia would naturally get placed in the East so they end up being the best three seed opposite.
The worst 2 seed in our rankings and UCLA Virginia goes to Greensboro. That is Far, the best geographical location that we could put them in of all of them and it ends up working out because we haven't had a team go to Greensboro yet, our 10th overall team is Tennessee who as it turns out also goes to Greensboro for first and second round and Tennessee. You don't want to put them in the South because you want to keep them away from Alabama.
You want to try to get those top three teams in the SEC and separate areas. So instead we put Tennessee in the midwest where they fit really nicely and then then our 11th overall is Kansas state. Now this is where things start to break down a little bit because there are so many Big 12 teams in key spots that we have to find a way to split them apart a little bit. In this case, what we're going to do is put Baylor in Kansas State in the same sub-region.
So unfortunately and we try to avoid this. If we can, you're going to have a matchup between those two teams, if they both make it in the sweet 16 but that works out better than putting Big 12 team in Kansas has region. Instead, that's where Indiana ends up going. So, Indiana ends up being the three seed that goes to the West. Now, we could have just put Indiana in the South, but there was a choice made here to try to balance things as best we could. There's so many Big 12 teams in
those top four seeds. It's hard to get everything to fit together. Hopefully this isn't too confusing but that's essentially how the process goes. So hopefully that kind of explains it. The goal is to try to keep as much protection as you can for the top. Eads and also try to keep conferences away from each other and least until they get to the Sweet 16. The other question that JD had, what is the best case first weekend location for IU?
I mean, I would argue that if Indiana could get into it. You'd want to either go to Columbus or to Des Moines. Those are the two that are the closest geographically. But there's honestly, there aren't a whole lot of like terrible options for Indiana. I've got them in Albany. But you know, that's largely because Kansas State ended up taking the slot in Columbus that was still on the board in the,
the the draw right before. So, you know, I think likely Indiana's probably going to be in a position depending on, who's in front of them, where they might get us shot at Columbus, they might get a shot at Des Moines, but I would not be shocked at all at this point and less Indiana, like really goes on a run. I wouldn't be shocked to see them actually ending up in either.
ER, Albany Orlando because there just aren't going to be a whole lot of other spots that are geographically favorable for IU that will pop up and be available. Whenever they're part of the draw is whether they are a lower level 3 seed or a higher level for seed, that's where you're
likely to see them. You know, ideally obviously Indiana would love to be a top four seed, feeding into the Louisville, Regional the south regional because ultimately at that point, you're almost playing a home game like this one. Those weird quirks where I you even though there are natural geographical region is the Midwest would actually benefit from being in the South and it would almost be a little bit of a drawback for a team, like, Alabama, having to play a team, like Indiana.
So, close to where Indiana's at, if you'll recall, that's how the scenario played out in 2002, where Indiana ends up playing in Lexington, against Duke in the sweet 16 and that ended up being kind of a home game for Indiana because not only did you have a bunch of Indians Deanna fans there and also because Duke
really doesn't have fans. But you also had a bunch of Kentucky fans who wanted to root against Duke more than they wanted to root against Indiana. So it all kind of worked out but that's how that process goes you know ultimately Indiana will you know that's why you want to work your way up the seed board a little bit because you want to be in a more advantageous position to get crowds not just for the first and second round.
But for the third and fourth rounds to the Sweet 16 Beyond Let's answer some other questions here. These are. We've had some good ones that have come in. Question from Matt Roth. Appreciator is there any way to identify a priority list for the committee in terms of evaluating a team's resume? Could you walk through a mock thought process of two teams that have very different resumes but fighting for the same seat. IE like st. Mary's in Kansas State.
I think it's a good idea. Let's let's go ahead and do that. I gave a little bit of this rationale earlier wrong. On, but I'll give you two teams that sat right next to each other on my board. And actually, I made a shift with one of them earlier on. So let's do actually, St. Marys and Texas Christian. These are two teams that are are pretty different overall, in their profile. But they've both got some things that you would have to try to consider in terms of where you
would place them. So st. Mary's twenty four and five overall twenty three and five against division. One, those are the only ones that count. They have one win against a non division. One opponent Kansas State or excuse me, TCU 18 and 9 overall. Now one thing to keep in mind is that conference records really don't matter. They really just look at the overall accomplishments you've had so like you could look at st.
Mary's, and say they're 13 and one, which they are in the West Coast Conference. And TCU is only seven and seven in the Big 12. But the reason that doesn't get looked at is because the Big 12 is much stronger than the West Coast Conference and it's really about the teams you've beaten or
lost too. Why not the quality of the conference that you're in one is kind of an artifact of the other, but like, as we've talked about with IU IU, could end up with like the fifth sixth, seventh best record in the Big Ten this year, even though they've played one of the hardest schedules in the entire big tent, like, they'll only play the bottom five teams in the Big Ten once each, whereas, like, Purdue and a couple of other teams will play them much
more. So, when we look at these two teams might try to go as much Apples to Apples, as I can. So you can see the Conflict in the difference that sometimes pops up here, st. Mary's, let's take their their kind of high level numbers first. And then we'll delve into the individual games st. Mary's is six and one in Road games and three, and two and neutral games. So that means that they are 9 and 3 in games away from home, TCU, is 2 and 6 in Road games
and for no and neutral games. So, they're six and six in those such games. So advantage to st. Mary's slightly strength of schedule, wise, overall strength of schedule, st. Mary's His 97th TCU is 15. Now, the flip side of that is st. Mary's, non-conference strength of schedule.
The teams they chose to play is 99th tcu's is 263rd, but overall strength of schedule very much tilts and favor of TCU their overall resume, if you average up kpi strength of record and the nitty-gritty report which is something that a friend of mine, Joby Fortson puts out, that is very, very accurate and calculating the field. St. Mary's averages out to having the 22nd best resume in college basketball, TCU averages out to having the 28th best resume in
college basketball. So they're pretty close to each other. The predictive rankings very much love st. Mary's St. Mary's is kind of got that perfect profile that the power numbers struggle with. They have a great defense and a pretty good offense. And so they are coming out to an average of about 14th in the country and they're Hooves TCU comes out to about twenty fourth. So pretty large Advantage there to st.
Mary's. So then what we'll do is we look at the individual wins and losses that each team has had over the course of the season and try to Divine, you know, which one of those is really more impressive. So if you look at quad one wins, we talked about quad one earlier and how the quads, even though they are more accurate and a better picture than what we used to have that, there's still some problems with them. St.
Mary's has 2 quad one wins. They have a home win in overtime against Gonzaga, and they have a neutral Court win against San Diego State. They've also got sick Squad two victories, so they have wins at home against Oral Roberts. Who will almost certainly make the tournament. They're going to win the regular season title in the summit League, North Texas, who's not likely to win the tournament but is it pretty good team or get into the tournament?
I mean they want at Santa Clara at BYU on a new Record against Vanderbilt and at San Francisco. That's all of their quad. One and two wins. Right there. You look at their losses. They've got one quad one loss on a neutral court, against Houston.
They've got to quad 2 losses against New Mexico and then at Loyola Marymount, the Loyola Marymount, one kind of hurt and then they've got winds or scuse me losses at home against Colorado, State, that's bad and they have a neutral Court loss against Washington, not great either. Those are both tier 3 losses. So put that aside let's talk TCU tcu's got for Quad one wins at Kansas which is a tremendous win. One of only. I think, two teams that's one at Kansas all year in Kansas one of
our one seats. Remember they've also won at Baylor which is another tremendous win, because Baylor is right on the edge of our 12 line, like, they're right there in the mix and then they've won at home against Kansas State and a neutral Court win against Iowa. And then in their quad 2 wins, they've got West, Virginia, Oklahoma, State Providence, all Those teams are likely to make the field and are those were all home wins for them. They be Texas Tech at home, who's right?
On the borderline, they beat Utah. Who's not a bad team, in a neutral, Court game, and then they beat Oklahoma at home. So they've got more combined quad, 1 and quad 2 wins and their overall quality of those wins is significantly better. You're just not going to find two better wins overall than Kansas and Baylor on the road right now in one a jewel teams profile, you know, their losses, almost all of their losses are in Quad one.
They've got one stinker of a loss early on in the season to Northwestern State who's not great but could make the field as an automatic bid, you know, contender in the Southland. So you can see. Like, I mean, if you think in your head like, who am I going to pick? Who would, you know, both of those teams are making the tournament? No problem. The question is, how do we rate them? How do we rank them against each other? I look at this from the tournament, you know committees
perspective and I say to myself. Well, st. Mary's has more wins overall and that does matter the committee. Like if you win a lot of games and you only lose two, three, four, five games the committee's always preferred those types of teams. And and that will come into play down the list like teams like Florida, Atlantic or Charleston, who win a huge number of games, even if they're not against great competition. A lot of times will get the nod over. Two teams that have only one, a
few more games. And they've lost the thing about these two though is that I look at tcu's overall strength to schedule and I look at the fact that they have 12 insanely difficult games on the road, plus, they want a neutral Court game against an Iowa team that's safely in the field. And and the fact that they blew Kansas out one by 23 points in Lawrence. I think the committee would look at that and say, you know, both of these teams are relatively equal, st. Mary's is got some things.
We like, but the reality is, the TCU has shown an ability to go on the road and win big against the top teams in the country. So, I would ever, so slightly put them above st. Mary's in my rankings, and that's what I did in this. I and again, they're right next to each other. I had TCU 19th on my S curve. I had st. Mary's 20th. So they ended up being the last
25 seats. So, if you looked at the field, you wouldn't even necessarily know that one was ranked ahead of the other, but that's how I would rank them. Going back to Indiana. This is one of the things that really helps Indiana out is that they want at Xavier. They're the only team that's done that. They want ad Illinois handily so they've demonstrated to the committee that yes, we can go on the road and win those sorts of games. That does travel really.
Well, when you think about how a team is figured, this is where Yukon is such a difficult team to figure out because they've got three really good neutral Court wins one of them's against Alabama, who's the top team in the country? The other two are Iowa state, whose before five seed somewhere in that mix, and then Oregon who's Right On The Fringe of getting into the field. So you look at that and you're like, well, they've demonstrated quite a bit.
The one difference with Uconn and why I think they got knocked down below. Indiana is that their record against teams that are likely to be in the field is they've only got an eight, and six record against those teams. And so, I think the committee really weighed that heavily in looking at where they would Place Yukon and I'm guessing they have Them as probably a five seed.
So that's how you would look at all of that and I hope that that Roth appreciator that gives you a sense of what the process is. It gets much harder as you get further down the field and you know, when you get down to trying to pick who you're at large teams at the very bottom of the list, are going to be there. You're picking between two very
different types of things. I mean, the big one I had today was Wisconsin versus Charleston because, you know, Look at Wisconsin, and you say to yourself. Well, that's a team that they've got some really good wins away from home. They want at Marquette. They want at Iowa, they want, it Penn State, who's kind of On The Fringe, they won, you know, on a neutral court, against USC
there, eight and ten overall. When you look at their, their record against teams that are going to be in the field, which is pretty good. And they really don't have any bad losses, but they also don't look very good on paper. They are one of the worst teams in terms of predictive statistics that I've gotten the field or had in the field.
I don't have them in the field right now, whereas Charleston, if you average out their resume and their predictive, they're about the same as Wisconsin. They don't have a whole lot of top level winds. In fact, their best Wayne is probably Kent State who would not get in as an at large but we're Charleston. Really I think has some benefit is that they are 20 25 and 3 against Division 1 teams they're
26 and three overall. And I just get the sense, even though their strength of schedules real bad, and I think that that, you know, that's the one thing that gives me pause. I think that number of wins Charleston would likely get a chance ahead of Wisconsin, because the committee loves to reward teams that go 25 and 3 27 and 3 somewhere in that range, over a team from a power conference.
That's only three or four games above 500, but I could easily see the committee saying no Charleston you didn't play anybody. You didn't really beat anybody. We're going to go with the team like Wisconsin that we feel like could actually do something in the tournament and that is really a factor that you'll find with a lot of these.
A lot of it really comes down to the committee looking at two teams and saying, okay, we understand what this team's got on paper or doesn't which of these teams do you really think is going to be able to accomplish something in a tournament environment and that's where I can't really decide between these two teams and even you throw a team, like North Carolina in, you know, one of the reasons, Is why they've struggled and, and in terms of their bracketing, is they
really? If you look at it, like they've got one win right now, against a team that would likely be selected as an at-large maybe two, if you want to count Charleston. That's one of their wins. They have zero quad one wins and their quad to winds are North Carolina State. Charleston, Ohio State and Michigan on neutral floors, Wake Forest at home and at Syracuse, it's like that's not great. So looking at North Carolina it's like what they played a much tougher schedule.
But they haven't really beaten anybody on it. These are the things that you end up, weighing as you try to rank these teams against each other and try to figure out who's going to be in the field versus who's not. So hopefully that that answers your question some other ones here from our friend Lieutenant Vincent Hanna, what are the updated rules for how soon? You can play a conference Foe and a repeat opponent from the non-conference schedule?
Are they the same? So it's one of those things where there are rules and then there's exceptions that are to some degree dependent on what's going on within total number of teams from a conference. So ideally they're not going to have any rematches of Conference teams until you get to the Sweet 16. They don't want to have the top three teams from anyone conference in the same region.
And so we talked about that earlier where it's like, we don't want, you know, the top three teams in the Big 12, we'd really like to have those all three Different regions and then you don't want to have any rematches. If you can before the sweet 16. Sweet 16 is kind of The Sweet Spot. The one exception here is if you end up with more than eight teams from a conference, even then ideally, you've got it so that the earliest you would see, two teams play each other would be the sweet 16.
So that's essentially the rule. Now what the other thing that complicates this is the play in games Because the playing games for the at large has generally. There's one that feeds into a 611 matchup and there's one that feeds into a 512 matchup. So sometimes you'll have situations where you have to place a team as a five-seater is six seed.
And there's a slight possibility, unless you really mess around with how things are being placed that you could have a conference matchup, you know, really early, maybe even the second round, you know. So if a team gets in the last team in the The field and there are 12 seed in the play-in game, you might have a situation where a conference team that they might be playing against would be the four seed.
Generally they do a good job of avoiding that that's like the one situation that's hard to to seed around or try to place teams around. But generally speaking they're going to try to keep teams from the same conference or teams that are are doing a rematch away from each other until the sweet 16. That's that rule. Some other questions. This is from Thoughts by will. If Joe lunardi is Big Bird, who is Oscar the Grouch and the Bracketology universe is probably Jerry.
Palm palm has been doing it forever. We actually had another question about Jerry Palm from Glen. Why is Jerry Palm so bad? At this, it's kind of funny because Jerry was the first one that really kind of popularized. This in the early era the of the internet. I mean Joe and Artie's been around doing it for a long time
longer than Palm, I think. But you know, Palm You got to go back to like late 90s, early 2000s and Jerry Palm was the guy who did a replication of the RPI that was available for everybody because he used to be the RPI was just an internal metric that was being controlled by the NCAA. They weren't they would publish it occasionally and newspapers I remember. I've got cutouts of the RPI and newspapers in Bloomington and in Lafayette from like 1986 87
somewhere in that range. But Palm in addition to Replicating, the RPI would do bracket projections. And I was like, the only place you could reliably go on the internet for a long time to see what somebody else was doing in terms of projecting brackets. And then, you know, I think the thing with Jerry with all due respect is that Jerry has struggled to evolve and how he thinks about how the bracket is
put together. Because the bracket has changed a lot in terms of how its put together, how the committee approaches things, the RPI formula has changed a bunch over time. I'm that you know, the net being introduced to replace the RPI changed. A lot about how things got done in terms of this process and Jerry, you know, I think he admitted on his website for a long time. He was, he's biased against Indiana, he carries some other biases.
I think into the way that he picks things and, you know, look, you'll sometimes you'll really know how stuff goes for a while, and then eventually the process leaves and you don't follow it. And I think that's to some degree where Jerry is at and all of that. But anyway, it's just kind of funny because you this is it's kind of a silly thing like the whole Bracketology thing to
begin with. It's a little bit silly that we spent This Much Time on it but it's interesting watching somebody's been doing it for so long who you think would be an ace at it. But a lot of that is because the process has changed underneath his feet over the course of time. And that's again you know I'm not a top-level, Bracketology style be the first to admit that there's other people in the eye, you universe that have done better and he bottoms being a great example of that.
That. But, you know, I've tried to change as much as I can with the times and that's like I place better than lunardi and palm I think and bracket Matrix in terms of measuring how these things do against the committee at least the most of the last couple of years. Some other questions that we wanted to answer Andrew Montgomery with a good one? How much if at all does the committee factor in injuries and to seating.
And if they do, is it for long absences like Xavier Johnson or were they also can't Consider Trace Jackson Davis and Jalen Hurd chafee, no playing hurt in December. This is one that the committee does Factor it in. But I'm not convinced that it's applied evenly and it's really hard to get a good measure of how much of an impact. The factoring of injuries has on the overall seating.
I mean, I've seen teams who the part of the let me back up a little bit part of the issue is With a team like Indiana. When you look at trying to see them. Ultimately what you're trying to do is figure out okay, what exactly is this team that we're going to put in the field?
The committee will certainly factor in injuries the other direction I'm you know famously Cincinnati was the best team in college basketball in. I want to say it was 2000 and then they lose their best player right before the tournament and they end up dropping to a 2 seed. A lot of times, what will end up happening is the committee will try to factor in injuries to some degree but ultimately, they're just trying to figure out how strong is this.
Team going into the NCAA tournament and so for a team like Indiana on the one hand, you'd think, well, they'll factor in Xavier Johnson's injury. But I don't know how much they will.
If they don't have Xavier Johnson back and playing like 20 to 25 minutes by the time, the tournament starts because in their eyes, they'll look at it and say, well, you know, whatever, Effects have been we're not going to oversee this team simply because they were missing this player who starts for them, because this is who they are now.
Now, I do Wonder a little bit, if you know factoring Indiana up that high, if maybe they've slightly discounted some of the losses that they had without Xavier Johnson. But I think as we get closer to the actual selection, I don't know how much that's going to run into the picture, unless we see Xavier Johnson back, and we see the team playing at a higher level, I don't think in the Anna's gonna suddenly jumped up to like a two line or something like that.
I just think what you're going to see is kind of what you've currently got the other team. That's really. I think we're looking at with this as Creighton you know because Creighton lost a bunch of games early when they didn't have Ryan M hard on the roster due to injuries, but now that they've got him back, I think you're starting to see, like, okay, we know what Creighton is essentially and while you know, they're not going to give them the benefit of the doubt
necessarily for the now. Ask a loss, the Arizona, State lost the BYU loss. I don't think it's going to matter, much with them. I think they're going to probably end up being in that. 45 range with the idea that that's essentially where their resume is going to land them.
Anyway, the injury thing is one of those things that's gotten talked about so much and I just don't think it's that big of a factor for a lot of the selection committee when they're actually trying to get in there and figure out how strong are these teams relative to each other. So, that's with so many of these criteria. When you actually line all All of them up. It's almost like it's not just straight away. Well, there were injuries so they're going to factor that in
or well. They've got a great road record. So they going to factor that in it. All be ends up being part of this larger Continuum about how good the team is, and what they've accomplished. Brian Hicks asks, does the committee warp expected seeds to avoid Conference teams playing before the sweet 16 or is that a myth? So they don't warp them but they
will move teams around. As much as they can, they will generally not drop a team in the first four seeds to, you know, to accommodate the lack of an intersection there. You know, before the sweet 16, they'd rather move them to a different geographical region. Now, what they will do sometimes is they'll move a team up or down a seed, line to avoid a conference rematch before the sweet 16.
But the lower seeded Umm is generally the one that gets affected and it's almost always just one seed line. So for instance, like if you've got Northwestern as an eight seed, you know, that's a bit of an issue if they're only place that they can go, is to go play against the against Purdue as a one seat. So you might actually see Northwestern get bumped up a seed. And someone else swapped down into that eight seed spot to avoid that second round matchup potentially that's going to be
the big question mark though. And this is where these things generally. Like, you know, you'll fret about them now. And then, by the time the selection committee actually puts the selection together and puts it out in front of everybody, it ends up not being
as big. The deal, you know, generally every year if you will, one of the informative things to do the committee when they release the bracket about an hour or two later will release their full seedless there, one through 68 seedless and you'll actually be able to see, we're a team, potentially got placed up or down a seed line.
Generally speaking with the four regions there's enough flexibility that you can move a team from say it's natural geographical region to a less likely or less positive one because Was the benefit there is that you will avoid that sweet 16 or that pre sweet 16 matchup by doing that. So that's essentially the way that process works a couple of other questions. We had another question, is it better to be top four seed than last three seed from original
placement? Standpoint, I kind of answered this earlier. So what he's saying is is it better to be the best for seed as opposed to being the worst three seen? The answer is no, you always want to be higher up on the list. Last three seat is going to Get first crack at best first and second round matchup spot where as the, you know, the being the four seed, you're going to get one less option there so that could be the difference for Indiana if they were the last
three. See, they might get Columbus as a first and second round spot. Whereas if they're the first for that might be off the board. Now, the flip side of that is you might have a shot at a more positive. Sweet 16, a regional location if you're the first four.
See, but again, as we've talked about earlier, so much of that depends on what's happened in the first second and third seeds, in that region and where you would be placed to avoid, you know, unbalancing the region or you know, it like being in a situation where you're one of the top three teams in your conference and you can't be placed in one particular region because there's already somebody from your conference above. You, in that same. Same region again.
Lots of things to keep track of and it's very confusing but that's essentially how it all works out. Anyway, I think that was all the questions. Let me see if there's any other questions that popped up. Looks like okay some good questions here from the Cornelius. Bumpus the late-season run in the Big Ten tournament last year. Didn't seem to help all you with regards to how the committee
seated them. If they received a double by in this year's tournament and lost the first game, what did have an impact on their final seed line? So I a lot of people have said that they're like, well, the last year, even though I you made a run in the in the Big Ten Tournament, it didn't help them with how the committee seated them, and I actually that's the wrong way. Look at it last year's IU team.
I think the more accurate way to look at it last year's, I you team wasn't going to make the tournament if they hadn't beaten Illinois. And you know, you can be like, well how could that be the case? Because everybody, I think and
talk to themselves. Bracketology is included into this idea that I, you was going to be in the field and that they were in the Big Ten Tournament just to add to that overall resume realistically, though, if you go back and look at what Indiana did last year, they have a whole lot on their resume, you know, their best wins last year going into the tournament away from home were a neutral Court win against Notre Dame who you know, was an 11 seed in the tournament.
So you're not talking about a top-level team and they won at Maryland who didn't make the tournament soberly prior to the Big Ten Tournament. Those were their best wins away from home, winning against Michigan.
Who made the field, winning against Illinois, who made the field, suddenly gave them Two wins away from home and allow the tournament selection committee to look at them and say, well, that's actually a team that has the capacity to do something away from Assembly Hall and even though, you know, Indiana had beaten Purdue at home. They'd beaten St. John's at home, they'd beaten Ohio State at home. There's plenty of teams that win
a lot of home games. There's a lot of teams that that's all they do and they don't get into the NCAA tournament because they don't show that they can win away from home. So, I actually don't think it was a situation where the committee didn't pay attention to the Big Ten Tournament. I think they did. I just think Indiana. Absolutely needed those games to
get in in the first place. And, you know, they'd beaten Iowa, they might have gotten out of the play in, but realistically speaking, they didn't. So, as far as this year's team, it's different, this year's team. We've already seen the committee likes this team. They're, you know, they like what they've done away from home.
They like their overall resume. I think for this tears team, if they want to tread water, if they want to stay at the four line or maybe have a chance to get to that last three. Need to win the two games at home against Iowa and Michigan because that's a win against the tournament team and a borderline
tournament team. And then they're going to want to, you know, if they do, they don't have to win the two games on the road, but it'd be nice if they did, if they could beat Michigan State, that's a really nice Road win against the team that's going to be in the field. And obviously, if you beat Purdue on the road. Now, you're one of only two teams that's beating Purdue at Mackey Arena.
That's huge because that, that, that is the type of when that gets you solidly on the 03. And maybe as you peeking into the, to line depending on what's Happening elsewhere, as far as the tournament in the Big Ten Tournament is concerned to go back to the question that was asked if they get a double by in the tournament and lose their first game, it really kind of depends on who they lost to if they let you know.
If there are, let's say, I you ends up as the four seed and they play the five seed in the, you know, the the whatever. That would be that Thursday, the Big Ten Tournament they lose that game, probably. Not going to hurt them because in that case, you're likely losing that game to Rutgers or an Illinois or you know, somebody that's in that morass of teams Iowa right now, it's like northwestern's the second seed Indiana's, the third seed and then Maryland and Iowa are
tied for the fourth seed. Rutgers is tied with Michigan like you're in that mix where any team except Michigan. I think you could survive losing to and not have it affect your seating you could win that game. Obviously you'd like to win that game. That could potentially push you a little bit higher in the seedless.
Because now again, you've demonstrated you can win away from home on a neutral court against a tournament team again, unless it's Michigan. And in that case, it doesn't matter what happens in that next game, because if you lose to Purdue because I'm assuming when Purdue is going to be the number one overall seed, you haven't hurt yourself at all there.
So that would be how I would look at it is I you can reward themselves by winning in the Big Ten tournament and get themselves in a better overall position. The only scenario I could see hurting them in terms of seating is if they were the five seed and they end up losing to the 12 are whoever wins that 1213 game because the 1213 is probably going to be Nebraska Ohio State you wouldn't want to lose to either of those teams on a neutral floor.
So that's what the thing that Indiana would need to be watching out for again, I don't think it's gonna hurt them tremendously but it wouldn't help them at all if they were to lose a game like that. So anyway, hopefully that answers the questions that you've got. We will do this again at some point soon and I'd be happy to answer. Any other questions that you folks have? I you know what? I'll probably try to do at some point is put a video together.
We're actually go through the whole bracket show you how that process works and if you have questions off of that, you can certainly Feel free to chime in and ask as we go along, we might even do that. Why? That might be a good thing to do maybe next weekend or something like that. So anyway let me know. If you've got other questions, sending your tweets to Crimson cast, you can also DMS happy to answer any questions that you've got. But anyway, this has been our
latest edition of the bracket. Racket will be back with more Bracketology throughout the course of this upcoming week and Beyond will start to delve into the bottom of the field figure out who's legit down. On there who we need to be watching out for were also talk a little bit about some of the better at large teams, coming out of some of the mid-level conferences, who do we need to be watching out for Drake Oral
Roberts? Utah Valley, who else will talk about all that and more coming up on the bracket racket. I'm Gail McLeod. The oh, thanks for joining us. Folks will catch you on the flip side. So everybody,