Well, this is fun: Kenpom's top 14 teams are all still in.
While there is some bias due to teams' Efficiency Metric improving with each win...that's pretty baffling.
Upside: the big guns battle it out.
Downside: Cinderella is just a pesky duck in a major conference.
March 27th, 2019 at 12:05 PM ^
Cinderellas and upsets makes for a great first weekend.
Chalk makes for a great final two weekends.
March 27th, 2019 at 12:06 PM ^
I think one Cinderalla in the second week helps, you don't want a ton but this week would be more fun if UC Irvine was in rather than Oregon
I would rather sit back and watch the (CBB) world burn. Chaos is a ladder.
I love the upsets. A Duke vs. North Carolina or something of the sort loses all interest for me.
Hate to say it but I think Sparty might just take out Duke.
I'll believe it when I see it. Zion Williamson comes in at 284. Tillman and Ward are each giving up 40 pounds to him. He's going to knock them over
+1 for the GOT reference.
Chalk makes for a tournament I've got little interest in watching once my team is out.
Just curious, did you like that UConn/Butler final a few years back?
To me that was about the worst NCAA championship game I've ever watched.
I'm pretty sure it was UConn vs. Kentucky...2014.
UConn-Butler played in 2011.
OTOH, in the year before that, Duke v. Butler in the championship game was a barn-burner.
March 27th, 2019 at 12:07 PM ^
I for one am looking forwards to 4 days of high-end CBB matchups. I root for the underdogs in the early rounds like everyone else, but I'd prefer to see a bunch of really good games and relatively equitable roads to the final four for everyone
March 27th, 2019 at 12:15 PM ^
My love of the sport agrees with you.
My anxiety in seeing Michigan's path to the Final Four does not.
This is exactly how I feel. I am excited to watch a bunch of top-tier match-ups. That said, to win it all, we are going to have to go through:
Texas Tech (the scariest defense we have faced this season)
Gonzaga (the scariest offense we would have faced this season)
Duke (featuring the only man elected to the NBA Hall of Fame on the first ballot before ever playing a single NBA game) - or Sparty (they can't beat us 4 times, right? Right?)
Likely either NC, Ky, Virginia or Tennessee.
Talk about a murder's row!
Well...if we pull it off we would have definitely earned that shit. It doesn't get more daunting than that.
Compare this to college football where only 4 teams play in a "meaningful" bowl games and the other 60 play in "meaningless" extra practices.
Imagine a sweet 16 college football playoff!!!
16 might be just 'too much'... but that concept with the Top 8 includes your Power 5/"6" and a few Wild Cards ([6/]7 & 8)
Eh, 12 teams make the NFL playoffs, 24 teams make the FCS playoffs, 28 teams make the Division II playoffs, 32 make the Division III playoffs.
It's not "too much" at any other level of football - but I would say that 17 games are a lot in one season (12 regular season games, a conference championship game, then sweet 16, elite 8, final four, and national championship game).
I wonder if anyone would be in favor of chopping off "FCS" weekend or equivalent from the regular season (down to 11 games) and then expanding to 8-12 teams.
Every proposal I've seen for a 16 team playoff just nukes the conference championship games since it has very little effect on who would get in anyhow. With that, the top 4-8 teams are each only playing one more game than they would have previously.
March 27th, 2019 at 12:13 PM ^
I saw that. There will be some high quality matchups this weekend.
March 27th, 2019 at 12:18 PM ^
As was pointed out on the podcast or somewhere, last year had a 9, 11, and two 3 seeds in the Elite 8.
People who complain (not that you're complaining - just in general) that "There's no upsets! Where's the parity?!" apparently don't remember a year ago/have massive recency bias.
March 27th, 2019 at 12:27 PM ^
John Gasaway had a really nice and simple analysis of sweet 16 quality based on Kenpom rating: https://johngasaway.com/2019/03/26/welcome-to-the-strongest-sweet-16-ever/
The long and short is that this year's group is by far the "chalkiest" sweet 16 since 2002. But there is not much of a trend in chalkiness over time, at least in this particular 18 year window
Clicked the link but there is nothing but hot air there.
That’s because this is the first year they instituted using the NET.
March 27th, 2019 at 12:27 PM ^
That is mostly everything nowadays though - hot take central/recency bias rules all.
The chalkiness of this years Sweet Sixteen is pretty cool actually - this weekend will be a ton of fun with a lot of great matchups.
Also Duke won a 1 point game to advance and damn near lost that game to UCF of all teams and LSU beat Maryland by 2. flip those two games and you have a #9 seed (Kenpom #34) and a #6 seed (Kenpom #24) in the Sweet 16 and Duke (the prohibitive favorite) out of the Dance. Sometimes these things are a coin flip from looking quite a bit different.
I think it feels extra chalky because most of the game have been decisive wins by double digits. When you have win margins of 20 points (MSU), 12 points (Zags), 28 points (FSU), 20 points again (TTU), 15 points (Michigan), 15 points (HOU) again, 22 points (UNC), 26 points (Purdue), 19 points (Oregon), and 12 points again (UVA) in the games that decided more than half of the suite 16, it's not exactly feeling like a competitive tourney to date.
March 27th, 2019 at 12:33 PM ^
We got a sweetheart path to the Finals last year, so we can't complain. Gotta really earn it this year.
Agreed. We were a good team last year, but damn did we get lucky draws to the finals.
March 27th, 2019 at 12:41 PM ^
I'm totally fine with this. All that this means is the Kenpom got it right this year. And, while it is fun having a cindarella every once and a while, aside from Michigan games, I kind of like watching the big boys go up against each other.
Actually, you have it precisely backwards. It means that the committee got it right, and that the favorites mostly got lucky enough to win, not that KenPom got it right. Judging a full-season efficiency metric by the results of a single-elimination tournament is foolhardy.
Yes, the committee definitely got it right.
But, I still stand by my prior point that, to some extent, this validates the kenpom metrics since the wins and losses largely tracked what kenpom's metrics would have predicted. Obviously, any single-game elimination is insignificant, but over the entire pool of date from this tourney, kenpom did really well from a predictive standpoint.
Also, I don't understand your point that "the favorites got lucky enough to win." The favorites won largely because they were better than the underdogs, and in most cases by a lot. Sure, the Duke game was decided by one or two shots that could have gone the other way, but for the most parts, the favorites won by double digits. Did Texas Tech get lucky to beat Buffalo by a million?
LSU got lucky to beat Maryland. Auburn was very lucky to beat NM St. Tennessee went to OT. That's four chalk teams that could easily be out, and none were actually knocked out that way.
Any individual favorite had an advantage, but as a group, the favorites still got lucky to win.
For example, in Sunday's games, according to KenPom, Texas Tech was a 66% favorite, Tennessee was a 74% favorite, and Houston was a 67% favorite. The chance of all three teams winning was about 32%.
Actually, all 16 KenPom favorites won in the second round games. The chances of that happening, based upon his pregame probabilities, was 0.38%, or about 1 in 263.
In fact, KenPom went 12-1 on Sunday's games (including NIT/CIT games), but expected, mathematically, to go 10-3; he went 10-1 on Saturday (ditto) and expected 7-4. (If you're a subscriber, he lists the expected record at the bottom of the FanMatch page for that date).
March 27th, 2019 at 12:56 PM ^
I wonder if that is an artifact of moving away from RPI and going with that new NET metric. Seeding just got better.
March 27th, 2019 at 12:56 PM ^
Expect chalkier tournaments going forward. The committee switched to NET from RPI in the offseason. NET has shown to track pretty closely to Kenpom, so you're going to get teams seeded more appropriately, which makes early upsets less likely. For example, last year, Xavier was a 1-seed but should have probably been rated a 4-seed according to Kenpom. FSU was a 9-seed, but Kenpom had them in the 7-seed range.
Had Xavier played a 5-seed, they probably would have still lost, but it wouldn't have been much of an upset. Had FSU played a 2-seed, they probably would have lost. So, had these teams been seeded appropriately, it's much more likely that the 1-, 2-, and 5-seeds make it to the sweet 16 in our bracket as opposed to effective 7-, 3-, and 8-seeds.
You also look at teams like Cincinnati that would have been a 1-seed potentially playing an 8/9-seed and winning a close game instead of playing a 7-seed and losing a close game. Michigan almost lost to Houston, who should have been a 5-seed. Michigan should have been a 2-seed and facing a 7-seed like we just did.
Obviously, upsets are still possible no matter what, as evidenced by UMBC beating Virginia, but the idea of a high seed making a deep run is going to start to vanish unless a team like Oregon makes a huge change near the end of the year and that causes them to be under-seeded.
EDIT: If Virginia had been given the worst 16-seed, they would have played a team almost 80 spots down in Kenpom. It could have been a different 16-seed that took down Virginia or a different 1-seed that lost. Or, we could still not have any idea that a 16-seed is capable of defeating a 16-seed.
Credit where due: the committee didn't screw up seeding this year.
Anyone can win at this point.
MSU has good numbers (barf). I wouldn't be suprised to see them take down Duke.
We are going to play MSU in the Final Four, aren't we...
Honestly, I would take them over Duke. We can beat them. I know, we lost three times in the past month, but in 2 of those games, we were up in the second half. Not saying that we WILL beat them but the three games that we lost were played either without Matthews or with Matthews playing hobbles, and we still played close enough to win 2 of those games.
Duke's physical presence inside, length and Zion-ness scares the crap out of me. MSU, last month notwithstanding, doesn't scare me as much.
We were up in the second half in all 3 games. The other thing to consider is that Michigan seems to get a friendlier whistle in the tournament Big Ten refs seem to be used to MSU's physical play. That might be an edge that helps us beat them.
I would much rather face MSU than Duke
We don't have anybody who can slow Zion down let alone guard Zion and Barrett. Zion and Barrett love to penetrate and draw fouls. Duke overall are great shotblockers
I could see us getting into early foul trouble vs Duke and we all know what happens when this team gets into early foul trouble
I love it. Just please, everyone: Stop saying/writing/texting the word "chalk" or any variation thereof.
Where did that come from? I hadn't heard the expression prior to this year's tournament.
I would chalk it up to tradition.
Old horse racing lingo when they used to list and adjust odds on a chalkboard. Before my time, but something like that. Betting favorite = Chalk.
And yes, KBLOW, I'm with you. I will have Captain O'Hagan pistol-whip the next guy who says "chalk".
You should probably avoid visiting any Kansas fan sites.
Honestly, that's a pretty good life lesson on its own.