Bubble Watch


obviously couldn’t care less about uconn but they were the #1 overall team and the committee paired them with the SEC/Big 12/Big Ten conference tournament champs in Auburn/IowaSt/Illinois

Literally just lined up every team coming into March hot and put them in UConn’s region.

It feels like the committee truly was trying to give a middle finger to our conference this year
 
Hopefully Hoops is wrong


The issue is really what does the Tournament want to be? This really isn’t about who is the “best“ team or challenging games. It just isn’t. The marketing of the Tournament wants the charming 1 vs 16 story. We have automatic bids that have almost ZERO chance of advancing.

The kids at those schools have their moment. That’s FINE. If you view it from that perspective that’s OK. Cinderella sells. Understand top teams are virtually gifted a ride to the second weekend and more talented teams stay home.
 
Be ready to hear a new acronym/data point in the coming days: KPI

It's established as one of the metrics used by the committee.

Once you look at their rankings, you can tell the committee leaned more heavily on this than anything else.

Brief sampling:
Seton Hall -- 66
Providence -- 69
St. John's -- 71

Virginia - 38
Dayton - 12
FAU - 33
Duquesne - 35
Indiana State - 40
Michigan State - 45

"KPI ranks every team’s wins and losses on a positive-to-negative scale, where the worst-possible loss receives a value of roughly around -1.0 and the best-possible win receives a value of roughly 1.0. KPI then averages these scores across a season to give a score to a team’s winning percentage. The formula uses opponent’s winning percentage, opponent’s strength of schedule, scoring margin, pace of game, location, and opponent’s KPI ranking."

There ya have it.
 
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Be ready to hear a new acronym/data point in the coming days: KPI

It's established as one of the metrics used by the committee.

Once you look at their rankings, you can tell the committee leaned more heavily on this than anything else.

Brief sampling:
Seton Hall -- 66
Providence -- 69
St. John's -- 71

Virginia - 38
Dayton - 12
FAU - 33
Duquesne - 35.

"KPI ranks every team’s wins and losses on a positive-to-negative scale, where the worst-possible loss receives a value of roughly around -1.0 and the best-possible win receives a value of roughly 1.0. KPI then averages these scores across a season to give a score to a team’s winning percentage. The formula uses opponent’s winning percentage, opponent’s strength of schedule, scoring margin, pace of game, location, and opponent’s KPI ranking."

There ya have it.
Except that no one referenced this yesterday.
 
Be ready to hear a new acronym/data point in the coming days: KPI

It's established as one of the metrics used by the committee.

Once you look at their rankings, you can tell the committee leaned more heavily on this than anything else.

Brief sampling:
Seton Hall -- 66
Providence -- 69
St. John's -- 71

Virginia - 38
Dayton - 12
FAU - 33
Duquesne - 35
Indiana State - 40
Michigan State - 45

"KPI ranks every team’s wins and losses on a positive-to-negative scale, where the worst-possible loss receives a value of roughly around -1.0 and the best-possible win receives a value of roughly 1.0. KPI then averages these scores across a season to give a score to a team’s winning percentage. The formula uses opponent’s winning percentage, opponent’s strength of schedule, scoring margin, pace of game, location, and opponent’s KPI ranking."

There ya have it.
I had noticed this in a prior post and it is the only metric in which Virginia was ahead of the BE teams. I did not look at the other marginal teams but its use does seem to line up with the committee's choices.

Oddly, the committee has not (thus far) pointed to KPI as a basis for its decision instead of mouthing insubstantial rationalizations. I wonder if the reason is that while teams had notice (clearly falsely) that NET mattered, I am not aware of anyone ever saying that KPI was the relevant metric. So if in fact that committee used KPI it can't say so because that would amount to a bait-and-switch.

Personally, this is the first time in my long life of watching basketball that I think the committee's choices were heavily influenced by political considerations, and if they used KPI it was only to justify doing what they wanted to do. There have been some controversial decisions in the past but I always felt those had some basketball logic to them and they often played out in a way that justified the committee's decision.

Possibly Virginia and a couple of other teams will live up to that standard and make the committee look good in the end, but it is not a good look.
 
Anyone have an update on how those top bracketologists on Bracket Matrix ended up doing? 🫣
We are waiting for final rankings to be released, but more importantly which braketologists’s bubble burst, assigning them as a NIT(wit) selection.
 
I had noticed this in a prior post and it is the only metric in which Virginia was ahead of the BE teams. I did not look at the other marginal teams but its use does seem to line up with the committee's choices.

Oddly, the committee has not (thus far) pointed to KPI as a basis for its decision instead of mouthing insubstantial rationalizations. I wonder if the reason is that while teams had notice (clearly falsely) that NET mattered, I am not aware of anyone ever saying that KPI was the relevant metric. So if in fact that committee used KPI it can't say so because that would amount to a bait-and-switch.

Personally, this is the first time in my long life of watching basketball that I think the committee's choices were heavily influenced by political considerations, and if they used KPI it was only to justify doing what they wanted to do. There have been some controversial decisions in the past but I always felt those had some basketball logic to them and they often played out in a way that justified the committee's decision.

Possibly Virginia and a couple of other teams will live up to that standard and make the committee look good in the end, but it is not a good look.
It's truly the first tournament that has no juice to me because of that. Bait and switch is exactly right.

After attending the Duke/Vermont & Wisconsin/James Madison games, I'm probably not watching anything else before or after. Just rooting for the three Big East schools from afar.
 
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