A look at our final bracket versus the actual field
We have reached the end of the road in Bracketology for the 2023-24 season, thus meaning the best three weeks in sports are coming up next.
The general consensus this year is clear: the selection committee whiffed big time. With a self-stated five bid stealers, the order — and selection — of their top 46 teams were at best eyebrow-raising, and actual WTF reactions at worst. The committee seemed to have it out for the Mountain West as, despite the league actually realising its six-bid dream, the league saw most of those six teams vastly under-seeded. We will dive into the entire seeding, the contradicting committee’s seeding of the MWC, and the bubble here shortly, but first, we will look at the final seeding for reference:
Now, we will look at my final seeding prediction:
Overall Total Correct: 67/68
Teams Correctly Seeded: 47/68
Teams Predicted Within 1 Seed Line: 62/68
Perfect Hits: 18
The ‘perfect hits’ represents the teams I predicted exactly correctly. The one-bid low-major teams, especially the 16-seeds, do a lot of the carrying here as I predicted 8 of the possible 18 13-through-16 seeds and 18 teams perfectly overall, including the top 6 seeds which felt like a pretty easy group to sort after Purdue’s loss to Wisconsin in the Big Ten Tournament.
Swings and Misses: 7
My ‘swings and misses’ are the teams I missed by multiple seed-lines, predicted to be in the tournament and missed, or teams I predicted to miss the field but made it. Despite a comfortably big loss to Saint Mary’s in the WCC Final, Gonzaga still found themselves on the 5-line, but I had them on the 7-line. Boise State and Colorado State were both in the committee’s ‘Last Four In’ while I had them both earning single-digit seeds. Lastly, I had Indiana State as my final team in over Virginia, but the committee chose the ACC’s Cavaliers over the Missouri Valley’s Indiana State.
The Bubble at a final glance & the committee’s gripe with the Mountain West
Overall, my ‘First Four Out’ and the committee’s are merely a swap from matching all four teams, but the committee’s disdain for the Mountain West really separates the two ‘Last Four In’ groups.
I don’t see a world where Virginia deserves to be in the NCAA Tournament, but at least their spot in the tournament comes in a Play-In game. That being said, if the committee claims to value wins the way they say they do, then a team who went 2-7 in Quad-1 games and lost all seven of them by double-digits should be looked at a little deeper. Of those seven losses, three came against teams who aren’t in the tournament, and six of them were by 15+ points. If other teams on the bubble are punished for their poor non-conference scheduling, so should the team that ranks 236th on KenPom in non-con SOS. If the committee simply said they put them in based on the name on their jersey, and it’s infinitely more believable than any lie they could have said otherwise.
Speaking of injustices, the committee was not just wrong across the board when it came to the Mountain West, but they completely botched the seeding altogether because of it. Somehow, Nevada was selected as the last ‘bye’ for the committee, slotting in as the top 10-seed. Nevada, with a 26-7 record, six Quad-1 wins, three Quad-1A wins, and just one loss across Q3 and 4, was seeded below a Utah State team they beat in their lone matchup this season, a Washington State team who played in a worse conference and had a worse non-conference SOS and fewer Q-1A wins, Florida Atlantic, who had two Q4 losses on top of just two Q1 wins, and a Texas A&M team who had four Q3 losses. Just laughable.
Then there’s Boise State, who posted 4 Quad-1A wins, a top 30 non-conference SOS on KenPom, and they’re somehow one of the last four teams in the tournament. In fact, Boise State had as many or more Q-1A wins than Nebraska, FAU, Mississippi State, Northwestern, Michigan State, Dayton, and Gonzaga had Q1 wins overall. How does that happen?
None of it makes sense unless you look at it through the scope of the committee does not watch west coast basketball or games from teams outside of the power conferences. Yes, these clichés arise in specific, very biased situations from fans who feel their team was slighted, but there’s no other way to explain this.