Triple Option

As the first championship Monday has passed, the path towards that second championship Monday of the year on April 4th heats up as college basketball gets its three months in the limelight.  After being about as effective as offenses against LSU or Iowa State, COVID caught fire around Christmas and has caused a massive wave of cancellations.  Ommy has had mitigating effects on teams, as Baylor and the SEC have stayed on the court, while the PAC 12 and most mid majors had multiple postponements.  The spike was enough for most leagues to change policy on forfeiting conference games with a team in the protocols to postponements, which saves me a huge headache tracking which wins are actually wins but probably creates a bigger one for teams and ADs dealing with scheduling make up games later in the season and the resulting three game weeks.  

However, I’ve been tracking teams and synthesizing resumes to give the outlook on how everyone stacks up.  COVID world college hoops means it’s likely that every team has an asterisk point or will go through a slump.  Until Mark Titus develops his COVID algorithm or on the off chance I commit a majority of rosters to memory by March, I have to give teams the benefit of the doubt and judge them by their high point.  I have always in the 5 or so years I’ve been doing this weighted conference play more than nonconference, as it takes time for players to mesh and develop a team identity, especially with all the transfer fluidity.  The bracket pictures I post are fun visuals, but I wanted to post some context behind to explain the trends, snubs, seeding discrepancies, and things to watch out for.  

With that said, let’s get into the topics of discussion. 

The early returns are a top-heavy bracket 1-6, with little differential among those 24 teams aside from Baylor

I had a really hard time differentiating the 4-6 seeds, especially with the cluster of Big East teams, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.  Iowa State and Loyola both have a good chance to push up even to the point of a top 4-seed, so there will certainly be a lot of fluctuation.  From that however, there is a pretty good indication of which teams are “good” per say.  The majority of this post will be dedicated to those teams, but the other major note is that quite frankly the bubble sucks right now, or in nicer terms it is wide open because I had a tough time finding the last 6 teams teams to get in, so I’ve had to resort so far to having 2 MAAC teams, a bad Michigan team and a Memphis squat that’s as steady as the stock market, and Texas A&M (not used to them being in the conversation again, and we’re not too far from Vanderbilt being right there as well). 

SEC legit

To all the SEC bros who just celebrated their claim to dominance of college sports in football, well keep riding that high into hoops.  LSU, Auburn, Tennessee have all looked elite so far, and Alabama and Kentucky should get there.  I haven’t gotten to watch Auburn much, so I’m looking forward to the Iron Ball Pt1, as Jabari Smith has a ton of hype as a potential #1 pick in June. As mentioned earlier, the bottom of the SEC is rising up, as some surprise breakout teams like A&M or Vandy could emerge. Another major story is how Arkansas, an Elite 8 team a year ago, has fallen off a cliff after a weak nonconference schedule and a slow start to SEC play. Georgia looks like the only free win thus far in the conference, but even they gave Kentucky a battle, so every game in this conference this year is meaningful and anyone could win on a given night.

Big East was so good in nonconference they can just sit back and play basketball 

Okay sidebar #1, the parity of this league means in my eyes a lot of teams (Providence, Seton Hall, Creighton) are underrated by KenPom and NET, the two major rankings systems I reference most often, which means this year of bracket forecasting I get to depend on my intuition more, which is a lot more fun.  Realistically, the top six teams are all in, and I think as long as Marquette finishes above .500 they are pretty safe as well.  Right now, I can’t differentiate the top teams so I think I put them all on the 4-5 line. If anyone pulls away in this conference race, there is an opportunity for a 1 or 2 seed, but everyone will probably settle in that mid tier range.  In other words, the conference standings will be crucial in this one. I watched the tail end of Seton Hall and UConn, which if that’s any indication of how this race will shake out means that all eyeballs will be on the weekly battles in the northeastern private schools.  

Big 12

No need for a real exciting headline here, like the Big East these teams all showed well out of conference, so the conference games offer a chance for a few elite teams and elitish teams to move up the ranks.  I watched the second half of Iowa State and Texas Tech, and it was a remarkable display of no offense and it was awesome.  Texas Tech impressed me a lot this week, as without lots of key players their players seem to rallying around Coach Adams and gaining confidence as a contenedor, this of course in relation to the potential dumpster fire taking place in Year 1 of departed coach Chris Beard’s run in Austin.  I say possible because I have confidence Texas will get it together, but they looked awful to Oklahoma State and haven’t been super encouraging on the bigger stages they’ve been on.  They don’t have a signature win yet, so it is challenging to project them so high.  Lucky for them, they get their shot this week at Oklahoma and Iowa State.  

Don’t need to touch much on Baylor, watch them if you need to be more convinced that they’re good. They’ll take a couple losses in conference but they’re the “good teams find a way to win” team of the year for me.  Would be awesome to see them go back to back, and I don’t think any athletic program has more momentum right now.  Kansas has some negative momentum after a tough week on the road, so while I dropped them off the 1 line, they should remain in that race.  Speaking of which…

1-seed race is wide open

This week is probably a bad representation of the top four seeds because with no one in the PAC 12 playing, it’s hard to dock the teams as Purdue, Kansas, and Duke are all trending down.  I think Baylor has a three game buffer at least on one of those top seeds, so they’ll go to Houston in the South region (because we’re doing that again this year, bury the lead I get to project locations again this year LG). Midwest should be led by either the Big Ten champ or Kansas, so 1-2 set pretty clearly there (likely a 3 from the SEC in that region.  The SEC champ has the inside track on the East region pole, barring a scenario where Kansas and Purdue/Illinois or something all ascend to the 1-line. Which leaves Gonzaga and the PAC 12 champ out west with the other two PAC 12 teams filling out in one any of the other two regions (all likelihood barring another Oregon State like run, Conference of Champions only gets 3 teams in sorry Bill). 

Boots on ground: Iowa at Wisconsin.  

Wisconsin impressed me a lot in this game.  They have the MAUI bump, and in all honesty they probably should be seeded higher.  A win in West Lafayette with a Houston victory is a tough resume to top.  They get a shot at avenging the Ohio State loss on Wednesday.  Anyway, Johnny Davis was getting on the NPOY watch right about the time I got to see this game, and he is definitely legit.  Iowa looked awful on offense, which I don’t want to overreact to because Wisconsin’s defense was on point. Every drive was cut off, and Iowa had no second chance opportunities, while on the other side Wisconsin moved the ball well, made open shots, and dominated on the glass and in the paint. 

On the other side, I’ll buy into Keegan Murray as a 1st round pick. He can certainly do it on offense, but again I wasn’t very enthused with the effort put forth by the Hawkeyes on offense, so I worry this could be a situation where Murray gets his 25 then gets out, and maybe Iowa wins a few of those games.   The Big Ten is a gauntlet, even more so with 20 conference games, so in my mind every team is allowed a few bad showings, but at a certain point judgements have to be made.  

Prop time:  More teams in tournament, ACC or WCC?

Let’s start this off simple.  As long as these four do what they are supposed to, the west coast conference is getting 4.  Gonzaga and BYU are safe locks, and worst case maybe one of San Francisco or St. Mary’s falls out of the picture. 

But the ACC is literally Duke and the field.  Miami was a huge underdog on the road, and they are the red hot story of the week, moving to 5-0 in ACC play with this signature win and more importantly avoiding COVID interactions to this point.  So those two are in.  After that, everyone is down.  Virginia, Florida State, and Virginia Tech are all year to year shoe ins to make it right?  Yeah no.  Chances are they all finish 12-6 in conference, but that might not even be enough because the conference isn’t that strong.  Wake Forest and Louisville have been the best of the rest in conference play so far, but neither has a strong nonconference resume to fall back on.  North Carolina is a mystery team.  For sure will keep weekly tabs on where that team is at.  At the moment Notre Dame and Clemson seem like they could maybe get sneaky hot. 

Point being, for purposes of tournament consideration, these two leagues are pretty identical in my eyes.  I’m officially unofficially saying that 12 conference wins is a minimum to be in consideration for me (ACC plays 18, WCC 16).  So that pace is something to monitor.   And before all the WCC people say that’s unfair, that gives a window of two Gonzaga losses and a split in the other two serieses.  I’ll concede for Santa Clara or LMU but I’m going to be concerned about losses coming at the hands of the Pilots or Toreros. 

Also BYU and Gonzaga play this week in a fun matchup. BYU is coming off a win against St. Mary’s, and Gonzaga is Gonzaga.  Duke also travels to Wake Forest.   I did my research and Wake Forest can confirm is on campus to start the semester, with a January 10 start date, so Duke gets to play their first true road game since the pandemic. 

Random mid major notes:

First and foremost, congrats to Mississippi Valley State on the outright win against Prairie View A&M.  We will gloss over the fact PVAM is winless, but this has been one of the worst programs in the country the pay few years.  Also shoutout to the SWAC for continuing the forfeit policy, working to the benefit of Southern and the G-Men. 

Also huge rivalry win for The Boys on the road in Monroe.  Arkansas State is my adopted team in the Sun Belt, which is shaping up to be a wild race.  They housed Georgia Southern then took Louisiana-Lafayette to overtime before coming backing to beat Louisiana-Monroe.  I also tell this to everyone I know, but Arkansas State is at the top of the list in that they have one of the biggest center court logos that I have ever seen.  It rivals NC State, and the funniest part is last year they had a giant red wolf but switched it to the more commonly recognized stAte logo, but they kept the scale the same and it literally goes three point line to three point line. 

The Southland is dying out, but they did a fun 8-team preseason tournament style event with their remaining teams that didn’t dip for the greener pastures of the WAC and ASun.  The games don’t count towards conference play, but Southeastern Louisiana took home the crown, so they’ll likely be my auto-bid for a while.