3/3 NCAA Tourney Update

Read my last post for details on how I'm doing this.

Here are the current 31 projected conference winners:

A10	VCU
ACC	DUKE
AEAST	STONY BROOK
ASUN	MERCER
B10	INDIANA
B12	KANSAS
BEAST	LOUISVILLE
BSKY	WEBER
BSOUTH	CHARLESTON SOUTHERN
BWEST	PACIFIC
CAA	G MASON
CUSA	SOUTHERN MISS
HORZ	DETROIT
IVY	PRINCETON
MAAC	IONA
MAC	AKRON
MEAC	NC CENTRAL
MVC	CREIGHTON
MWC	SAN DIEGO ST
NEC	ROBERT MORRIS
OVC	BELMONT
P12	ARIZONA
PAT	BUCKNELL
SB	MIDDLE TENNESSEE
SOCON	DAVIDSON
SEC	FLORIDA
SIND	STEPHEN F. AUSTIN
SUM	NORTH DAKOTA ST.
SWAC	SOUTHERN
WAC	DENVER
WCC	GONZAGA

Notes on some changes and surprising non-changes:

• Mercer moved past Florida Gulf Coast in the Atlantic Sun.
• Charleston Southern took a bid from NC Asheville in the Big South.
• Southern Miss continues to hold on to Conference USA despite the fact that Memphis has handled them pretty easily twice now.
• Princeton was projected to win the Ivy last time I did this, which was at a time when Harvard appeared to be in full control. Well, now Princeton has three games they should win (all on the road, but still) to wrap up the Ivy.
• San Diego State is still projected to win the Mountain West, somehow. There are so many good teams clumped together there that it's a crapshoot, but my system kind of hates New Mexico.
• Robert Morris jumped Bryant in the NEC. All hail Bob Morris.
• Denver continues to hold on to the WAC, and by a pretty comfortable margin. They won't win the regular season crown barring some weird shit from La Tech, but I'll name them the favorite in the conference tourney.

At-larges (1-37):

1 WISCONSIN
2 MICHIGAN ST.
3 SYRACUSE
4 OHIO ST.
5 MINNESOTA
6 PITTSBURGH
7 MIAMI FL
8 COLORADO ST.
9 GEORGETOWN
10 NORTH CAROLINA
11 UNLV
12 NEW MEXICO
13 MARQUETTE
14 ILLINOIS
15 CINCINNATI
16 OKLAHOMA ST.
17 KANSAS ST.
18 BOISE ST.
19 KENTUCKY
20 BAYLOR
21 VIRGINIA
22 MISSOURI
23 ST. MARY'S
24 NORTH CAROLINA ST.
25 COLORADO
26 UCLA
27 WICHITA ST.
28 OKLAHOMA
29 ST. LOUIS
30 IOWA
31 NOTRE DAME
32 STANFORD
33 NORTHERN IOWA

LAST FOUR IN:
34 CALIFORNIA
35 IOWA ST.
36 OREGON
37 BUTLER

FIRST FOUR OUT:
38 VILLANOVA
39 MISSISSIPPI
40 LA SALLE
41 WYOMING

NEXT FOUR OUT:
42 PROVIDENCE
43 TENNESSEE
44 ARKANSAS
45 MEMPHIS

Notes on the above:

FALLERS:

• Northern Iowa has dropped quite a bit. In reality, they have little chance unless they go on a big run in the MVC tourney (probably need to win it, really -- at 18-13, their record is blah), but they haven't lost to any bad teams other than a clunker at Southern Illinois last Wednesday.
• Butler! In reality, wins over Marquette, North Carolina, Indiana and Gonzaga have the Bulldogs in absolutely no danger o missing the tourney. But they've struggled somewhat against some lesser A10 teams (and even awful teams like Ball State, Penn and New Orleans -- seriously, they only beat New Orleans by 13). And they lost to a middling Charlotte squad. And they've lost two straight against St. Louis (at home) and by 32 at VCU. It would be hard to logically argue against any team capable of beating Indiana in OT or Gonzaga not making the tourney, but that's where you have to consider: How much differently would you view Butler if they hadn't beat Marquette, Gonzaga and Indiana by a COMBINED margin of four points? And then consider how generally meaningless those close wins are ... and you realize that Butler can't exactly afford to blow any of their final two games. They'll get in because they're BUTLER, but in a perfect world they would have work to do.
• Wyoming's season has really gone down the drain with some injuries and suspensions. They have no business being in at this point, so I'm glad they are now pretty solidly out.
• Ole Miss has dropped to first four out territory. That last post I made came on Feb. 18. On Feb. 20, Ole Miss lost to South Carolina. Then, on March 2, they lost to Mississippi State. Those are the Nos. 185 and 228 teams in my rankings. That is, how you say, DAMAGING.
• La Salle was barely in last time, and now they're barely out.

RISERS:

• Oregon, Cal, and most emphatically Notre Dame moved to the right side of the bubble. ND got big wins over Pittsburgh and Cincinnati to cement their status as a tourney team.
• St. Louis made the least sense to me as a "next four out" team last time around, so I was glad to see that they're now solidly in. 

STANDING STILL:

• Villanova is still the first team out. Yikes. They had a chance to put themselves solidly in today at Pitt, but they blew it. I should note that these ratings did not include today's games, so I'm quite sure that kind of performance against Pitt would probably put them in.
• Providence remains in the next four out list. At 16-12, they probably don't have much of a chance in reality, but that's why pure win-loss is a shame -- they lost to Syracuse by 6, at Georgetown by 9, Pitt by 4, UConn by 3 ...they really did themselves in, though, around the New Year. They went from 8-2 to 8-7, with three of those losses coming to fairly poor Boston College, Brown and DePaul squads. 

FINAL THOUGHTS:

I'm still rolling with Florida as my best team, but it's less emphatic than it was in the last update. In fact, the team most likely to beat Florida is ... DRUMROLL PLEASE ... the Wisconsin Badgers. Yep, the same Wisconsin Badgers squad that Florida rolled by 18 back on Nov. 14, and the same Wisconsin Badgers squad that lost to Purdue today. By my numbers, Wisconsin is slightly more likely to knock off Florida than Indiana, which in turn is slightly more likely to knock off Florida than Duke. 

I know this will likely cause you to discount my numbers and musings altogether, but hear me out: It's likely to be a very defensive game with fewer possessions than you'd see in any of the other matchups listed above. A Wisconsin-Florida game would be in the 50s or low-60s. The others would be in the high-60s/low-70s. 

Now say it with me: FEWER POSSESSIONS = BETTER CHANCE FOR AN UPSET.

The easiest way to think about this is to boil it down in rather extreme terms: Let's say you play Michael Jordan in 1-on-1 for $10,000 (because Michael Jordan is a compulsive gambler and you have money to burn because your great aunt just died and left you $1 million). And let's say Mr. Jordan gives you two options: You can play first one to 15 wins OR you can play one possession each -- you each get the ball with a chance to score one time only. 

You don't even think about it, right? Assuming Jordan can dunk on you 80% of the time and make a 3 the other 15% of the time, he's going to score 95% of the time. You, on the other hand, have a 2% chance of scoring on some kind of ridiculous move going at Jordan, and a 5% chance of bombing in a 3 over him from 30 feet away.

Your odds are terrible either way, but if it's a one possession proposition, he doesn't score about 5% of the time and you DO score 7% of the time. Yes, your chance of beating Michael Jordan in 1-on-1 for even one possession is still less than one-half of one percent, but it's within the realm of reasonable conjecture.

On the other hand, if you play to 15, you enter scientific notation territory. You truly have a better chance of being struck by lightning. 

And yet teams seem to ignore this all the time. Yes, I'm entering diatribe territory here, but it kills me when I see inferior teams pressing the pace and trying to speed the game up. It's one thing to do this when it's truly meant to alter how the other team plays -- as much as I hate VCU, their style of play is a good example of this. But so many teams run without a purpose -- if teams take care of the ball against VCU, the Rams actually play fairly slow offensively. They're deliberate and take mostly good shots.

But a lot of teams artificially press the tempo and end up taking terrible shots and wasting possessions. Again, it could be one thing if this was part of your strategy, but the only place I know that truly successfully does that is Grinnell College. So many teams that play fast end up simply sacrificing efficiency on both ends and nothing more. 

So, it will kill me over the next couple of weeks when more or less awful teams with nothing to lose don't change things up and try to get into a 45-40 game with a much superior opponent. We'll see a pathetic Depaul team -- the third-fastest team in the nation and also 11-18 -- lose 90-70 in the Big East tournament and I will just shake my head. 

There is something to be said about a team having an identity and a preferred style, and that varying from that could negatively impact the team's overall efficiency. And while that may be true to some extent, when your team hasn't performed well all season, or if your team's year-to-date efficiency pales in comparison with your opponent's, why wouldn't you try to slow it down and hope to get some positive variance in your direction?

On the other hand, if you're the better team, it's harder to push the tempo to get more possessions, because you know that could negatively impact your efficiency if that's not your typical style of play. 

So, in some sense, assuming some level of ball control and ability to not turn the ball over, the underdog has the edge in dictating how a game is played. And yet coaches so often ignore this fact. 

Basketball is a simple game: You want to get the best shots you can get and force your opponents to take the worst shots possible. So many teams these days really seem to get off on PLAYING UP TEMPO, but it's an empty act -- tempo is meaningless on its own (unless, again, you're really at an extreme where you can affect the other team through conditioning). 

Good fast tempo comes from good defense. Bad fast tempo comes from good offense. 

Playing more slowly/deliberately won't necessarily make your team the next incarnation of the UCLA dynasty. But it will absolutely give you a better shot if you're outclassed.