[Cracked Sidewalks] Making Chicken Soup Out Of...

[brewcity77]

Well, that week sucked. The only real upside is that Marquette's resume so far has them in good position to make the field of 68, even if their conference slate ends up disappointing. Which while not inevitable, sure feels like it at the moment.

http://www.crackedsidewalks.com/2020/01/making-chicken-soup-out-of.html

[mu_hilltopper]

I am completely floored that a 7-11 BE record "would have us in the field as the last buy, so narrowly avoiding Dayton."

I mean .. really?

[brewcity77]

I am completely floored that a 7-11 BE record "would have us in the field as the last buy, so narrowly avoiding Dayton."

I mean .. really?

According to Torvik, yes. It might sound counter intuitive, but the precedent is there. Not just the Florida team, but also Ohio State last year who went 8-12 in conference and earned a non-Dayton 11-seed and Oklahoma who went 7-11 in conference and earned a 9-seed.

I know some like to dismiss our non-con, but that's because they don't look at the entire country & any resumes outside our own. If you lower expectations to a NCAA bid, Marquette is still in good shape.

EDIT: Personally, I think 7-11 is dicey and would have us right on the bubble. Dayton would be a real possibility. But unless the bubble firms up (consider I have SLU as the last team in and frankly their resume is clearly better than just about anyone else I considered) there's plenty of reason to expect this can still be a tourney team, despite the bad week.

[dinger]

According to Torvik, yes. It might sound counter intuitive, but the precedent is there. Not just the Florida team, but also Ohio State last year who went 8-12 in conference and earned a non-Dayton 11-seed and Oklahoma who went 7-11 in conference and earned a 9-seed.

I know some like to dismiss our non-con, but that's because they don't look at the entire country & any resumes outside our own. If you lower expectations to a NCAA bid, Marquette is still in good shape.

EDIT: Personally, I think 7-11 is dicey and would have us right on the bubble. Dayton would be a real possibility. But unless the bubble firms up (consider I have SLU as the last team in and frankly their resume is clearly better than just about anyone else I considered) there's plenty of reason to expect this can still be a tourney team, despite the bad week.

Brew,

Careful with those predictors. They're good with predicting likelihood of future results of a single team, but notoriously bad at predicting entire outcomes of a season within the context of the rest of NCAA basketball. I remember playing around with RPIforecast and it was just all over the place. I think the main reason they're off is because you're selecting a set of results and the other 350 or so teams are just assumed to win games they're predicted to win and lose games they're predicted to lose, but it never pans out that way. Honestly 7-11 might get us in if our 7 include sweeps of Butler and Nova and 9-9 might not get us in if the rest of the wins are against the bottom half of the league. /Shrug

[brewcity77]

Brew,

Careful with those predictors. They're good with predicting likelihood of future results of a single team, but notoriously bad at predicting entire outcomes of a season within the context of the rest of NCAA basketball. I remember playing around with RPIforecast and it was just all over the place. I think the main reason they're off is because you're selecting a set of results and the other 350 or so teams are just assumed to win games they're predicted to win and lose games they're predicted to lose, but it never pans out that way. Honestly 7-11 might get us in if our 7 include sweeps of Butler and Nova and 9-9 might not get us in if the rest of the wins are against the bottom half of the league. /Shrug

That's why I went with comparative resumes. If MU brought this year's resume at 7-11 in league to last year's Selection Sunday, we would've been in without question and would not have been in Dayton. And last year everyone talked about how the bubble was uncharacteristically strong.

I did a deep dive on RPI Forecast a few years ago and understand those predictive tools often trend to a recency bias. That's why I think at 7-11, we'd likely be in but it would be close.

Compare our 7-11 resume to Florida, Ohio State, and Oklahoma of a year ago. They are similar in terms of quality of wins & which quadrants the wins came in. I'm basing this not just on the Torvik predictor but actual results.