Punching The Ticket: Go Huskies Comment Count

Ace



Was this enough? We'll find out tonight.

Hold onto your butts.

On Selection Sunday, Michigan is either one of the final at-large squads in the NCAA Tournament field or just on the wrong side of the bubble, depending on where you look. Before we get into the bracket projections and your rooting guide for today, here's a look at Michigan's final tournament resumé:

Record: 22-12 (21-12 vs. D-I), 10-8 Big Ten

RPI: 58

KenPom: 55

RPI Strength of Schedule: 44

KP SOS: 45

RPI 1-25: 3-7

RPI 26-50: 1-4

RPI 51-100: 0-1

RPI 101+: 17-0

The above is why the oft-cited "record vs. RPI top-100" stat can be very frustrating; ten of Michigan's 16 games in that category have come against top-25 teams. Here's hoping the committee makes that distiction instead of oversimplifying.

For the most part, Michigan is projected to make it into the field. ESPN's Joe Lunardi came to that realization in his latest update despite leaving M out of the tourney even after the Indiana win; he now has the Wolverines as the third-to-last team in, playing a First Four game against San Diego State. Yahoo's Brad Evans has Michigan as the second-to-last at-large; SI's Michael Beller has them as the fourth-to-last team to make it. CBS's Jerry Palm is the more bullish, projecting Michigan as an 11-seed that avoids the First Four—and matching them up against Dayton, oddly enough.

So they're in, right? Unfortunately, it's not quite that certain. Two of the most accurate bracket prognosticators in recent years, according to the Bracket Matrix, still have Michigan missing the tournament. The Washington Post's Patrick Stevens places M as the third team out, citing that damned RPI stat:

A really tricky team. The Wolverines bagged a late victory over Indiana in the Big Ten tournament, and they have three top-25 victories. They’re also 4-12 against the top 100, which is even worse than UCLA’s 5-10, which proved good enough, a year ago. Michigan doesn’t have UCLA’s top-60 non-conference schedule strength, either. The inclination is to say the Wolverines are off to the NIT.

Assembly Call's Andy Bottoms also brings up that damned RPI stat in projecting M as the second team out:

Following a loss to Purdue on Saturday, times are tense in Ann Arbor. They have four great wins but are just 4-12 against the Top 100. While they don’t have a bad loss, a low total of quality wins and the fact that 11 of their 12 losses have come by at least nine points with 10 by double digits. The other concern is the non-conference strength of schedule, which ranks around 190th. Outside of a win over Texas, the best non-con victories came against North Carolina State and Elon.

There will be precedent broken no matter what happens with the Wolverines. No Big Ten team to finish with a winning conference record in the last five years has been left out; conversely, no team with as poor a record against the RPI top-100 (I know, I know) has made it.

One thing seems certain: if Michigan doesn't make it, John Beilein's suboptimal non-conference scheduling—at least as it pertains to RPI rankings—will largely be to blame.

Your rooting interest for this afternoon is simple: you want UConn, which has secured an at-large spot with their run through the conference tourney, to beat potential bid-thief Memphis in the American title game (3:15 pm, ESPN). The NCAA selection show begins at 5:30 pm on CBS; if Michigan is left out, the NIT selection show is at 8:30 on ESPNU.

Comments

MGoBender

March 13th, 2016 at 2:32 PM ^

"John Beilein's suboptimal non-conference scheduling"

I don't think scheduling is a 1-person thing.  The ADs (Brandon and Hackett) probably have some influence as well as logistical circumstances ("let's get Dayton to come in!"  "Nope, they refuse.")  

I wonder what kind of "mandate" or "goal" the athletic department puts on number of home games.  For example, I wonder if Beilein would have preferred to not play some RPI destoying body-bag, but Brandon/Hackett respond with "Nope, need home games to fill the season ticket packages."

Seems like a good premise for a long-form Daily article.

snarling wolverine

March 13th, 2016 at 3:10 PM ^

Regardless of whom is responsible, we definitely need to revisit the way we schedule. The D-II games should only be scheduled as exhibitions; playing them in the regular season is a waste of a game. (The committee does not factor D-II games into the analysis, so we get no credit for the win.) And we've absolutely got to cut down on the super-low RPI teams. I know some of it is luck of the draw, but we end up playing about 3-4 every year and it drags our strength of schedule down.

It's frustrating to have such a low-rated OOC schedule when we played Xavier, SMU, UConn, Texas and NC State. Those four horrible teams make the schedule look much worse than it was.

MGlobules

March 13th, 2016 at 9:11 PM ^

at the 9:31 mark of his interview about the tourney tonight:

http://www.umhoops.com/2016/03/13/video-john-beilein-discusses-ncaa-tou…

Nebraska, Illinois, and Minnesota would all have been projected as 50-100 teams if they hadn't had disastrous seasons. We would have been fine. I'm disappointed Ace doesn't think it through before he slags Beilein like that, given the outpouring of fan venom that's been laid on the team.

Don

March 13th, 2016 at 2:52 PM ^

There's no excuse for putting so many body bags on the non-conf schedule. It's really a stretch to think that's on anybody but Beilein; it's his job and responsibility to fix it. If nothing else, get rid of the goddamn D-II game. It's a joke, and we should be better than that.

PurpleStuff

March 13th, 2016 at 3:01 PM ^

It doesn't effect us in any way.  And playing bad teams isn't the issue.  It is just a goofy math equation that says beating Shithole State by 40 is somehow significantly worse than beating (or maybe even losing) to Way The Hell Below Average Tech. 

Obviously we should try to game the system better, but the fact that the committee might use nonsense like that to keep us out (when other teams on the bubble have actually lost to teams with a 200+ RPI) would be ridiculous.

PurpleStuff

March 13th, 2016 at 2:58 PM ^

Our up to the second RPI appears to be 56.  That puts us ahead of Butler and Temple, and only a few spots behind teams like USC (51), Pitt (52), etc.

Matrix has them all comfortably in the tournament.  If we were talking about reading between the lines with a low RPI number I would be worried, but we are right in the mix there.  Obviously we'd be a lock with just some wiggling of the RPI match problem (playing Eastern and Central, for example, as some have mentioned), but it isn't like the math is that big a detriment at this point.  And we still have the best wins and the fewest bad losses on the bubble.

Muttley

March 13th, 2016 at 3:15 PM ^

as an ordering system.

An intelligent use of it would be to place games into buckets (e.g. Top 50) and then compare what's inside those buckets between bubble teams with attention to individual game detail using human judgment and other metrics.  After that first rough sorting, the known inferior but simple and transparent RPI would be tossed away as an ordering metric.

I hope the committee uses it in such a way.  That would be reasonable use of the RPI, with the inferiority of the metric a bias-avoiding feature and not a bug.  Conversely, allowing the RPI to influence the choice of a 50th-ranked RPI team over a 56th-ranked RPI team would be a stupid use of the metric.