Bracket Matrix Update
For those that are tracking it, thought it might make sense to do a quick Bracket Matrix update (http://bracketmatrix.com/):
- As of last night's update, Michigan is in 126 of the 129 brackets listed
- They have us 5 teams above the cut line. The 3 teams on the other side of the cut line that we want to keep the closest eye on are: VCU, BYU and *gulp* Indiana. Good news is, BYU's conference tournament is over, so they aren't moving anywhere. VCU doesn't play until Friday and they'll take on the winner of Thursday's game between Richmond & the winner of Duquesne & Rhode Island. Obviously, the Indiana game speaks for itself.....
- For those that are curious, our average bracket position on Bracket Matrix is 10.56 (or the top 11 seed). I would LOVE for us to be an 11 but not an 11 in Dayton. Feels like that really sets up for a nice run.
- Speaking of an 11 seed, that woud put us against a 6 seed in the first round. Bracket Matrix has the 6 seeds as: LSU, Alabama, Iowa, and Ohio State. We obviously wouldn't be pitted against the last two. LSU is 21 on KenPom and Alabama is 27. What's interesting is, LSU and Alabama are totally different teams. LSU's offense is ranked 104 but their defense is 8. Alabama's offense 12 and their defense is 113. (We're 16 and 82 for those that are curious and don't feel like looking).
- If we by chance moved up to the 10th line, the 7 seeds are currently: USC, Colorado State, Seton Hall and Murray State. Some interesting matchups there for sure.
So, there you have it. No bubble pressure for today but it ramps back up tomorrow. Outside of bid stealers however we are in great shape. Go Blue! Beat the Hoosiers on Thursday and none of this matters!
Beat IU!
True Blue!
I'm curious how important the NET is, vs how much other factors actually influence the selection committee. We are 31 in NET when I looked earlier, and that would translate to an 8 seed. I'm somewhat surprised we're still considered a serious bubble team as a 10 or 11.
We're in. We're playing IU to stay out of Dayton and even that is unlikely with a loss.
Everyone but Jerry Palm has come around to this fact, but he is holding to some irrational notion that a team must be four games above 500 (despite MSU not being above 500 and getting in with a significantly worse resume at 15-12 last year).
The crazy thing is, if we beat IU, I think we'd be in more danger of getting a 9 seed than of being in Dayton with a loss. Not that I would root against that and I wouldn't mind a 9 seed as long as we're not in Gonzaga's region but just saying. The resume is quite strong right now.
Time to go dancin' with Juwan!!
If you look closer at the higher ranked people on the matrix a few still have us in the play in game. I really think our situation is pretty tenous with a loss. Would almost certainly be in the play in games with a loss and probably sweating out a bid stealer or two as one of the last teams in.
Would absolutely love to take down Will Wade’s cheating ass again. Looks like they play a whole different style this year. Their O was damn impressive last year.
Would prefer not to play Alabama. Oats always has his teams playing at lightning speed
LSU is so crazy as they went from the team last year we played that didn't play a lick of defense to an elite defense (that was at one point this year looking historically good). Interestingly, there is a schematic change they made, as they are now an aggressive switching team (it ends up looking like an amoeba zone). I would think Dickinson would be the antidote, though it would look ugly as it would be difficult for our other players to get going.
@QMatic, I about shit a brick when I checked out Alabama's schedule:
- Beat Gonzaga on a neutral court
- Beat Houston, Baylor, Tennessee and Arkansas at home
They also lost at Georgia and Missouri, so they're all over the place.
On the other hand, LSU started 12-0, lost Auburn, and were 15-1 at one point. Since Jan. 15th, they're 6-9 (nice!).
I agree with you based on that. I'd much prefer to play LSU.
Of the entire group, I'd probably want to play Colorado State. We beat SDSU and UNLV, two teams that absolutely smoked Colorado State. My 2nd preference is probably a rematch with Seton Hall.
Agree with ak47. Look at the projections made by the top-ranked bracketologists. They’re not as famous as ESPN's Joe Lunardi and CBS's Jerry "Face" Palm, but they’ve been doing much better than them at predicting the NCAA tournament field, even though some of them don't have daily updates of their projections. LINK
I usually ignore “Face” Palm, other than to see how far off he tends to be. He’s the 100th ranked bracketologist among The Bracket Project’s 135 veteran bracketologists. Not long ago, he had Michigan, Rutgers and Indiana playing in the NIT. Lunardi is 55th on that list.
The Big Ten Network defers to Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News and Fox Sports. He's ranked 20th on the list of 67 relatively new bracketologists whose predictions make it to to The Bracket Project, but his projected bracket doesn't appear to have been updated since Sunday.
@mwolverine1
wow, that's crazy. they turned over almost their whole roster except for Darius Days. Will Wade clearly has no style.
Guess that's what happens when you just get the best players that'll take your money and then roll the ball out there.
Thanks for the update and including the Kenpom numbers for your analysis.
I've said it before, but I'm frustrated that we're under-seeded relative to our quality in the advanced stats. 31 in Kenpom and NET, 25 in Torvik's rankings. We should be safely in the 7-9 range, though I understand why we're not. If we end up as an 11 and can get a weaker 6 and 3 seed, it may work out in our favor. A Sweet 16 run would be a salve on the annoyances of this season.
Indiana is an interesting case. They appear to be similar to Nebraska football 2021 (though to a lesser extreme). They are 9-11 in the Big Ten, 2 games behind Michigan at 11-9, but statistically similar efficiency. Lots of close losses (2OT at Syracuse in OOC, 2-5 in 5 point or less games, plus OT loss at OSU).
The game on Thursday is tighter than I would like. I hope the team comes out motivated to cement the tourney bid and put Indiana away, the ball bounces the right way, and we get one more crack at Illinois.
I know kung foo
For those talking about the "top-ranked" bracket pickers, the matrix itself is the top ranked bracket. No one beats it long term.
It's the remarkably cool and seemingly contradictory thing about the wisdom of crowds.
That's why everyone's average variances are worse than the matrix's average variance (except one guy that's only been doing it for three years and he will revert to below the matrix - he's riding one lucky year).
And the matrix, ie the best picker of all has Michigan comfortably in.
Notes:
1) There's a huge amount of variance in individual scores from year to year, so it's hard to call some "good" rather than just "lucky".
Take for instance, the "champion" or person with the best bracket last year, Patrick Stevens from the WaPo. He beat the average bracket score by 25.6 points last year. But the matrix itself beat the average bracket score by 19.6. That's almost as much as the best of the 200+ component brackets. Remarkable!
Only a handful of 200+ brackets were lucky enough to beat the matrix. And in 2019 he was 9.9 points worse than the average picker and 28 points worse than the matrix. He got lucky last year but again, no one beats the matrix long term.
For the record, his bracket this year has Michigan in as an 11 seed and not one of the last four in.
2) The NET rankings and team sheets were adopted in the summer of 2018 so we've only had two tournaments (2019 and 2021) after a pretty dramatic change in how they evaluate teams.
And what's really interesting is that you'll see on the rankings page that the individual brackets averaged a higher score in 2019 and 2021 than the previous three seasons, suggesting the changes made things more predictable, and the matrix performed 3x better than it did in each of the previous seasons. Could be some multiplicative property of the wisdon of crowds that makes it such that small improvements in the knowledge of the crowd exponentially improves their collective knowledge. I dunno, but looks interesting.
Anyway, if you still want to look at individual brackets, I'd suggest focusing on the best performers in the last two years, ie the ones that seemingly "get" the new system. Making the Madness has Michigan as an 11 seed and not one of the last four in and From the Rafters has Michigan as a 10 seed. Those two had the best average performance in the last two years.
You can stop worrying now....unless there's some major bid stealing...then commence worrying again.
One game at a time - Beat Indiana.
No sweat if we beat IU. If we lose it could be close.
@mwolverine We did the opposite. We went from #3 in opponent 2 point % last year at 43%, to 227th at 51% so far this season. I still can see a 2nd weekend in our future at the Big Dance.
@Qmatic Will Wade underachieved so much with that team last year it's hilarious. All you have to look at is how good Cam Thomas is with the Nets this year
Excellent summary. Beat Indiana.
Just looked at Bracket Matrix...and we're now up to a 10-seed!
I think if we beat IU we will be a 10-seed.
Two wins in the Big Ten Tournament probably gets us up to 8 or 9.
Good stuff. I will say that some of those bracket matrix entries are pretty dubious in both directions but in particular the ones that have UM out but, for example, have Iowa St as a high 7 seed even though by most metrics they are pretty similar.
I think UM is going to be seeded in the 10 spot if they beat IU.
TrueBlue2003
You got it right! Michigan should be safely in the NCAA Tournament field.
Well done and thanks for the reminder that even though The Bracket Matrix has been the “Champion” picker only once (in 2007) during the 15 seasons when The Bracket Matrix has been picking a “Champion”, based on the indivdual bracketologists’ predictions, The Bracket Matrix usually is the most reliable predictor of the NCAA Tournament field.
The updated Bracket Matrix as of March 8 has Michigan as a 10-seed and safely in the NCAA field, most likely thanks to the wins over Purdue at home in a rout (82-58) and at Ohio State (75-69).
Because The Bracket Matrix rarely is the absolute best predictor, from year to year, I like to look at the predictions from those individual bracketologists whose predictions are among the highest in the rankings for at least the past five seasons.
Indiana (NET 44) must know that they probably have to win at least three games in the Big Ten Tournament to steal a bid. A win against Michigan (NET 31) makes them only 7- 11 in Quad1/Quad2 games, while a loss makes Michigan 8-13 in Quad1/Quad2 games.
Rutgers (NET 76, mostly due to their three, bad losses in November by a total of seven points) and third of the four listed 12-seeds in the latest Bracket Matrix would be 9-10 in in Quad1/Quad2 games with a loss in the Big Ten quarterfinals, but that loss and a bid stealer or two could send Rutgers to the NIT. [I wonder how good Rutgers might've been this season if Myles Johnson (UCLA), Jacob Young (Oregon) and Montez Mathis (St. John's) hadn't transferred out.]
Serious question
Dayton or 8/9 seed?
Think about it a second before you answer.
8/9 seed. This team can pretty much go lose to most anybody in the tournament (minus some 15 and 16 seeds). I'd rather not have to go through a play-in game and not make the field of 64. Playing an 8/9 seed with decent odds of winning then taking a chance against a 1-seed and seeing how far this team has truly come will be a fun enough opening weekend. But the chance of not playing Thursday/Friday of opening weekend would suck. YMMV.
Two words: "Parity and "Variability". Here, college basketball is full and running over. It is very difficult to know what this team is capable of-what it can reasonably be expected to accomplish. But with the parity and variability that is present there could well be a very surprise winner of this year's NC.
@1989 UM Grad, I saw that too! Bracket Matrix has officially made its update for today.
- Out of 141 brackets, we're in 140.
- We're ranked as the 3rd #10 seed
- There are 7 non conference champions behind us, so we have some room
- VCU, Indiana, and Dayton are the biggest concerns of teams not currently in the bracket.
- The 7's are still Colorado State, USC, Seton Hall, and Murray State
Let's get some teams losing tomorrow and we can move up even further. Go Blue
March 8th, 2022 at 9:11 PM ^8/9 seed. This team can pretty much go lose to most anybody in the tournament (minus some 15 and 16 seeds). I'd rather not have to go through a play-in game and not make the field of 64. Playing an 8/9 seed with decent odds of winning then taking a chance against a 1-seed and seeing how far this team has truly come will be a fun enough opening weekend. But the chance of not playing Thursday/Friday of opening weekend would suck. YMMV.
Im thinking stay away from 1 and 2 seeds as long as possible and weve got a very good chance. The Illinois and Arizonas of the world are still much better than us. You can get to the Elite 8 without playing one of the top 4-6 teams if things bounce the right way. After a couple of weekends of more ball we might hit another level. I want to prolong our season as much as possible to give the guys more time to improve.
Let's...just not stumble vs. the Hoosiers. We spanked them earlier at their house. Take care of business here, and we're in for sure.
Of course, since our loss vs. OSU on 2/12, well, we haven't strung together two wins (or two losses) in a row. It's been L/W/L/W/L....
So, I kinda hope we can break outta that pattern!