turd ferguson

February 17th, 2014 at 2:12 PM ^

Personally, I care a lot about winning the Big Ten and very little about seeding.
 
My guess is that seeds actually matter very little.*  I mean, even a team that could somehow be either a 5-seed or a 12-seed, the only difference in the path they face, seed-wise, is their first round opponent.  After that, they face identical paths.  When there are dominant 1-seeds, then I think there's value in avoiding them.  In that case, I'd want to avoid a 4-, 5-, 8-, or 9-seed if possible.  Beyond that, I think people worry way too much about seeding.  (And I don't think there are dominant 1-seeds this year.)
 
 
(*Obviously, better-seeded teams perform better in the tournament than worse-seeded teams, but that's because they're better.  I'm talking about whether it matters to a given team whether they get a slightly better or worse seed.  Confusing lecture/statement complete.)

LSAClassOf2000

February 17th, 2014 at 12:59 PM ^

Pollstalker hasn't posted the AP vote distribution yet, but it will be interesting to see. Typically, a majority of the votes sit near the actual ranking, so I bet about half of the votes are in the 19-21 range. Still, even last week, a couple people had us unranked who did submit ballots. It will be interesting to see which writers did this for this particular poll. 

corundum

February 17th, 2014 at 1:09 PM ^

Will the Big Ten regular season winner still receive the best 2 seed at this point? Seems like the conference tourney will be more important than ever this season. Hoping we see Purdue in the first round.

SF Wolverine

February 17th, 2014 at 1:10 PM ^

None higher than 13th.  Seems wrong, but when you look at any individual team, also hard to find a lot of fault with those positions.  Hope we light it up in March and make the pundits look dumb.

bklein09

February 17th, 2014 at 1:16 PM ^

Has anyone ever created an objective system for ranking how well conferences do in the NCAA tourney? Some kind of point system that would be able to rank the best conferences based on how far they go? I always here people say that we really find out about the best conferences in the post season, whether it be bowl games or the tourney. Bowl games are easy to look at with wins and losses. But the NCAA tourney is more difficult based on seeding and all that. Anyone on mgoblog want to tackle that one?

corundum

February 17th, 2014 at 1:16 PM ^

I still think the Big Ten is the strongest conference top to bottom with the Big 12 and ACC not far behind. There are still a lot of games to be played so don't put so much stock in the rankings at this point. The Big Ten will get favorable seeds and regions when Selection Sunday rolls around due to SOS and RPI top 50 wins.

ryholly

February 17th, 2014 at 2:04 PM ^

Very interesting that we are the only team in the Top 25 with 7 losses...including a "looking worse by the week" loss to Charlotte.

 

We're getting a lot of respect based on our "strong" road wins in conference....though Northwestern & Nebraska have won in some of those same tough road venues.

 

We really need this win against MSU (and really to finish with 1 more regular season loss, max), otherwise could selection Sunday, we could see our seeding slip quickly. 

bklein09

February 17th, 2014 at 2:22 PM ^

If we manage to win the B1G, I think the committee will have a hard time figuring out what to do with Michigan. We will likely have at least 8 losses and possibly as many as 9 or 10, and yet we will have won or shared one of the best conferences in the country. It will be interesting to see how much weight they give to our relatively poor non conference performance.

bklein09

February 17th, 2014 at 2:27 PM ^

To follow up on that, I think our seed will really come down to how we look down the stretch. If we take care of business, and go 5-1 or better down then stretch as well as making the B1G semis, I think it will go a long way in showing the committee that we are not the same team as we were in 2013.

CJsWolverines

February 18th, 2014 at 10:51 AM ^

I have to agree that #20 seems fair. Our schedule has been crazy the last couple of months and no one should of expected Michigan to beat all the ranked teams they have played. However on Sunday against Wisconsin they were very flat. If they want to make a good run in the tournament, they are going to have to find ways to stay electric. They need to play as they did against State, Wisconsin, Iowa in their first meetings. I would like to see us go to at least the elite 8 this year. Anything after that is a bonus!