Saturday's Rooting Guide - Bubble Edition
Morning all! Huge lineup of games today and many that will effect Michigan's chance of making the tourney. Before I get into today's game, here's a recap of where Michigan is and how last night went:
- As a reminder, we were watching 6 games last night. 3 of those games went Michigan's way and 3 went the other way. Seton Hall's home loss to Xavier pretty much means they have to, at a minimum, make the Big East final. Old Dominion did us a solid and gave Marshall a Quad-3 loss. Their only way in now is winning the Sun Belt. And last but not least, Lipscomb won a road game at Stetson. Why does that matter? Well, Lipscomb shot up 9 points on the NET rankings and are 1 spot away from moving from a Quad-4 win to another Quad-3 win. Every little bit counts when we're this close to the cut line.
- Michigan's numbers stayed pretty flat last night. NET ranking is still 53. We're 44 on KenPom and 46 on Torvik
- Northwestern and Pitt both moved up 1 spot on the NET rankings, so they are that much closer to being Quad-1 wins (specifically the Northwestern game in Ann Arbor. The Evanston game is already Quad-1)
Alright, let's dive into today's games (going to try and keep this a short as possible):
- TCU at Texas Tech (TTU by 2) - 12pm EST on ESPN 2 - This is a critical game for Michigan. Texas Tech is currently 48 on the NET rankings and just ahead of Michigan in the pecking order on most bubbles. They also have 4 Quad-1 wins and this would qualify as a 5th. This might be the most important game for Michigan today. Rooting for TCU feels a bit cringe after our game on New Year's Eve but gonna have to suck it up here.
- Clemson at NC State (NC State by 6) - 12pm on ACC Network - Clemson is a fascinating team. They have 20 wins and 3 Quad-1 wins but they also have 3 Quad-4 losses. Most brackets have Clemson right around the same place as Michigan, so we can't afford them getting a big road win like this. Go Wolfpack!
- Michigan State at Iowa (Iowa by 5.5) - 12pm on ESPN - There's honestly only one reason why this game matters: Quad-1 wins. MSU is 5 spots away from being a Quad-1 win for us. A win against the Hawkeyes on the road would likely do that. You do the math.
- Arizona St at Arizona (Arizona by 12) - 2pm on CBS - Another really critical game for Michigan. Not only is ASU right around the same place on the bubble as Michigan, they also have a convincing win over us. We need as much distance from them as possible. A win against Arizona would be huge for their resume and we can't risk that. Rooting for Arizona here.
- Kansas State at Oklahoma State (Ok State by 3) - 2pm on ESPNU - While Okie State has the same record as Michigan, they are ahead of us on the bubble line. Mainly because they have 4 Quad-1 wins and no Quad-4 losses. We can't afford them getting another big win. Let's go K State!
- Texas A&M at Mississippi State (Miss State by 1.5) - 3:30pm on SEC Network - Interestingly enough, this might be the most important game of the day for Michigan. On most brackets, Miss State is right at the cut line. They're 43 on the NET rankings and are 18-10 so far but also 3 games below .500 in conference play. Rooting for the Aggies here.
- West Virginia at Kansas (KU by 9.5) - 4pm on ESPN - WVU is another really strange team. Yes, the Big 12 is great this season but WVU's conference record is 5-10. Is that seriously enough to feel safely in the tournament? At some point, are there too many losses? Losing here would drop them to 16-13. We need the Mountaineers to continue to take losses, in particular today in Lawrence.
- Syracuse at Pittsburgh (Pitt by 6) - 5pm on ACC Network - This game is the ultimate conundrum and I'll be fascinated to see what people think. We've thought all along that Pitt getting to a Quad-1 win was the most important thing. Well, we actually might be fighting with Pitt for a spot. They are right on the cut line for most brackets and with the way we beat them, might the committee put us in over them? Here's my take: we either need Pitt to win a lot or we need them to lose a lot. What we likely can't afford is Pitt just sitting still. We either want them to tank so we can pass them or we want them to win out, so that win looks as good as possible. Today's game will tell us which way this is going.
- Virginia at North Carolina (UNC by 3) - 6pm on ESPN - Fascinating game between two teams Michigan lost to in very close fashion. This is an easy one however. We're competing with UNC for a spot in the tournament. Go Hoos!
- Indiana at Purdue (Purdue by 6.5) - 7:30pm on Fox - I'm simply listing this game because it should be fantastic! I'm not sure I have a preference, just hoping for an awesome game. Torvik seems to think we should root for Purdue, so take that for what it's worth.
- USC at Utah (USC by 2) - 8pm on ESPNU - Another conundrum game. USC right now is on the cut line on most brackets and Utah is a bit behind us on the cut line. And this would only qualify for a Quad-2 home win for the Utes, so I'm rooting for them here.
- San Diego State at New Mexico (SDSU by 3) - 10pm on CBS Sports Network - If I had a guess, New Mexico is going to be a team fighting with Michigan for a spot until the very end. Their 20-8 overall record is good but they have 3 Quad-1 wins and are 45 on the NET rankings. We simply cannot afford them to get another Quad-1 win today. Brian Dutcher owes us one ;)
- Last but not least, Oregon at Oregon State (Oregon by 9) - 10pm on Pac 12 Network - Oregon is just ahead of Michigan on the NET rankings (50) and right near us on most bubble lists. Pretty simple here, rooting for Oregon State here.
Thanks again all for the continued feedback and encouragement! Have a great Saturday!
February 25th, 2023 at 11:54 AM ^
I’ll do us all a solid and bet on every team that could hurt our chances.
You can thank me later
February 25th, 2023 at 11:55 AM ^
Nice recap once again.
Also, I did the math and it says to root for MSU to lose the rest of their games.
February 25th, 2023 at 12:00 PM ^
lol you know, you might be onto something there ;)
February 25th, 2023 at 12:10 PM ^
There must be a path where MSU loses and we still win.
I can’t root for them.
February 25th, 2023 at 12:53 PM ^
Iowa vs staee 42-42 halftime.
High scoring affair, must be driving izzo crazy....
Update: staee leading by ten, under four minutes to go. Also shooting eighty percent from three🤪
February 25th, 2023 at 2:00 PM ^
not now. state up 12 with 1:30 to go. they've got this one.
EDIT: as the great lee corso might say, 'not so fast!'
February 25th, 2023 at 2:25 PM ^
Not so fast, my friend. Heading to ot now.
February 25th, 2023 at 11:57 AM ^
Logged in to upvote. Thanks again.
February 25th, 2023 at 12:00 PM ^
Really appreciate that! Honestly, I just love college basketball and am just glad others find these helpful!
February 25th, 2023 at 12:00 PM ^
Good job setting the table as always.
Re: Pitt, I've been banging the drum for them to tank for the last 2 weeks in multiplethreads here, as we may very well be fighting with them for an at-large and have such a convincing H2H win. Passing a team on the bubble - both dangerously close to the cut line - > any potential marginal benefit a 53rd vs 50th ranked Q1 W affords.
Lunardi has us as 5th team out on his seed list, Palm has us as 3rd out. Wiscy is critical tomorrow as they are just above us (somehow) in most current projections.
GO BLUE
February 25th, 2023 at 12:09 PM ^
Pittsburgh is definitely not our friend. Unfortunately, Syracuse is really stinking it up lately, so I expect a big win by the Panthers.
Great write up. 20 wins is our magic number.
February 25th, 2023 at 12:14 PM ^
I personally think 19 will be just fine but I'd be fine with 20!
February 25th, 2023 at 1:03 PM ^
Leave no doubt. I recall a year not that long ago where we were left out with 20 wins.
February 25th, 2023 at 12:17 PM ^
I love these! Thanks for these posts!
Great summary of the day before and what is upcoming!
Thanks
Go Blue!
February 25th, 2023 at 12:24 PM ^
Look forward to these daily. Go Blue!
February 25th, 2023 at 12:24 PM ^
Thanks for taking the time to do these!
February 25th, 2023 at 12:30 PM ^
Thanks for posting, I've been reading (and looking forward to) these the past few days, very helpful!
February 25th, 2023 at 12:35 PM ^
True, I'm really enjoying your Rooting Guides.
Remind me: does the committee take improvement into account?
I know they consider when a key player is out for a while but improvement? Michigan's team is very different than it was earlier.
F'rinstance, I'd be willing to bet (a little) that Michigan would beat Arizona State now.
February 25th, 2023 at 12:36 PM ^
It's a good question! I know they used to consider 'record in the last 10 games' but I don't believe they do that anymore.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:10 PM ^
They are big on "body of work" for the full season which minimizes the impact of improvement.
This is moronic in my opinion. You can not tell me a college basketball "exhibition" game in November / December should count the same as a game in February / March.
It also makes a joke out of seeding the teams. If a higher seed is supposed to be a reward, why would you "reward" a higher seeded team with a team like Michigan which is a completely different (better) team than it was earlier in the season, and has demonstrated that.
If we make the tournament, we are going to be a nasty - and really unfair - "reward" for some 4 or 5 seed.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:38 PM ^
Yeah, last year I remember looking at KenPom at UM was something like #32 and Colorado St. was #34 when they met and it felt so unfair for CSU to have to play a team that probably should have been an 8/9 seed in their opening round.
February 25th, 2023 at 12:38 PM ^
Whew Clemson game not looking great. Clemson with 42 points with 5 mins left in the first half! Up 17 at NC State.
February 25th, 2023 at 12:42 PM ^
I really appreciate the effort you put into researching and publishing this.
February 25th, 2023 at 12:43 PM ^
I'm assuming Pitt isn't going to lose a lot and they don't need to win a lot to get to top 50. They're at 54th now. So I'm rooting for them to blow out Cuse to get there. Michigan's main resume hole (other than the CMU loss) is a relative lack of q1 wins. Picking up another by Pitt moving to top 50 would be good. Helps us relative to a lot of other teams, whereas Pitt losing only helps us relative to them.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:00 PM ^
I'm on the other side here - Pitt actually dropped from 50 to 53 Wednesday after beating Georgia Tech Tuesday. These Q3/Q4 wins aren't moving the needle, and actually diluting SOS. Syracuse and ND won't get them to 50; rather, they'd stay floating in the 55-60 range. Only the game at #13 Miami will move the needle. So, as they're most likely to drop that one, I'd rather have them lose at least one of Cuse/ND to further drop them - could be the difference between them staying above us or right in line with us, for 1 spot we would take via H2H blowout tiebreaker.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:34 PM ^
Yeah, the ACC is so bad that Pitt is going to be one of those weird teams where they could could close 22-9 on the year and be more on the bubble than an 17/18/19-win team from the Big 12/10.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:37 PM ^
False. Those q3/4 wins won't move the needle if they're close wins. They will move the needle if they're blowouts. 20+ point win v Syracuse gets them to top 50.
Ga Tech is on another level of bad. They're 207th!! So winning that by only single digits is gonna hurt you.
Syracuse is 107th. Totally different.
There is a point margin at which any game can either hurt or help you. It's not like the old RPI.
February 25th, 2023 at 2:18 PM ^
You are putting too much weight on how MOV shifts the NET rankings. The efficiency metrics that take into account MOV only have so much weight into the calculation of the NET. Of course Pitt can move up much more quickly if teams above them lose, but that’s not a variable they can control.
February 25th, 2023 at 2:42 PM ^
False. Beating #107 as a low-Q3 at home by 20 will not jump Pitt from #54 to top-50. Beating #207 by 8 dropped them 3 spots; although nothing happens in a vacuum - they will not leapfrog 4 teams by beating a not-significantly-better low Q3 team by 20. If anything, they may drop further pending other adjacent teams results (College of Charleston already won by 40, and Penn State should get a result at home against freefalling Rutger, for example, as the 2 teams below Pitt).
February 25th, 2023 at 10:54 PM ^
These Q3/Q4 wins aren't moving the needle
This is what's false. MOV matters a lot for NET. Teams can move up or down a lot depending on how much they beat bad teams by. To say a q3 win won't move the needle without considering margin ignores how NET works.
I don't know if 20 was exactly what they needed to move up to top 50. And what other teams did matters. We'll pretty much find out because 17 was close. They will move up.
And here's my prediction, time stamping it for posterity:
Pitt will move up to 51 or 52 from 54 after improving their NET with a win over Syracuse that significantly exceeded expectations. They'll move past Michigan (currently 53) and probably North Texas (currently 51) who were idle.
They'll also move past current #50 team Oregon who also played a q3 game (@ Oregon State) but only won by 2, falling far short of expectations. That'll be a good test to show how much MOV matters. Both played q3 games, Oregon will drop with only a 2 point win (didn't cover), Pitt will move up with a 17 point win (covered pretty easily). Oregon will probably drop behind North Texas and Michigan.
Pitt won't move past Missouri who also won a q3 game by a large margin (22) or USC which won a q1 road game by 13.
The reason they might end up 52nd instead of 51 despite passing three teams is they might get passed by Charleston which won a q4 game by 40 points. That will be another test of how much MOV matters. They hosted one of the worst teams in basketball (331st in NET) so just about the worst of the worst q4 games but they won by 40. Keep an eye on which direction they go.
February 25th, 2023 at 12:50 PM ^
Great stuff. Thanks for continually putting these out.
I really don't get why WVU is being treated as much of a lock as they are. They close @KU and @ISU and then home vs. KSU. Per KenPom they're likely to finish the season at 17-14 and 6-12 in the Big 12. The Big 12 is the best conference in America but at some point being 8th or 9th out of a 10-team league is getting into "the SEC is great because every win and loss is against an SEC team, which is great" circular logic. Congrats on beating Auburn a month ago but gotta see something more.
Similarly, Wisconsin still being in the field seems like a lagging indicator; they're likely going to finish 9-11 in conference and while they have some nice scalps in the OOC slate at some point we gotta stop acting like what a team did in November means a ton in March. It's my one big issue with the NET's "every game is treated as equal" focus; it ignores context for the sake of "objectivity" but instead injects a fair bit of subjectivity and unevenness into the proceedings. You should absolutely factor in how a team played early in the year but since the tournament is played now and not 3 months ago recency should matter a bit more than it sometimes does.
A&M winning would be huge for Michigan because Miss St. is barely holding on as an 11 seed and a loss robs them of any potential resume boosting before the SEC tournament.
UVa lost to BC by a lot and suddenly they're a 4 seed to Lunardi and are 33rd to KenPom, a crazy drop for a team that was a top-8 team only a couple weeks ago. If they can do a solid and knock UNC off in a mild upset that would be great.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:14 PM ^
WVU, Wisconsin, Penn State, and OKsu are the last four in CBS bracket, and Michigan is 3rd on the first teams out group. ESPN has a similar list of last 8 in and first 8 out, there UM is 7th. These are projection brackets as of today, not end of season brackets.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:21 PM ^
Interestingly enough, Joe Lunardi was talking with the ESPN crew at halftime and he's actually moved Michigan to his 5th team out from 7th, so we're getting closer!
February 25th, 2023 at 1:31 PM ^
I get that but Wisconsin is currently 63rd per KenPom and 70th per NET ratings; there's little reason they should be sniffing the 11th seed right now outside of a nice 10-10 record in Quad 1+2 games, most of which were picked up in November and December. They're 6-9 since the start of the year and their best win is (probably) beating UM at home. I really don't get what all these prognosticators see in them.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:36 PM ^
Settle the debate tomorrow - we'll leapfrog Wiscy on nearly every bracket with a W tomorrow. We're that close.
February 25th, 2023 at 2:24 PM ^
Well, i think we need to actually beat Wiscy tomorrow before we can complain about them being slated above us. Beat them and things will work out.
February 26th, 2023 at 1:41 AM ^
6-5. That's their Q1 record. That's WAAAAAY better than any other bubble team. Usually only teams with 3 or 4 seeds or better have winning records in Q1 games.
And the committee cares more about quadrant wins than anything else so Wisconsin's poor kenpom and NET don't matter much.
Committee cares very little (if any) about when games happen. It's the full resume.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:01 PM ^
I can’t tell you how much I love these posts. By far one of the most informative and useful board posts ever.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:14 PM ^
Seconded.
We love to bitch about useless content, so we should go out of our way to acknowledge useful content like this.
February 25th, 2023 at 3:28 PM ^
not sure what you mean?
I love “make my playlist” (when xmradio literally has a road trip radio station), “secret recipe bbq” (when there’s a barbecue bible book/website), “help me throw a dinner/party/happy hour” (when there’s google) and “I have a life threatening illness, how should I treat it?” (when there are world class medical centers available) threads.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:03 PM ^
I'd rather be in the NIT than root for Staee
February 25th, 2023 at 1:15 PM ^
Don't be like them.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:54 PM ^
I def can't root for state, but this win is at least a silver lining for us. They should move into the top 30 or very close now which would make last weeks win a q1.
February 25th, 2023 at 3:20 PM ^
Wait, what win?
February 25th, 2023 at 1:31 PM ^
Officially have our first data point on bracketmatrix - self-proclaimed 'blacketologist' Jamal Murphy from Brooklyn has us in his (updated today) list as an 11 - not a play-in.
Of 81 brackets compiled since Tuesday -
Last team 'in' as an at-large - Wisconsin as an 11-play in, 74 brackets (Pitt is just 6 slots above them) -
First at-large teams 'out' -
Utah State (7 brackets), Penn State (3), Texas Tech (3), New Mexico (2),. Michigan (1) Clemson (1), North Carolina (1) -
Of those listed above, only Michigan has been placed in brackets from today, the others are dated from earlier this week.
Trending up, and will only pick up more data points with a Wiscy scalp tomorrow.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:43 PM ^
Fantastic data! Thanks for sharing!
February 25th, 2023 at 1:59 PM ^
yep, I made the point last night that this is why the matrix is actually worse during the season than any single bracketologist that is using current data. there's a lag, sometimes significant.
There are still 17 brackets in the matrix that haven't be updated since 2/23 and even 2/22 so those weren't even done since our win at Rutgers.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:46 PM ^
One game I did fail to talk about was Missouri at Georgia. Missouri is about 10 spots above the cut line but are far from safe yet. They are literally one spot above us on the NET rankings. They've also played a weak schedule (8 Quad-4 games). A loss, even on the road, to Georgia, would qualify as a bad loss for them and we'd almost certainly jump them on the NET rankings. Georgia is up by 1 at the half.
February 25th, 2023 at 1:59 PM ^
Hey, these are great and I know the line information is a pretty good indicator but based on some of these comments, perhaps consider including overall record and last 10 game results to be really slick!
Thanks - watching this TCU game today is only a thing for me because of your write up and the SoCal “monsoon”. What a game!
February 25th, 2023 at 2:02 PM ^
Good suggestions! I've been trying to balance containing enough info and having these posts not be too long. But I would think overall record would be pretty doable!