SpartanDan

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1 year 6 weeks ago Yost is what college hockey crowds should be.

Of all the college hockey arenas I've been to, the only one that even comes close is Mariucci. I wish the crowd at Munn was half as good.
1 year 10 weeks ago There have been explosions on

There have been explosions on site, mostly hydrogen explosions from the reaction of zircalloy cladding with water (producing zirconium oxide and hydrogen). However, a criticality accident causing a massive power surge and explosion (which happened at Chernobyl) can't happen here because the system is shut down with the control rods fully inserted.

Aside from the fact that everything is shut down, these reactors are of a much better design than Chernobyl. Modern water-cooled reactors have a negative void coefficient (which basically means that in case of loss or boiling of coolant, the reaction slows down); Chernobyl had a large positive void coefficient (so if the water starts to boil, the reaction speeds up and you can very easily get thermal runaway).
1 year 10 weeks ago Colorado was always going to get left out.

The committee weighs non-conference strength of schedule fairly heavily; it you go out and play seven teams rated #294 or worse like Colorado did, you'd better absolutely blitz your conference because the committee is going to look for any excuse to leave you out. Just ask 2010 VT, 2009 Penn State, or 2008 Arizona State. You can argue whether that's fair or not, but it's been stone obvious for years and any coach who schedules like that knows (or should know) that he just punched his ticket to the NIT.

VT seems like the only serious snub to me, although you could make an argument for Harvard or St. Mary's.
1 year 10 weeks ago Pay no attention to his seeding

Lunardi really isn't that good at this, for a guy whose only job is to make the bracket. Of those the Bracket Project tracks, he's 23rd out of 32 "regulars" (last year and two of the four previous), and just slightly below average even if you count the one-year guys who give it a shot and then find out they really suck. He also seems to very strongly overreact to whatever the last thing that happened was (jumping us from last-in to a 9 on beating Purdue, for instance).

His educated guess probably isn't much better than anyone who's put more than an hour into it. I've been doing a series of bubble posts over at The Only Colors, and for what it's worth I have Michigan and Michigan State both in the 10-11 range (two of the three immediately above "last four byes" along with Marquette).
1 year 10 weeks ago Hockey uses the Pairwise pretty strictly.

So they don't really need to exile anyone for discussions because it's all objective and they don't need much discussion. (Whether it's the right objective method is another matter entirely.)
1 year 10 weeks ago You can get a vague idea of it

But the difference between what the advanced metrics predict and what actually happens isn't all luck. I think bad luck in basketball has a tendency to correlate very strongly with bad free throw shooting; certainly the least "lucky" team I've ever seen (2008 Illinois, had three overtime losses and four more by 4 points or less) fit this profile, as they blew at least three late leads (and opportunities to win another game) by bricking free throw after free throw (notably, Pruitt had two free throws with less than 5 seconds left in regulation and a tie game against Indiana and bricked both, then same thing happened in the first OT).
1 year 10 weeks ago The committee doesn't weigh head-to-head much

If it comes down to the last spot and we're the only two teams in consideration, maybe. But they focus more on the overall resume - and MSU has the better wins, slightly less bad losses, and better strength of schedule.

I do think you'll make it even if Illinois beats you (though it will be a very nervous Sunday). But head-to-head counts for little when we're two teams among 15 fighting for those last 10 or so spots.
1 year 10 weeks ago I'm honestly not sure it does.

If there's one way to get the committee to look for excuses to leave you out, it's by having a 300+ non-conference SOS. Virginia Tech learned that to their sorrow last year, as did Penn State in 2009.

Honestly, if they don't beat Kansas I don't think they get in over Illinois, MSU, or Michigan regardless of Big Ten results tomorrow.
1 year 11 weeks ago Certainly not terrible losses.

Those were all the losses outside the Kenpom top 50 for both teams (and PSU is not too far from the top 50 either).

 
1 year 11 weeks ago Most bubble teams have a wart or two on their resume

It's why they're on the bubble.

It'll count against you, but if it were enough to disqualify you on its own there wouldn't be enough eligible teams to select 37 at-larges. I think you need one more decent-or-better win (MSU or a quarterfinal win over Wisconsin/Purdue) to make it.
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