Bracket Matrix March 3rd evening posted, M still the last five seed
A little surprised there wasn't more upward motion. We almost caught Gonzaga, but that likely won't stay true if they win their tournament against St. Mary's.
It's hard to tell what time each bracket was updated within the day. It seems possible that a substantial number were updated before we beat Sparty. It is notable that there are no more 9-seed predictions in the latest group posted. It seems a four seed is probably our ceiling, and that would still be pretty good thinking back to our feeling about this team 6 weeks ago.
That no one wants in their region! Give us a 7 seed for all I care... everyone in our part of the bracket will cringe when they see a ridiculously underseeded Michigan in their region! Go blue!!
What does it take to get a bracket listed on bracket matrix? Just curious as to how much credence I should be giving to this.
If you have UM as an 8/9 seed, either (a) your algorithms are broken, or (b) you haven't been paying attention
EDIT: Also, what has Kansas done to deserve a near-unanimous 1 seed?
I'm pretty sure all you have to do is ask and not be clearly trolling. They try to go by wisdom of the crowd, which means you have to put up with a few subpar brackets.
What does it take to get a bracket listed on bracket matrix? Just curious as to how much credence I should be giving to this.
Looks like not much. One of the sites is literally a blogspot site entitled "The Amateur Bracketologist." Several of them just appear to be guys posting brackets consistently on social media. My guess is that you have to be consistent and probably have some kind of system, but it doesn't look like they weed much out.
I think it's almost a sure bet that they would include a bracket from, say, Seth if he were to develop one regularly. And the mathlete, of course.
They're 11-4 in Quadrant 1 and won the Big 12, generally regarded as the strongest conference this year, by two full games. Their record looks a lot like Michigan's from 2014; Michigan was 23-7 at the end of the regular season (Kansas: 24-7) , and they won the #2 KenPom conference by 3 games (Big 12 is KenPom #1 this year). Michigan was 10-5 in KenPom A games (roughly analagous to Quadrant 1).
Kansas has both played and won more quality games than anyone in the country.
But this Bracket Matrix includes almost no brackets that were done with today's games taken into account.
With Kansas losing to Ok St. today they added to a growing list of mediocre losses (Washington, home to ASU, Ok St, twice) to go with all those quality wins. Duke almost certainly moved ahead of Kansas for a 1 seed after beating UNC today.
The 2 was the right seed for UM in 2014, and on a normal year Kansas' profile this year would be a 2. But I suppose the dearth of elite teams might push them up to the last 1 seed
Michigan was 5 on the S-Curve that year.
Of course, they weren't 5 on the S-Curve entering the conference tournament. Of course, not only aren't there a lot of elite options this year -- I mean, somebody has to be a 1-seed -- Kansas doesn't have any losses as bad as Michigan's loss to Charlotte in San Juan.
At a neutral site, after smoking a "desperate" bubble team should absolutely push this team into the 4 line.
it'll certainly move the needle. When teams vying for 4/5 seeds will have about 10 Q1+Q2 wins, increasing your total of those wins by 10% is significant.
Nebraska was a two and our win at PSU moved up from a two to a one.
Nebraska is 64th in RPI so at Nebraska is Q1, neutral Nebraska is Q2. Still a nice win.
I think he means PSU's victory at Ohio State pushed Penn State to Q1 territory. The Q1 win pickup was retroactive.
And #9 in Kenpom. I think we have a very good chance to be a 3-seed after we beat Purdon't
That seems likely. I started scanning brackets that had Michigan low, and it only took until the second one to see a bracket that clearly doesn't include today's results (in his bracket post that has Michigan sixth, he listed the must-win games... for Saturday. Including PSU, who has since lost).
The results aren't even finished for today, so I doubt most of these brackets are up-to-date. Monday will give us a clearer picture.
EDIT: going through a few more, including one that has Michigan listed as an 8 (a bracket that the author himself says is probably underrating Michigan) and they all seem to have been posted this morning. As Padog says.
An 8 seed is probably underrating Michigan? Boy, that author is a genius
Heh. Well, that particular author uses a mathematical formula not used by the committee, one that dings Michigan for not having a top 50 RPI non-conference win. He is basically saying that the formula isn't accurate in Michigan's case, but says that he doesn't want to change the formula mid-season.
YMMV.
After today's results, Michigan has two top 50 RPI wins in the non-conf.
Michigan is a 4 without question right now. And they'd only drop if a lot of teams behind them do unexpectedly well in their conference tournaments.
Duke is the only team in the country top ten in offensive and defensive efficiency. They scare me. To be fair, I think MSU was on that list entering today but are now 11th in offense.
I want no part of Duke, UNC, Purdue, or UVA for as long as we can avoid it. The first three because they scare me, the fourth because that would be like a 51-46 game and ugh.
than UNC, but yeah, I mostly agree with that list.
But that's why you have to evaluate teams on more than just their record. We've just been saying how MSU may have the weakest 29-win tournament résumé in history; we should apply the same logic to Michigan too. The overall weakness of the Big Ten is dragging down Michigan's chances -- and the fact that we're finishing the season a week early means all of the teams right behind Michigan on the S-Curve have opportunities to win a few games and impress the committee.
There seems to be an expectation that every victory should move Michigan up a line or two -- but, if that's the case, you need to expect the same thing about teams around Michigan.
PS: Michigan doesn't have a better record than Duke. Duke is 25-6; Michigan is 27-7, with one of those agianst Chaminade and certain to be ignored.
played very different conference schedules though.
Theirs was awful. Ours was somewhat difficult with road games against each of the top 5 teams in the conference (MSU only had one). Plus, our non-conf was more difficult.
Everyone is overthinking this.
We're 9th in kenpom.
We're better than that in SOR (we were 9th before today's game).
Even in the most unfriendly ranking system (RPI), we're 16th.
That means in every ranking system we're a 3 or 4 seed.
We are 6-5 in Q1 games (5 of the wins on the road!).
We are 4-1 in Q2 games.
At Northwestern is our worst loss.
There are not 16 teams with a better resume. Probably not even 12 teams with a better resume. Go ahead and compare the resumes of any team on the Bracket Matrix and make an argument their resume is better than Michigan's.
A loss to Purdue wouldn't do much if any damage either. We're a 4 seed barring some very bad luck in conference tourneys.
You're comparing Michigan's nearly-complete résumé with teams that haven't started their conference tournaments yet. It doesn't take "very bad luck" for teams to pass Michigan. It just takes fairly normal luck. Think about how much the board's opinion of Michigan's seeding has imrpoved over the past couple of days. Other teams will have the same experience.
The game against Chaminade doesn't count in RPI cause they are D2. Duke is 25-6 and UM is 26-7. Duke has a better winning percentage.
1 - A lot of brackets haven't been updated yet.
2 - A lot of these people really don't know anything.
on both. Except I will go so far as to say most of these bracket providers dont know jack shit,
We are jumping OSU, Clemson (losers today), Kentucky (losers today), and I think ultimately either West Virginia (losers today to Texas) or ultimately Auburn (losers of 3 of 5, they suck, and will get smoked early in SEC tourney.
We deserve a 4 even under the highly unlikely scenario that we lost to Purdue. No way are we not one of the top 16 teams in the country. Even the dimwitted selection committee should see that, dammit!
That makes sense and everyone had a chance to factor in yesterday's games. This one is listed at 7:15 PM while a number of games are in progress. I think the reason for the update is that several new brackets were added since the last one. The total number went from 95 to 100.
Our RPI is #15 (and we're about to play the #9 team) and our Kenpom rating is #9. To be a 5 seed at this point would be a surprise. I guess if we got killed by Purdue or if someone else had a huge final week it could happen. But as of tonight I've got to imagine we're a 4.
Sorry, but I think it is difficult for a conf to improve overall in the rankings after all of the non-conference games are complete. It's unfortunate, but overall conference rankings are kinda done by the end of December.
is that you get location protection.
We may not be playing in Detroit as a 4 seed, but at least we wouldn't have to worry about playing Arizona in a 4/5 matchup in San Diego.
Also, the drop from 12 seeds to 13 seeds tends to be relatively large because you're going from essentially at-large to auto-bid teams so you'd expect to have a significantly better matchup in the first round as a 4.
You're going from the best auto-bids to one rung below, which is also valuable. (The last-four-in generally end up near the 11/12 line, along with the top autobids).
You're mistaken about the protection, though. It only applies to the first game. Michigan could absolutely end up in a Michigan / Arizona 4/5 game in San Diego, even if they're the 4 and Arizona is the 5.