Field of 68 Breakdown: Gophers one of 12 near the bubble, but not on it

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SelectionSunday

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Here's a thumbnail look at a projected NCAA Tournament field as we enter the final two weeks of the regular season. A lot of the smaller conference tournaments begin next week.

Currently I have 85 teams at least moderately in contention for the 68 bids, of which 52 (including the automatic bids) I'd consider locks. So with just under three weeks remaining until Selection Sunday, my guesstimate is there are roughly 16 at-large bids still up in the air. That number can & likely will shrink, obviously, once upsets start occurring in conference tournaments. Please note that in this projection, I have considered teams' remaining schedules.

Teams are listed in order of current RPI. "Automatics/Locks" with ^^ indicates current conference leader who I'd consider a bubble team if they fail to win their conference tournament.

Automatics/Locks (52) -- conference leaders + those locked in
#1 Duke
#2 Miami-Florida (ACC leader)
#3 New Mexico (Mountain West leader)
#4 Florida (SEC leader)
#5 Kansas (Big 12 leader)
#6 Michigan
#7 Indiana (B1G leader)
#8 Louisville
#9 Michigan State
#10 Gonzaga (West Coast leader)
#11 Arizona (Pac 12 leader)
#12 Syracuse
#13 Georgetown (Big East leader)
#14 UNLV
#15 Colorado State
#16 Marquette
#18 Memphis (Conference USA leader)
#19 Oklahoma
#20 Ohio State
#21 Kansas State
#22 North Carolina
#23 Belmont^^ (Ohio Valley leader)
#24 NC State
#25 Wisconsin
#26 Oklahoma State
#27 Middle Tennessee^^ (Sun Belt leader)
#30 Wichita State (Missouri Valley leader)
#31 Butler
#35 Saint Louis (Atlantic 10 leader)
#36 VCU
#38 Missouri
#39 Notre Dame
#40 Pitt
#42 UCLA
#48 Akron^^ (MAC leader)
#52 Louisiana Tech^^ (WAC leader)
#53. Bucknell (Patriot leader)
#67 Valparaiso (Horizon leader)
#77 Stephen F. Austin (Southland leader)
#82 South Dakota State (Summit leader)
#83 Harvard (Ivy leader)
#87 Davidson (Southern leader)
#89 Stony Brook (America East leader)
#106 Montana (Big Sky leader)
#113 Niagara (MAAC leader)
#115 Long Beach State (Big West leader)
#128 Robert Morris (Northeast leader)
#142 Northeastern (Colonial leader)
#146 Mercer (Atlantic Sun leader)
#175 Norfolk State (MEAC leader)
#186 Charleston Southern (Big South leader)
#190 Southern (SWAC leader)

In the Field, But Near the Bubble (12) -- still some work to do
#17 GOPHERS
#29. Colorado
#32 San Diego State
#33 Illinois
#37 LaSalle
#41 Temple
#43 Saint Mary's
#44 Creighton
#45 Cal
#49 Oregon
#50 Iowa State
#51 Cincinnati

Squarely on the Bubble (14) -- only 4 of these would make the tournament
#46 Kentucky (last 4 in)
#47 Boise State (last 4 in)
#54 Villanova (last 4 in)
#55 UMass
#56 Ole Miss (first 4 out)
#57 Tennessee (first 4 out)
#59 Indiana State
#60 Charlotte
#62 Alabama (first 4 out)
#63 Saint John's
#64 Baylor
#65 Maryland (first 4 out)
#73 Virginia (last 4 in)
#88 Arizona State

Longshots (7) -- win out, make noise in conference tourney, pray
#34 Southern Miss
#58 BYU
#76 Denver
#80 Arkansas
#81 Providence
#91 Iowa
#95 Xavier
 

After we beat Indiana and Penn State the Gophers will be completely locked in right? :)
 

Leaves the Big Ten with:

5) in

3) with work to do - Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa

4) see ya - Purdue, Nebraska, PSU and Northwestern.
 




station19 said:
Leaves the Big Ten with:

5) in

3) with work to do - Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa

4) see ya - Purdue, Nebraska, PSU and Northwestern.
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With its next win, Illinois upgrades to "lock" status. With how they're trending in the second half of the B1G season (5-1), Illini definitely in sitting there already with wins over Butler (neutral site), Gonzaga (road), Ohio State, Indiana, and Gophers (road).
 

IMO an Illinois or Minnesota team that finishes 8-10 in conference should be considered more of a lock than both NC State and UCLA. If either of those 2 teams were playing in the B1G I think they would be in trouble and when you look at the resumes NC State is only better off in their conference record and in their record in last 12 games. It will be interesting to see how much the selection committee looks at things like when comparing the difference teams. IMO conference record shouldn't be looked at too much as the strengths of different conferences can really effect those things.
 

Goldy Gopher said:
IMO an Illinois or Minnesota team that finishes 8-10 in conference should be considered more of a lock than both NC State and UCLA. If either of those 2 teams were playing in the B1G I think they would be in trouble and when you look at the resumes NC State is only better off in their conference record and in their record in last 12 games. It will be interesting to see how much the selection committee looks at things like when comparing the difference teams. IMO conference record shouldn't be looked at too much as the strengths of different conferences can really effect those things.
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Solid points. Your thoughts are a good summation of why the Selection Committee's job is a difficult one. They have to make some of their decisions comparing apples to oranges (major to mid-major schedules; lots of home games vs. lots of road games; lots of quality-win opportunities vs. very few quality-win opportunities) instead of apples to apples (if all teams played like schedules). Not an easy thing to do.

Agree with you about conference records. I don't pay much attention to 'em unless they're really, really good (let's say +8 over .500) or really, really poor (-2 under .500).
 

SelectionSunday said:
Solid points. Your thoughts are a good summation of why the Selection Committee's job is a difficult one. They have to make some of their decisions comparing apples to oranges instead of apples to apples. Not an easy thing to do.
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Always difficult decisons for them and no matter what somebody will be mad at them at the end of the day on selection Sunday. I do see that Jerry Palm has moved NC State to a bubble team as of now however he has 23 teams in the field as on the bubble but some of them are teams who should win their conference and would be on the bubble if they don't claim the auto bid.
 



Do we know the history of how many at-large teams made tourney with a losing regular season conference record? I think we should be in with an 8-10 mark, but I'd much rather be at 9-9. I don't recall anyone off hand in recent memory.
 

Shawn Bradley Guy said:
Do we know the history of how many at-large teams made tourney with a losing regular season conference record? I think we should be in with an 8-10 mark, but I'd much rather be at 9-9. I don't recall anyone off hand in recent memory.
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Posted it somewhere a week or two ago.

The worst conference record to ever make it was Florida State (6-10) in 1998. UConn made it last year at 8-10. There were some others (including a couple Big Ten teams) in between.
 

That loss to Nebraska really hurt Iowa. Their RPI is only 90th. I don't think they make it at 8-10 and 9-9 might not be enough without a a couple of BIG tournament wins.
 

Where do we fall now? Assuming we win beat Penn St. and Nebraska, we would be 21-10 (9-9). I would guess a 7 or 8 seed?
 




If we finish 9-9 and win a btt game, I would have to think we reach a 6 seed.
 

I would love to be a 6 seed.
 

If we finish 9-9 with a btt win, Gophers will be about a 4-5 seed.
They'll get a good jump from their win tonight which gives more credence to their #15 RPI ranking as it stands right now. 8-10 should be a lock. The lowest anyone has put them is 11 today by Lunardi which I think is absurdly low when you have North Carolina at #8.
 

Face The Facts said:
If we finish 9-9 with a btt win, Gophers will be about a 4-5 seed.
They'll get a good jump from their win tonight which gives more credence to their #15 RPI ranking as it stands right now. 8-10 should be a lock. The lowest anyone has put them is 11 today by Lunardi which I think is absurdly low when you have North Carolina at #8.
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Hypothetically speaking, what happens if we finish 10-8 with 2 btt wins?
 



Now this is only an educated guess, and looking at 86 different brackets before our win over IU, we averaged 7.91 seed.

Thinking the win over IU jumps us up pretty far, somewhere in the 6.25 - 6.75 range. Thinking each win after that bumps us about a 1/3rd of a seed or so through the first game of the BTT, with any loss bumping us back an entire seed, and every game after the first round of the BTT, that bumps us a full seed.

So 5 straight wins and then a loss, gets us a 5 seed, 6 wins and then a loss, a 4 seed, 7 wins and then a loss, a 3 seed and 8 wins without a loss, a 2 seed.

So any loss in our next 3 games, even though a win would only affect our average seed rating by about 1/3rd, a loss could affect our seeding by a whole seed.

So lets say we lose to Purdue, but go on to win the BTT, instead of getting the #2 seed, we'd get a #3 seed.


Wins in our next 4 games won't help us much, but they will hurt us a lot. But wins in the 2nd round or Semis or Finals of the BTT, will help a lot because there won't be a single team we'll face most likely, that's not ranked very highly.
 

mcal24 said:
I would think that means no lower than 5.
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Yeah, I'm thinking a 5 seed. That would give us another top 25 win.

Who knows this year, though. It's just such a crazy season. The way things are going, most of the #1 seeds may have five or six losses. Gonzaga will probably get one of them with just two losses, but they haven't played anyone. They're 1-1 against current teams in the RPI/AP/Coach's Top 25 all season. The Gophers are 1-1 against Top 25 teams the past two games.
 

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