On the edge: Gophers among 'last four in' as experts build women's basketball bracket

[BleedGopher]

per Sinker:

The Gophers will find out their NCAA women's basketball tournament fate on Monday after the full run of conference tournaments have been played. Coach Marlene Stallings sounded certain that Friday's 90-89 victory over Iowa in the Big Ten quarterfinals was enough to give the Gophers a spot in the field. The phrase she used was "in safely."

But they are still living on the edge, according to two respected bracket updates that were published after last weekend's games, including the Big Ten tournament, which was won by Ohio State, the team that beat Minnesota in the semifinals.

Both Charlie Creme at ESPN and Russell Steinberg at Summitt Hoops have the Gophers among their "last four teams" in the tournament. Creme has Minnesota as a No. 9 seed playing Villanova and Steinberg has the Gophers as a 10th seed playing Syracuse. If one of them is accurate, they would set up the Gophers to play a No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the second round if they win their opener.

http://www.startribune.com/on-the-e...-build-women-s-basketball-brackets/475974303/

Go Gophers!!

 

[Ignatius L Hoops]

http://www.omaha.com/huskers/blogs/...cle_efe77e6c-2097-11e8-8af5-9bcd8eeccdb3.html

Now here's how you do a blog post about bracket selection. Cutting to the chase:

Since 2013, the highest power-conference RPI teams left out are Michigan (46) in 2017, Duke (47) and NC State (49) in 2016 and Minnesota (47) and Ohio State (49) in 2014

So the cutoff seems to be about 45. Rutgers will test that litmus test, and Rutgers darn well should, with a 4-10 record in its last 14 games.


Now, before we start hammering away at ESPN bias, I don’t think there’s any [bias] at work here. Power conference teams with an RPI of 40 or better don’t get left out of NCAA women’s Tournaments. Since 2013, here are the 40-or-better RPI teams that have been left out. See if you spot a trend:

2017: South Dakota State (No. 38)

2016: UTEP (37) and Western Kentucky (38)

2014: Southern Mississippi (29), Bowling Green (31) and Central Michigan (40)

2013: Duquesne (36)

All mid-majors.

Of course the blog is specifically about Nebraska so here's some selection committee musing:

This stuff is fascinating to me because you can make strong arguments for both sides. Nebraska has a compelling case for making the 64-team tournament. If the women’s selection committee used the quadrant system, which they don’t, the Husker women would have seven (!) quadrant one wins.

Nebraska’s women played 13 quadrant one games and finished 7-6. The Husker men finished 1-6. (Side note: Nebraska’s men are headed for the NIT, y’all.)

Rutgers would have been 5-8 in Quadrant 1 games. So the Scarlet Knights weren’t bad.

But Dayton? The Flyers would have been 1-4.

And USC? Hoo boy, 0-10.

But the women’s selection committee didn’t adopt the quadrant system.

 

[tripledouble]

Thanks, Iggy. That's a well-written look at the process. I don't have a problem if the brackets set the Gophers up to play a #1 or #2 seed in a potential second round game, as I'm still miffed at the Gophers easy non-conference schedule. They knew when they were scheduling that one of their goals this year would be to make the NCAA tourney, so no excuse for that. Nebraska, on the other hand, had an excuse for a weak non-conference schedule, as no one thought they'd be as good as they were. We'll just have to keep our fingers crossed for the Gophers to make the NCAA field. It will still be a travesty if they don't make the field and Wagner has to spend her final minutes with the Gophers playing in a WNIT game. Not much can be gained from that.