25-26 Bracketology

NCAA Tourney and Post-Season
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And I wonder how many of those 17 brackets with SDSU have not yet been updated for last night’s result. CBS just moved SDSU from “first 4 out” to ass out (not even in the “next 4 out”). That seems kind of harsh, considering it was a road game vs the 59th ranked team in NET, which makes it a Quad 1 loss. Somehow Auburn avoided the same fate when they lost at home to the #92 team, which is a Quad 3 loss.

Edit: Answered my own question. It appears that none of the brackets in the Bracket Matrix have been updated for last night’s results; and 16 of the 49 brackets with Indiana are not updated for their loss on Sunday vs Sparty.

Edit #2: More nerdery - Of the 4 brackets (out of 132) that exclude SCU, one of them is not yet updated for recent losses by Indiana and SDSU, and we are their 2nd team out. I wouldn’t go buying plane tickets to Dayton based on that, but take it for what it’s worth.

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383

Shot clip, but made me smile nonetheless

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384

Sounds like the Athletic Department is concluding the likely destination will be Dayton if the Broncos get an at-large bid. Was at lunch with a couple long time season ticket holders and they were offered a seat on the charter to Dayton. Surprisingly they turned it down cuz they couldn’t leave that Monday.

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Why don’t we just go out to Vegas and win the conference tournament and thereby avoid Dayton?! :blush:

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386

I think Dayton has become the First Four location as Dayton historically has drawn good attendance to first round Field of 64 tournament games that were on rotation or randomly selected. I think Dayton requested to be a tournament host location every year hence the NCAA decided to make the First Four a Dayton annual event.

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I called the ticket office re: getting on a list for SCU’s allocation of NCAA Tickets and they either played dumb or had no clue.

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Another day where bubble teams mostly won, but New Mexico lost a home game to CSU.

Mountain West fading down the stretch, though it seems highly possible someone other than USU wins the autobid, given there’s four-five other strong teams in there (SDSU, UNM, GCU, Nevada, CSU).

Hope our guys are able to channel what lots of bubble teams are channeling - stakes are high and it’s time to win. Indiana and Ohio State blew their opponents out of the water.

Edit: Likely goodbye to USC, unless the do something super interesting down the stretch.

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389

I’ll add that the SMU loss at home to Miami was important. With UCLA, A&M, and TCU all getting big wins yesterday, SMU might be the only team left that we can leapfrog into the round of 64. Otherwise it’s Dayton or bust.

This weekend is going to be interesting because every team, and I mean EVERY team that is presumably on our heels is playing a road Q1 game. That sounds like it ought to be good but it’s actually bad because they are all opportunities for them to pass us. Those games are:

  • Indiana @ Ohio St
  • Auburn @ Alabama
  • VCU @ Dayton (#71 Net) on Friday
  • New Mexico @ Utah St
  • VA Tech @ Virginia
  • Cal @ Wake Forest (#69 Net)
  • Cincinnati @ TCU
  • Stanford @ NC State

If just one or two of those teams pull off upsets, that will make things a lot sweatier for us if we don’t beat SMC.

390

New Bauertology Bubble Watch here:

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For those on the board who were thinking about flying to Dayton, you can fly into Cincinnati & drive. It’s about a 90 minute drive and Southwest flies into CVG. Another possibility is Indianapolis but that’s like a 2.5hr drive.

Regardless University of Dayton on short notice is not easy to get to.

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392

And if you do fly into Cincy, and need a slice of regional cuisine, I can highly recommend stopping at White Castle for burgers or Skyline Chili (or Gold Star or Dixie) and try some Conies. They are small hot dogs smothered in chili, cheese, mustard and onions. Deelish!

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by coincidence I’m at the San Jose airport to catch a flight to Seattle. leaving from gate 20 is a direct flight to Columbus. wheels up at 6:30.

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Delphi, the purported 'most accurate bracket’ was updated today, with us in the First Four in Dayton against SMU, a recent loser. I tend to assume the lists are such that the first listed team is closest to going to the next best group, so to speak - so we’ve been in the top-half of the Dayton group in most spots. Lunardi, for example, has us listed first among last four in.

We are in 87 of 89 Bracketmatrix brackets (they appear to have culled their list of brackets). For those paying less attention, this is an aggregator that looks at all the reputable predicted brackets and puts everything in one place.

Lots of shuffling left. We’re holding firm so far in the Dayton group during our inactivity, but as Rock noted, almost the whole First Four/Last Four/Bubble cohort has meaningful games tomorrow (or today for Seton Hall, VCU and SDSU).

Folks, I think if we don’t beat SMC, we are going to need zero bid stealers. I don’t fear the at-large pack behind us as much as I fear the MAC/A-10/MW tournaments.

My evergreen hope is fading a little bit. The universe is going to trend us down a bit, between upsets and bid-stealers. We need to push out stock up a few spots by performing on the court to counterbalance. Fair enough, that’s what an At-Large team ought to do.

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395

Is it my imagination, or are we drifting a bit downward in both NET and WAB? I suppose it’s a combination of both Bronco inactivity paired with some bubble teams who’ve performed surprisingly well in recent days.

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They are slipping slightly, down to 43 today. They’ve been as high as 39 or 40. The somewhat good news is that there’s a significant gap between #43 SCU at 1.45 and #44 VCU at 0.69.

So it will take a big win or multiple wins from the teams below SCU to catch up and/or a bad loss from SCU to slip further. If SCU beats either Pacific or Seattle in the quarterfinals, their WAB should improve something like .2 to .3 which would (using the rankings as of today which will obviously change) get SCU back to #40 or so.

The best thing that can be said for SCU right now, I think, is that they are above most of the true bubble teams in all of the computer-generated stats and are generally receiving praise when it comes to the “eyeball” test from coaches and commentators. It’s the lack of another Q1 win and the presence of the Loyola loss that has SCU projected 3-4 spots further down than they would be if they traded one of the Q2 wins for a Q1 and never lost to Loyola, even if you left everything else the same.

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Here is the list of games that impact SCU this weekend:

Bubble Teams (last 4 in or first 4 out in a lot of mock brackets):

Fri 4 PM VCU @ Dayton

Sat 9 AM V-Tech @ Virginia

Sat 11 AM Cincinnati vs TCU - TCU is slightly above us, Cincinnati would be more meaningfully on the bubble with a win here. I wish I already knew whether we beat SMC or not. TCU is one of the few, if any, teams we can pass to get beyond the Dayton play-in round.

Sat 11 AM SMU @ FSU

Sat 1 PM New Mexico @ Utah St - I think a New Mexico loss here ensures that the MWC will be a 2-bid league at most.

Sat 1 PM Cal @ Wake Forest

Sat 2:30 Indiana @ Ohio St - I don’t think we can pass Ohio St (if we lose to SMC), so it’ll be much better to knock Indiana down a peg.

Sat 5:30 Auburn @ Alabama

Teams slightly ahead of us:

[TCU and Ohio St games are shown above.]

Sat 9 AM Missouri vs Arkansas

Sat 3 PM A&M @ LSU

Sat 5:30 Texas vs Oklahoma

Teams on the outside looking in, but not dead yet:

Fri 6 PM Seton Hall vs St. Johns

Fri 7 PM San Diego St vs UNLV

Sat 11:15 Stanford @ NC State

1st place teams that could become bubble teams:

Fri 6 PM Miami-OH @ Ohio - I am convinced that Miami-OH is a lock, which makes their final regular season game meaningless, but talking heads keep saying that Miami-OH is in jeopardy.

Sun 11 AM USF vs Charlotte - Not sure how seriously USF would be considered for an at-large should they lose in their conference tourney. A loss here in their final regular season game should remove all hope.

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398

VCU picks up a Q1 win in Dayton to close the regular season.

Bubble gets tighter. Not inconceivable that Dayton could win the A-10, either.

Here’s to some better luck for the Broncos across the weekend…

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399

We had so much luck the previous 10 days, we were due for some negative regression.

Im nervous for Sunday. This is fun!

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400

VT and Missouri losing is a nice start to the day. I’m torn on who to root for in Cincy @ TCU game. We are chasing TCU for a bye, but Cincy is chasing us for a bid. How greedy should I be? :rofl:

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401

SMU is getting drilled by Florida St. Stanford leads NC State by 6 with 3 min and change.

Stanford upsets NC State 85-84. Big road win for Stanford, 4th consecutive loss for NC State.

SMU falls 91-78. Good result for SCU!!

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