2021 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Projections: Part 2
Bursting Bracketology’s Bubble with an Objective Formula
Conference tournaments have begun. Games for teams on the razor’s edge of eligibility are being won and lost. Whether you find a Bilas to be biased or a Lunardi to be a lunatic, Selection Sunday always has at least one instance where players, coaches, and fans are left wondering what the heck just happened. Last week we took a look at an objective formula that seeks to remove the bad taste from those moments and to deliver the most fair bracket possible.
An absolutely exciting update: The WCC has seeded their conference tournament using KenPom.com’s Adjust Efficiency (AdjEM) to account for the disparity in this year’s schedules. That’s one huge step for hopes of one day selecting a fairer field—Read more here.
Market movers in seeding included early conference tournament knockouts like James Madison (Not a strong lock) and Belmont (Extremely surprising!). A 4-loss team is all but guaranteed to miss the tournament. While that may sound like madness, Belmont getting in would be because of heartstrings tugged rather than merit. The Bruins of Nashville are ranked just #100 in Adjusted Efficiency and #87 in BPI. Mississippi State, Notre Dame, Marquette, Auburn, Saint Mary’s, Stanford, Georgia and more would all tell them to get in line; those schools and more have much stronger at-large resumes.
Another team to watch out for are the Cleveland State Vikings, who benefitted from the Horizon League’s top team Wright State (#66 in AdjEM) losing to the UW Milwaukee Panthers. It’s worth noting that Cleveland State is the 1-seed, but was 3rd-ranked in the conference by advanced metrics behind Wright and also-eliminated Detroit. Tonight they’ve just won a tough one over 8-seed Milwaukee and look likely to take home the Horizon crown.
There is notable newcomer to the 1-seed podium, as members of the ultra-competitive Big Ten continue to trade seeds. Iowa reaches the top tier, while Penn State has played their way into the current field.
In #1 overall seed Gonzaga’s region, the 7–10 seeds are now SEC foes. This is the first time two conference opponents have been pitted against each other by the formula. Looking at their aggregate scores, neither team was tied in points. Distributing one team to another region would be disingenuous to their performance, which for some would prove to be a flaw in this process. Others may argue that it adds a layer of intrigue and makes the paths through the bracket as fair as possible.
With many Big Ten, Big XII, and SEC teams snatching up those at-large bids, we’ll have to see what happens as Championship week shakes out.
What do you think of the field? Do these metrics hold up under scrutiny? Are there different rankings or formulas you’d love to see used? Your suggestions may be used in next week’s update.
