College Basketball Blind Resumes: Visualized
Objective Evaluations from the 2024 NCAA Men’s Basketball Field
With the conference tournaments underway and the field of 64 (Ok, 68) beginning to fill in, the nation’s attention is on the bubble. What teams truly deserve to be chosen? Is it the school with the best NET ranking? The team with the best road wins? Or should it be based upon win totals? As long as the field remains chosen by a group of humans, each with their own unique background of inherent bias and endless opportunities for motive, we’ll never know a true formula.
A craving for objective fairness is what leads me to this, one of my favorite exercises: The blind resume. When the names of the colleges that could conjure emotion or preconceptions are stripped away, we’re left with a bare look at what a team has done this year. Diving right into it; let’s say you had the opportunity to take 2 of the 4 following at-large teams to put into the field. There’s still enough criteria present for an argument to go several ways, depending on what you value as an observer. It’s also natural to try to guess who the teams might be, or at least what conference they play in.
The Pick 2 Conundrum
Did you look at the information presented, then the captions? Or the other way around? These captions are just a taste of how leading everything we hear on TV is, and why we’ll likely never see the absolute best field of at-large teams featured in March Madness. I certainly don’t envy those with the decision-making on their shoulders. I do wonder if anyone in the committee would ever consider using a formula to choose at-large bids, rather than trusting the ego’s hard lean into a previously formed brainstew of bias.
Putting those captioned anecdotes aside, you might be a purist who thinks that overall record should win out in close-call comparisons — in which case you’d choose teams 2 and 3. Another outlook may favor Q1* overall records and quality road wins, in which case teams 1 and 4 are most attractive. Still others prefer a snapshot of the year distilled into simple averages, like quality of wins regardless of Home/Away, which would lead to choosing teams 2 and 4. Most likely, (And hopefully for the committee) it will be a bit of all of these components that weigh into the decision.
So based on personal preference, which 2 are you putting in? Have you managed any guesses at who any of these contenders are? Or do you need to see more?
Visualizing the resume
We can always reveal more. Being a visual learner and having the background of a designer, I love illustrating the data we have and trying to figure out a balance of what to reveal and what to hide to keep the resume truly blind. To further help disguise the identities of the teams, I’ve sorted wins and losses by the opponent’s rank using KenPom’s AdjEM metric. I’ve also found that data to be much more accurate for my own tournament projections than the NET.
To play up the data above, I’ve also included coloration of Home/Away/Neutral court. The size of the bubbles correlates to the rank of the opponent, to assist in the visual value of that win or loss. How does seeing a more full, yet still incomplete picture affect your choices?
Does that give you pause? Or solidify your viewpoint?
I’m generally curious if this starts to give away enough information for anyone to correctly identify the teams, or at least their conferences. I will reveal here that these 4 teams are representative of 4 different power conferences. To maintain a dance of similarity in quality, it would be hard to include a program from a smaller school that hasn’t had the pleasure of going up against a top-5 opponent, or one that doesn’t have over 10 Q1 games. That’s not to say those teams aren’t also viable for the field, they just stand out a bit more from the parity of the above.
Ok, fine, I’ll do it
I didn’t set out thinking I’d make this choice for myself, but now I’ve gotten curious. To defeat my own bias of the above 4 teams, I’ll throw together a simple arbitrary formula that works with the data present to make a selection for me.
Because I believe wins matter, but aren’t necessarily created equal, let’s assign each one a point value:
- Q1? Let’s say that’s worth more than a standard win (1.5).
- Q1 on the road should be worth even more, no? (0.5)
- Q2 isn’t bad, especially trying to sort through the bubble (1.25).
- Q3 and Q4 don’t impact any of these teams adversely. None have that bad of a loss, so that can represent the base value (1.0).
- Q2 home losses are the most troubling thing we can see here, so let’s assign those a negative value (-0.25).
Based on the above components, that leaves me choosing…
Go ahead and click or hover to see the true identities of the schools revealed. Is that above formula remotely fair? Probably not. It certainly doesn’t reflect the actual rankings of the 4 teams featured.
If there’s anything we can be certain of in March, it’s that the objectively minded won’t have control over the selection process. Of the teams who get in, we’ll see the usual spat of imposters while some very deserving programs feature in the NIT. I’ll be back next week to evaluate the bracket and present what it would’ve looked like if seeded objectively. Until then, I hope you enjoy the conference tournaments and potential bid stealers!
