OU might really have had a chance if they would have beaten us. I was kind of laughing at the announcers talking about it so much

Love that this annual thread returned!

Cincinnati is killing BYU. Is BYU a 7 or 8 seed?

Normally about a week out the bubble starts to get much more clear with each passing day. On Tuesday, if anything things got more muddled with fringe bubble candidates like Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Boise State, Cincinnati, etc. all notching huge Q1 wins and teams on the verge of reaching lock status like UCF, Missouri, Clemson all lost to fall back to the chasing pack that picked up big wins (A&M, TCU, Georgia).

OP is updated to lock in Georgia, and eliminate West Virginia. Not huge movements up seed lines for many teams even after significant results because 1) its important to not over react to 1 data point among 30 and 2) with some of these results you really have to look at how the metrics move on a game like UCF and Missouri to see if they are actually in trouble or not.

LouisvilleAg said:

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Cincinnati is killing BYU. Is BYU a 7 or 8 seed?

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I have them as a 7 now. Just 1-6 in quad 1A is worse than anyone else above them except Arkansas. Their T-rank may fall below 40 after that showing. Usually if only 1 metric is way off it isnt held too much against you but that is an eye sore for a team trying for a top 6 seed.

OP updated with UCLA locking up a bid, some slight scrubbing up and down based on how the numbers came in and adding tonight's schedule at the bottom. Also moving VCU ahead of Indiana for the last team in after their win last night.

It is very tight from 58 (last #9 seed) to #63 (first 11 seed). Anywhere in there is what i would consider the margin for error that committee member might argue for A&M to be seeded.

bobinator said:

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OU might really have had a chance if they would have beaten us. I was kind of laughing at the announcers talking about it so much

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Amusingly OU's NET ranking is now higher than Mizzou's.

https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/basketball-men/d1/ncaa-mens-basketball-net-rankings

Are you saying 4 SEC teams vying for 3 spots?

No, like nationally.

Like if the tournament were today it's really between 6 teams competing for 4 spots.

Santa Clara, New Mexico, VCU, Indiana, Cincy and Auburn.

And I'm not completley convinced that Cincy is really in that group yet.

The WAB numbers finally run and as expected there's a pretty big gap now (the equivalent of basically last night's game for us) between Santa Clara at #43 and SMU at #44.

There's actually a decent gap between SMU and #45 VCU too.

Ah, you're right. Early morning stupidity on my part.

Seven Costanza said:

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Beating LSU to feel fairly comfortably in the field, then having a one or two of bid thieves jump in to push us down to an 11 (with the bye) would be ideal for the possibility of making it to the second weekend.

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yea win Sat then I say rest starters in the SECT cuz we're not doing enough there to get past the 8/9

A win Saturday seems like it should keep us off the First 4 play in games

astros4545 said:

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A win Saturday seems like it should keep us off the First 4 play in games

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Agreed.

ColleyvilleAg06 said:

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astros4545 said:

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A win Saturday seems like it should keep us off the First 4 play in games

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Agreed.

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Yep

New Mexico down 15 to Colorado State at the half. That would be a horrible loss and pretty much kill their chances for an at large.

So apparently both New Mexico and USC performed ritualistic seppuku on their at large chances last night with UNM taking a quad 3 loss and USC losing a more difficult game but they were in a position where they had to win out.

I will look at the numbers this morning, given the continued struggles of the back end of the bubble. It's possible that neither loss completely eliminate either, but their chances for an at large feels somewhere in the neighborhood near Oklahoma

They're absolutely determined to make this boring. We're gonna be here next Friday debating like two teams

bobinator said:

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They're absolutely determined to make this boring. We're gonna be here next Friday debating like two teams

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New to thread. What is WAB and OP?
And why after beating Kentucky does CBS have us going from 10 to 11?

Matt_The_Lawyer said:

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bobinator said:

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They're absolutely determined to make this boring. We're gonna be here next Friday debating like two teams

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New to thread. What is WAB and OP?
And why after beating Kentucky does CBS have us going from 10 to 11?

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WAB is a metric the committee uses to rank teams. "Wins above bubble"

OP means "On Point". Like "You are right OP" or "My boi be boolin on 'em" - slang talk. Don't let other people tell you otherwise.

CBS sports is useless when it comes to bracketology. Jerry Palm, while a great name and butt, is nothing short of a sleep paralysis demon. Not even sure if he is still the CBS guy, but pay them no attention.

WAB is a new metric the committee added last year, like he said it means "wins above bubble." Basically it's a formula of what you did compared to what the average bubble team (theoretically the team ranked #45 in the NET) would do against your schedule.

There are multiple WAB formulations that have been around for a bit, but the NCAA started its own official one last season based on its own NET, thus the NET WAB.

I think there's a good question of causation vs correlations, but there's no debate that no single metric was as closely related to the actual seed list last year as the NET WAB.

I did an explainer on another thread if you're interested.

So let's take the Kentucky game, an average bubble team would be expected to beat this year's Kentucky team at home roughly 60% of the time. So for us that win was worth .4 WAB. Had we lost, it would have been worth -.6. By this metric, Saturday's game against LSU is actually a more valuable game than the Kentucky game, because winning on the road is more difficult.

I wouldn't worry about CBS bracketology, but in general our projection did not move much this week because we were expected to win this game. Meanwhile, a few other teams won games they were projected to lose. UCLA, for example, defeating Nebraska was worth more than our game and TCU winning at Texas Tech was worth twice as much. So a team like TCU moved up the charts quite a bit.

OP updated to include the analysis of the effects of New Mexico and USC. Neither actually dropped that much when the new numbers ran which should say a couple things:

1) How terrible the bubble actually is this year that a Q3 loss really doesn't hurt that much

2) How baked these resumes already are and how we can't react too much to 1 game. It is 1 data point out of 30+ and with how data driven the committee is now, 1 data point just isn't going to move the overall numbers that much and New Mexico from a pure numbers standpoint is still right in the mix. USC had work to do before and much more work now but they hardly moved this morning.

That should also be a warning about what is to come on Saturday and over the course of next week - don't expect to see wild swings in seeding. Even if we did assume the committee gave full weight to conference tournament games it is nearly impossible to play your way in if your metrics aren't at least top 50 going into the week. This is largely why they feel comfortable discounting alot of the results and falling back on over the first 33 games team A was better than team B so we aren't going to switch just because of 1 or 2 results.

Also adding in Arizona State. If we are keeping USC around and including Oklahoma State and Oklahoma, then ASU should be here too after beating KU. They also have a Quad 1A opportunity coming up this weekend at Iowa State and should they win that will be close enough to the bubble cut line to be in the conversation with a big week next week.

I think I'm close to convinced that the only teams really left in play that could go either direction are VCU, Auburn, SMU, CAL, Indiana and Virginia Tech

Oh boy. Incoming fire any minute.

CapCityAg89 said:

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Jerry__Ag said:

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Matt_The_Lawyer said:

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bobinator said:

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They're absolutely determined to make this boring. We're gonna be here next Friday debating like two teams

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New to thread. What is WAB and OP?
And why after beating Kentucky does CBS have us going from 10 to 11?

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WAB is a metric the committee uses to rank teams. "Wins above bubble"

OP means "On Point". Like "You are right OP" or "My boi be boolin on 'em" - slang talk. Don't let other people tell you otherwise.

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Just to clarify - OP means "original post" or "original poster". So "updated OP" means "I updated by editing my original post so look there" or "OP is right on target" means "Collyville, the original poster on this thread is a BAMF!"

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What about OPP? Are you down?

Yeah, you know me!

CapCityAg89 said:

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Jerry__Ag said:

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Matt_The_Lawyer said:

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bobinator said:

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They're absolutely determined to make this boring. We're gonna be here next Friday debating like two teams

---

New to thread. What is WAB and OP?
And why after beating Kentucky does CBS have us going from 10 to 11?

---

WAB is a metric the committee uses to rank teams. "Wins above bubble"

OP means "On Point". Like "You are right OP" or "My boi be boolin on 'em" - slang talk. Don't let other people tell you otherwise.

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Just to clarify - OP means "original post" or "original poster". So "updated OP" means "I updated by editing my original post so look there" or "OP is right on target" means "Collyville, the original poster on this thread is a BAMF!"

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I don't think that's right. You must be too old to understand slang. I'm pretty hip with the younger generation

And one more thing.........BAMF???? This here is America. We don't need to bring up any Canadian territories, or whatever they hell they call them up there in Mexico North.

Anyway, back to bubble talk...what is our rooting guide for the evening? Thursday's are generally pretty light but I am sure there are some mid-major games that could impact bubble talk.