Sorting Hat Time: How WAB can help the Selection Committee make the Final Bubble Call
Men's Bracketology 3/14
This year the Men’s Selection Committee might have the most magical sorting tool since 1997 when the Sorting Hat decided Harry Potter should be a Gryffindor.
WAB (Wins Above Bubble) will be officially used for the first time by the Men’s Selection Committee. A new metric being used could make the bracketologists’ prediction off a little bit, especially with seeding, but this tool should help make sorting the teams around the bubble a little bit easier.
NCAA said that based on research from previous NCAA Tournaments, this resume-based metric WAB can rank teams based on the amount of wins they have versus an average bubble team against your schedule1.
This morning #45 is TEXAS, likely one of the last four teams in the field this morning after their double overtime win yesterday against Texas A&M in the SEC Tournament.
(Full list of #40 to #59 below)
BUBBLE TEAMS #45 OR HIGHER
Arkansas (#40)
North Carolina (#42)
West Virginia (#43)
San Diego State (#44)
TEXAS (#45)
Teams just Below #45 (toss-up if they are in)
Indiana (#46)
UC SAN DIEGO (#47)
Xavier (#48)
UC Irvine (#50)
Teams in Trouble (if you are on this list, win your conference auto-bid or hope they decide to expand the tournament to 76 starting this year)
MWC teams likely outside of the bubble picture: Boise State (#52), Colorado State (#53)
A-10 outside of the bubble picture: VCU (#54), George Mason (#56), Dayton (#58)
Teams that seasons are done: Wake Forest (#49), San Francisco (#51), Ohio State (#55), Nebraska (#57), SMU (#59)
Let’s talk specifically about the UC San Diego Tritons.
The Big West regular season champions play their first game of their conference tournament tonight in the semifinals vs UCSB Gauchos.
USCD, in their first season of eligibility for the NCAA Division I Tournament after finishing their transition from Division II., went 28-4 this year winning the Big West regular season title.
Head coach Eric Olen led the Tritons to DII Sweet 16 in 2017 and four straight DII NCAA Tournaments before they went up to Division I.
Can the Tritons get a large berth if they lose in the Big West Tournament?
The Eye Test and the NET rating (UCSD is #36) say yes they are a NCAA Tournament Team.
Led by Big West player of the year Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones, Big West defensive player of the year Hayden Gray (3.25 steals per game, leads the nation), and a DII star towards DI sharp-shooting guard (think Jack Gohlke 2.0) Tyler McGhie (4th in the nation with 3.47 three-pointers per game) they play a complete game on offense and defense (see their NET ranking #36).
We know per comments yesterday from Dan Gavitt, that they are in consideration for an at-large position by being the Big West regular season champion2. As I discussed yesterday, there is some circumstantial evidence that most of the Selection Committee may not have voted the Tritons into consideration when doing their initial ballot, but that could also be chalked up to having half the Selection Committee being new members more than a general disdain of their NCAA Tournament resume.
The Big West had not gotten two at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament since 2005 and typically is not a conference that gets two bids. Should the league get two bids, they would likely have UCSD (regular-season champion) head to First Four like Belmont did in 2019 when they lost to Murray State in the Ohio Valley final and still got an at-large berth.
Helping UCSD’s at-large resume is a Quad 1 record: 2-1 with wins at Utah State (Mountain West runner-up; likely in the field about the #9 or #10 seed line) and wins at UC Irvine (Big West runner-up; Anteaters at 27-5 are likely on the bubble and could be part of the First Four Out if they lose in Big West final). They lost in their first game of the year at fellow bubble team San Diego State which could hurt them in head-to-head with the Aztecs.
2 Quad 1 wins give the Tritons the same amount as Xavier (2-9) and Boise State (2-5) and one more Quad 1 win than North Carolina (1-11), VCU (1-1), Colorado State (1-5), that should help them in any bubble conversation.
The negative on UCSD’s resume would be two Quad 3 losses at home vs. Seattle (who is in the WAC semifinals on Friday) and at UC Riverside (#3 seed in the Big West who lost last night to Cal Poly in Big West QFs causing this loss to drop into Quad 3 range for the first time today). Also, if they lost in the Big West finals to UC Irvine, they would finish the season 1-2 vs Anteaters.
(Courtesy of WarrenNolan.com)
There is a narrow path for UC San Diego to get in as at-large if they lose the Big West tournament.
UC San Diego and UC Irvine need to both win tonight. The Big West had two upsets in last night’s quarterfinals, with UCSB and Cal Poly advancing, and given the metrics of those two teams - it would be very detrimental to UCSD’s metrics if they lost to either UCSB in the semifinals or Cal Poly in the final.
New Mexico or Utah State wins the Mountain West Conference. With UCSD’s loss to San Diego State, two bid-stealers remain in the Mountain West Conference semifinals which could turn that conference into a 4-bid league since SDSU will have that head-to-head win over UC San Diego and their neutral site wins over Houston and Creighton. There is a chance the Mountain West Conference could claim a bid-thief as early as Friday if Colorado State and Boise State both win.
Memphis wins the American. As of this morning about 10 teams could be potential bid-stealers and 7 of them reside in the AAC quarterfinals (3 of them will make the semifinal, one will make the final). There is a chance the American could claim a bid-thief as early Friday if Wichita State beats Memphis for the second time this season and they will have a bid-stealer in Sunday’s final.
They can only have one bid stealer between MWC and American. If they both take up bid thieves, the Big West could be a one-bid league since the last 2 at-large spots in the NCAA Tournament will disappear. If neither have bid-thieves there is a chance UC Irvine could get an at-large bid with a close loss to UC San Diego but I do think UC Irvine likely will be on the wrong side of the bubble and is the perfect example of a team that should be in the field with expansion to 72 or 76 teams.
41 of the 68 teams in the bracket are playing today. (The only reason that number isn’t higher is that 14 of the 27 teams not playing have already punched their ticket via AQ). Today’s power conference tournament will be very important for seeding since all the major bid-thieves were eliminated last night. Teams could still easily move up a seed line or down a seed line before Sunday. The biggest advantage that Texas, North Carolina, UC San Diego, Boise State, Colorado State, VCU, and UC Irvine have over the other teams on the bubble, like Xavier, San Diego State, West Virginia, and Ohio State, is that they are playing today. SURVIVE AND ADVANCE.
I do want to say I appreciate EvanMiya’s.com Resume Quality Metric (not used by the committee) but possibly will be down the line. His expected bubble wins are a much more digestible format than instead of -0.50 or +3.25 wins his format shows expected bubble wins based on overall record. That way you can easily North Carolina (22-12) that an average bubble team would likely be 20-14 against their schedule vs the average bubble team would likely have the same amount of DI wins (26) as UC San Diego and UC Irvine if they played their schedule.