We are two weeks from Selection Sunday. Did any Hog fans think we’d be here after the losses to Vanderbilt and Texas A&M? It’s been a roller coaster season but the Hogs are in position to make this another special year.
Midweek Preview
Here’s a quick look at the biggest games this week.
Tuesday
- Tennessee at Georgia, 5:30 pm, SEC Network. Tom Crean is coaching what will likely be his final game in Athens, as the Bulldogs are 6-23 and definitely not interested in being this terrible for much longer. If Crean’s parting gift to the conference is shaking up the SEC title race by upsetting Tennessee, then Hog fans will say thank you. Is that likely to happen? Not at all.
- Ole Miss at Kentucky, 6:00 pm, ESPN. Similar story here. Any 2 of Arkansas wins or Kentucky losses this week mean the Hogs are guaranteed to finish higher than the Wildcats in the final standings. This one seems unlikely, as Ole Miss isn’t significantly better than Georgia. Rumor has it Oscar Tshiebwe is already in the lane at Rupp and isn’t leaving until the Cats get a win.
- Missouri at South Carolina, 6:00 pm, ESPNU. South Carolina is a potential quarterfinal opponent for Arkansas. A Gamecocks win keeps them in the running for the 5 or 6 seed. Mizzou probably won’t fire Cuonzo Martin… but he could really help his cause by going 2-0 this week (Mizzou faces Georgia on Saturday).
- Florida at Vanderbilt, 7:30 pm, SEC Network. Florida’s bubble hopes are on life support, but no one is going to have the Gators even on the bubble if they fall to Vanderbilt. The Commodores probably can’t move up from a Q3 to a Q2 loss for Arkansas, but if they keep winning I guess it’s possible.
Wednesday
- LSU at Arkansas, 8:00 pm, ESPN2. I don’t think the Hogs will overlook this one, and they shouldn’t. LSU is a much better team with Xavier Pinson, who didn’t play when the Hogs won in Baton Rouge but is healthy now. A loss probably leaves the Hogs with the 4-seed in Tampa and no better than a 5-seed in the Dance, if that. Our game preview drops on Tuesday.
- Auburn at Mississippi State, 8:00 pm, SEC Network. The three teams chasing Auburn are all pulling for some Starkvegas magic. Auburn has to lose a game for chaos to break out. Interestingly, if Auburn drops this one and Arkansas and Tennessee both win, the Plains Tigers are eliminated from 1-seed consideration in the SEC tournament. Wouldn’t that be a shame? Lead the standings all year just to lose it in the end.
- Texas A&M at Alabama, 6:00 pm, SEC Network. Alabama is the current leader for the 5-seed, so if you don’t want to see the Tide in the quarterfinals, then you either need the Hogs to win in Knoxville or have the Tide drop at least one of their last two.
Bracketology
For the first bracketology on this site, it’s probably useful to explain the methodology.
If you’re a regular around here (for the 3 days this site has existed), you’re familiar with Adjusted Scoring Margin, the single key number to evaluate the quality of teams. If you are not familiar, check out the glossary. Adjusted Scoring Margin is predictive in that it looks at team quality without considering wins and losses. But when you’re picking a bracket, wins and losses do matter.
That’s where we get Resume Margin. This is a statistic that adds up the value of all your wins, subtracts the value of all your losses, and spits out a result that gives us the net quality of your resume. It’s similar to a statistic called Strength of Record.
Here’s a more detailed look at how it works:
- To calculate the value of wins, every team’s Adjusted Scoring Margin “slides” up by the ASM of the worst team. So if the worst team in the country has an ASM of -20, then 20 is added to every team’s ASM. All teams’ wins are then added up using this slid value. In practice, this means that beating the worst team is worth zero, and we go up from there.
- To calculate the value of losses, every team’s ASM slides… you guessed it, down by the ASM of the worst team. This means that losing to the best team costs you zero, and we go down from there. All losses are summed up.
- For every team, the slid-down value of losses is subtracted from the slid-up value of wins, and then divided by the number of games. So the final number that is the output doesn’t really mean anything, but it is useful to compare to other teams.
- All teams’ Resume Margin is ranked 1-357 and an S-curve is applied so each team in the top 50 or so gets either a seed number or a designation of “bubble”.
And that’s it! No shady backroom deals. No Joe Lunardi making it up on the fly. It’s all objective and transparent. Is it perfect? No, it probably doesn’t consider the actual ASM of the team enough because it is entirely focused on strength of record. Having an actual person to call out something silly that a computer spits out is actually helpful.
That said, it did pretty dang well against the actual bracket last year. If I decide to tinker with it, I’ll let you know.
Here a couple quick observation on the results:
- Arkansas is a 5-seed. The second 5-seed, to be exact. That’s pretty much in line with what we’re seeing from actual bracketologists. Some put the Hogs on the 4 line after the Kentucky game.
- Auburn is still a 1-seed. Kentucky is a 3, Tennessee is a 4, Alabama is a 6, LSU is a 10, and Florida is not even on the bubble. Beating Kentucky probably won’t get the Gators into my bracket.
- Providence is a 1-seed. Yep, Providence. The Friars are 24-3 and outright Big East champions. Are they that good? No, not at all. They’re 43rd in Adjusted Scoring Margin. But they keep winning by razor-thin margins so the actual value of wins is amazing. Pro tip: Providence’s luck is going to run out eventually. Keep that in mind as you fill out your bracket this year.
- Some little guys are in the field. Murray State is a 5, Boise State is a 6, Iona (!) is a 7, and South Dakota State is an 8. Last year my bracket had little teams in them until they suddenly dropped during conference tournament week due to large shifts in strength of schedule. We’ll see if that happens again.
Ok, here’s the seed list. All teams are in order:
- 1 seeds: Kansas Providence Auburn Arizona
- 2 seeds: Wisconsin Duke Gonzaga Baylor
- 3 seeds: Purdue Kentucky Houston USC
- 4 seeds: Tennessee Colorado State Saint Mary’s Villanova
- 5 seeds: Murray State Arkansas Davidson UCLA
- 6 seeds: North Texas Texas Tech Boise State Alabama
- 7 seeds: Iona Ohio State Wyoming VCU
- 8 seeds: UConn South Dakota St Texas Illinois
- 9 seeds: UNC Michigan State San Francisco New Mexico St
- 10 seeds LSU SMU St Bonaventure San Diego State
- Bubble: Notre Dame Iowa State Iowa Loyola-Chicago TCU Wake Forest Belmont Miami