December 30 Update: West Coast Represent

Biggest mover over the last week was St. Mary's; with their one point conference season opening victory over West Coast juggernauts Gonzaga, the Gaels jump back into the S-Factor-predicted tournament.

The S-Factor is predicting a 5-seed for St. Mary's, which is absurdly high, though not as absurd as Sacramento State's 4-seed.  The Hornets of Sacramento State are bolstered in the formula by their top 50 and top 25 wins: over Oregon (RPI 33) and over ... St. Mary's (RPI 15) on December 5th in Sacramento.  This, so far, is St. Mary's only loss of the season.

Now in:
St. Mary's
James Madison
Vanderbilt
Auburn
Temple
Nebraska
Marquette
Hampton

Now out:
Texas
UCLA
Penn State
Oregon State
West Virginia
Middle Tennessee State University Blue Raiders
Northwestern
North Carolina A&T

Conferences with multiple bids:
SEC: 9
ACC: 8
Big Ten: 6
PAC 12: 5
Big 12: 3
American: 3
West Coast: 3
Big East: 2
Colonial: 2

December 23 Update: Winter Break

Most colleges are taking a couple of days off for Christmas this week. The next update to the College Women's Hoops S-Factor will therefore be next Monday.

Now in:
Oregon State
UCLA
West Virginia

Now out:
Oklahoma :(
St. Mary's
Nebraska

Conferences with multiple bids:
ACC: 8
SEC: 7
Big Ten: 7
PAC 12: 7 (!)
Big 12: 5
American: 2
West Coast: 2
Conference USA: 2

December 20 Update: Consistent Excellence is Boring and Beautiful at the Same Time

Connecticut's annual flogging of Duke occurred this week. For the third year in a row, Duke came into the game undefeated, and for a third year in a row Duke got walloped. The predictability (inevitability) of this result serves only to reinforce the widely held (and correct) view that Connecticut is an unstoppable force in a sport with very few opposing immovable objects (Skylar Diggins and Brittney Griner being the two most recent). 


Now in:
Middle Tennessee State University
Nebraska
Oklahoma State

Now out:
Virginia Tech
Temple
Oregon State

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big Ten: 8
ACC: 8
SEC: 7
PAC 12: 5
Big 12: 5
West Coast: 3
American: 2
Conference USA: 2

December 16 Update: Philly Women's Ball

It's a pretty good time for women's basketball in Philadelphia right now. St. Joseph's is on an eight-game winning streak, finding themselves fourth in RPI thanks to some decent scheduling of good mid-major teams like Wichita State, Princeton and Quinnipiac.  Two of their wins have come against fellow Philadelphia teams Temple and Villanova, which puts St. Joseph's on top of the Big 5 leaderboard.  Villanova currently holds the best overall record in the Big East, and Temple will be in contention this year for the best non-Connecticut non-Louisville team in the new American Athletic Conference.  Drexel has wins over Providence and St. John's and looks in okay shape to have another pretty good season, Penn is on a four game winning streak, and La Salle ... well, five out of six ain't bad.

Now in:
Princeton
Oregon State
Virginia Tech
St. Mary's

Now out:
Auburn
West Virginia
BYU
Harvard

Conferences with multiple bids:
ACC: 9
SEC: 7
Big Ten: 7
Pac 12: 6
Big 12: 4
American: 3
West Coast: 3

December 13 Update: Finals Week

As of this update, the Big East only shows up with one bid, Villanova. This is the first time in approximately forever that one could say this about the Big East.  It is only a temporary situation: both St. John's and DePaul were dropped out of the S-Factor for losing this week to SEC teams (Kentucky and Auburn), but they'll probably be back soon. 

If anything, this only highlights how stacked the SEC is this year.  Five SEC teams are still undefeated (Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina) and three more have only one loss (LSU, Mississippi State, Missouri). The conference as a whole stands at 108-22 right now, which is the second least amount of losses for a conference this year.  The Big 12 has one less loss but four fewer teams (and 48 fewer wins).   



Now in:
Texas
Ole Miss
BYU

Now out:
St. John's
Middle Tennessee State
DePaul

Conferences with multiple bids:
SEC: 8
ACC: 8
Big Ten: 7
Big 12: 5
Pac 12: 5
American: 3
West Coast: 3

 

December 9 Update: The Rise of Gonzaga

Now in:
Gonzaga
Oregon
Middle Tennessee State
North Carolina State
Temple
Auburn
Colorado State

Now out:
BYU
Texas
Vanderbilt
St. Mary's
Marquette
Seton Hall
Utah State

Conferences with multiple bids:
ACC: 8
Big Ten: 7
SEC: 7
PAC 12: 5
Big 12: 4
Big East: 3
American: 3
Conference USA: 2
West Coast: 2

December 6 Update

Now in:
Oklahoma
Seton Hall
Texas
North Carolina
North Carolina A&T
Utah State

Now out:
Washington State
George Washington
Eastern Michigan
Temple
Hampton
Wyoming


Conferences with multiple bids:
SEC: 7
Big Ten: 7
ACC: 7
Big 12: 5
Big East: 5
PAC-12: 4
West Coast: 3
American: 2

The Hiatus is Over

New mostly meaningless S-Factor, over there, to the right! My first post last year showed Dayton occupying a number 1 seed, and they ended up as a 7 seed. And that was three weeks later in the season than it is now. I guess what I'm saying is, lots will change.

Conferences with multiple bids:
SEC: 7
Big Ten: 7
ACC: 6
PAC-12: 5
Big East: 4
American: 3
Big 12: 3
West Coast: 3
Atlantic 10: 2
MAC: 2

2013 Bracketology-ology

How did everyone do?  Depends on methodology, as always.

I analyzed 7 bracket predictions and 21 ranking models (listed in this post).  In 2011 I used seven metrics to judge which predictions were the best, and I have chosen these metrics once again this year:

•  Number of teams that were correctly selected
•  Of the entire field, number of teams that were correctly seeded
•  Of the entire field, number of teams seeded within one seed of the actual seed
•  Of the top 12 seeds (roughly the at-large cutoff), number of teams correctly seeded
•  Of the top 12 seeds, number of teams seeded within one
•  Of the top 6 seeds (roughly the AP and Coaches poll predictive cutoff), number of teams correctly seeded
•  Of the top 6 seeds, number of teams seeded within one

Here are the lists.

1. Correctly selected



2. Correctly seeded (entire field)



3. Seeded within 1 (entire field)



4. Correctly seeded (top 12 seeds)



5. Seeded within 1 (top 12 seeds)



6. Correctly seeded (top 6 seeds)



7. Seeded within 1 (top 6 seeds)



In 2011 I used a Borda count method (assigning a point value to a ranking and summing the points, like how the AP poll does it) to combine rankings for all seven metrics.  In 2011 the S-Factor was third best at prediction.  The S-Factor was a bit worse this year, coming in fifth, tied with pilight's Field of 64 method.   Still, by the Borda count method, the S-Factor remains the best numeric-only method at tournament prediction.  The bracket produced by RealtimeRPI.com takes top marks by this method.




This year I calculated a ranking based on Paymon points, which is how the Bracket Project analyzes the men's NCAA tournament bracketologists.  Paymon's method gives three points to each team selected, two points to each team correctly seeded, and one point to each team seeded within one seed of the predicted seed.  By the Paymon method, S-Factor comes in fourth among all methods, and is still the best numeric-only method.  Charlie Creme's bracket powers to victory by this method, as no other method or bracket came close to the number of correctly seeded teams.




A third way of comparing tournament predictions is to simply add up the number of correct picks falling into the above seven metrics; unlike in the Paymon method, this method captures the complexity and relative importance of teams seeded 1-6 and 7-12 over the teams seeded 13-16.  Another way of expressing this method, in formula format:

Where

• x_i  is 2 if predicted team i’s seed matches actual team i’s seed, 1 if predicted team i is seeded within 1, and 0 if predicted team i is two or more seeds off;
• y_i  is 3 if actual team i’s seed is 1 through 6, 2 if actual team i’s seed is 7 through 12, and 1 if actual team i’s seed is 13 through 16;
• z_i is 1 if actual team i was predicted in the tournament, 0 otherwise.

Charlie Creme's bracket is once again the best by this method.  S-Factor comes in sixth, ahead of all other numeric-only methods.  



  


See the data used for this post here! If you catch an error, let me know.

Who Got Screwed?

As part of my annual bracketology-ology summary of which women's tournament predictions were the best (coming soon), I analyzed seven bracket predictions and 21 team ranking systems.  They are as follows:

Brackets:
1. Charlie Creme's bracketology
2. My bracket
3. RealtimeRPI's predicted bracket
4. Omni Rankings - "Macro" bracket
5. Omni Rankings - "Micro" bracket
6. "The Field of 64" - pilight's bracket on Rebkell.
7. Matt5762's bracket on Rebkell.

Ranking systems:
8. S-Factor
9. WBBState's "The State"
10. RealtimeRPI power rankings
11. Sagarin ratings
12. Sagarin ELO CHESS only
13. Sagarin PURE POINTS only
14. Massey ratings
15. Massey's power ratings
16. Omni "Macro"
17. Omni "Micro"
18. Warren Nolan's "NPI"
19. SporTheory's rankings
20. Sonny Moore's Computer Power Ratings
21. CJBratings.com composite ratings
22. CJBratings.com "Win ratings"
23. Stats.com "UPS Team Performance Index"
24. RPI calculated by NCAA
25. RPI calculated by RealtimeRPI
26. Win-loss percentage (from NCAA.org)
27. AP poll
28. Coaches poll

For the ranking systems, I created a list of 64 teams that would have been predicted as being in the tournament by that system; that is, the top 33 at-large teams along with the 31 automatic bids.

I averaged the seed that would have been predicted by each bracket or ranking system.  Then I took the difference between the average predicted seed and the actual seed handed out by the selection committee.  The following is the list of all the tournament teams ranked in order from most screwed by the committee to least screwed.



By this method, Green Bay is the most screwed team in America. No ranking system or bracket had them below a 9 seed, yet they received an 11 seed.  Gonzaga too was drastically underseeded.

Others toward the top of this list (Albany, Quinnipiac) have a high average due to some out-there ranking systems, namely WBBState's "The State", Warren Nolan's NPI, Stats LLC's TPI, and the straight up W-L percentage.  So I made another list taking these four ranking systems out. 




In both lists Kansas is at the bottom of the list with a DIV/0 error. This is because not one prognostication selected Kansas into the field of 64. Kansas was ESPN's Charlie Creme's only selection error, the seventh team out in his rankings behind San Diego State, Charlotte, Toledo, Ohio State, Pacific, Florida Gulf Coast, and the team he had in in Kansas's stead, Duquesne.

The following is a list of at-large teams sorted by how many predictions would have selected them.



If the selection committee was run by the consensus of the internet, San Diego State, Michigan, West Virginia and Duquesne would have been the last teams in, and DePaul (surprisingly), Creighton, Ohio State and Charlotte the first four out. Kansas is at the bottom of the list, picked by no one to be a part of the tournament.

Final S-Factor of 2013

I ran the numbers one last time this morning. I have also made one last human-based bracket prediction.

In terms of 64-team selection, the one difference between the S-Factor and my bracket prediction is that I included West Virginia and left out Creighton.  I felt that to really be in contention for an at-large bid, Creighton needed to have made it to the title game of the Missouri Valley Conference tournament, and that didn't happen.  I think they'll be left out despite their relatively high RPI of 41.

What I'm not at all sure about is which team should replace them.  I put West Virginia in, but I would not be surprised if one of the regular-season-winning teams from weaker conferences (San Diego State, Florida Gulf Coast, Toledo) was included in the field of 64.  I know I wrote two weeks ago that Creighton and Toledo had decent chances to get into the tournament as at-large bids, but neither team made it to their conference tournament final. San Diego State and Florida Gulf Coast did make it to the final game, and so I think both of those teams stand a better chance.  But I put West Virginia in the field because they proved themselves capable on more than two occasions of beating top 50 teams (Iowa State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State).

I feel that San Diego State, whose only win over a non-conference tournament-bound team was against Cal Poly, did not prove they could compete and win against the top teams. 

The team that makes me the most nervous though is Florida Gulf Coast.  They steamrolled through the Atlantic Sun conference, but they lost to Stetson in the tournament final. They have wins against tournament-bound LSU and Hampton, and 5 out of their 6 losses were against tournament-bound teams (assuming Charlotte gets in).  I could totally see the selection committee sticking FGCU in the field ahead of four other small conference regular season champs with better RPI ranking (Creighton (I know, co-champs), San Diego State, Pacific, Toledo).

I guess we'll see tonight.

I have Charlotte in the field despite their 53rd ranked RPI.  The S-Factor likes them even better than fellow Atlantic 10 conference mate Duquesne because of their 13-1 regular season record.  Charlie Creme puts West Virginia in the field instead of Charlotte.  Having both Duquesne and Charlotte in the field (in addition to Dayton and St. Joseph's) would be unusual: no more than three teams from the Atlantic 10 conference have been in the tournament since 1989. 

Comparisons to Charlie Creme's Bracketology

The penultimate run of the S-Factor changed little from Monday's run since most conference tournament games happened over the weekend.  It should be even less volatile for the last run, excepting Delaware, St. Joseph's, Green Bay, Creighton, and other teams from conferences whose tournaments have not yet been completed.

This is as good a time as any to point out the major differences between the S-Factor and Charlie Creme's bracketology, which has become the industry standard. 

S-Factor: Duquesne in, West Virginia second out
Creme: West Virginia in, Duquesne first out

The S-Factor favors Duquesne due to a better RPI ranking (41 to 52), fewer losses (7 to 13), and conference tournament wins (1 to 0). This outweighs West Virginia's better conference RPI and record against top 50 teams in my model. When weighted against conference RPI, 9-9 in the Big 12  is about equivalent to 11-3 in the Atlantic 10.


Purdue
S-Factor: 4-seed
Creme: 7-seed

5% of the S-Factor score comes from conference tournament performance. Winning the Big Ten tournament bumped Purdue from a 7-seed to a 4-seed in the S-Factor. Tournament games also bumped SEC-winning Texas A&M from a 5-seed to a 3-seed in the S-Factor, which is where Creme has them.

Michigan State
S-Factor: 5-seed
Creme: 8-seed

The S-Factor has been a little more bullish on Michigan State since February when they beat Purdue, a team high in RPI and low in respect.

Gonzaga
S-Factor: 7-seed
Creme: 11-seed

The West Coast Conference is in 7th place out of 31 conferences in terms of RPI, ahead of even the Atlantic 10. It has four teams in the top 75 in RPI and no teams with a strength of schedule in the bottom half of the country, which makes Gonzaga's current 15 game winning streak more impressive than similarly positioned teams like Delaware and Green Bay. That would be my pitch to the selection committee to give Gonzaga the 7-seed rather than a 10- or 11-seed (as a host school it is unlikely to get an 8- or 9-seed because that would involve a 1-seed playing an away game in the second round.).  

Green Bay
S-Factor: 10-seed
Creme: 7-seed

It's hard to feel confident in an evaluation of a team when that team plays few marquee games. An impressive 26-2 record is hedged by the fact that all we really know is that Green Bay is the best team in Wisconsin. 

Texas Tech
S-Factor: 10-seed
Creme: 6-seed

As much as conference RPI plays a role in the S-Factor (and therefore teams in the Big 12, the nations top RPI conference, get a slightly larger boost than other major conferences), a team's RPI  counts for more, as do top 25 and top 50 wins. The entire non-Baylor Big 12 has no non-Iowa State top 25 wins (Iowa State is 22nd in RPI but has been in and out of the top 25 all season).

Texas Tech doesn't even have an Iowa State win. The Red Raiders have a 48th ranked RPI, which is solidly in the  bubble team zone historically.  I'm not saying there's a chance Tech will miss the tournament (a Big 12 team missing the tournament after winning more than 60% of their games would be an outrage). I'm just saying that everything besides conference winning record (three straight losses to unranked opponents, no conference tournament wins, ten losses on the season, soft non-conference schedule coupled with an unimpressive performance, best win all season was against the Big 12's 5th place team) points to a 10-seed or worse (like Gonzaga, Tech is a host school unlikely to be an 8- or 9-seed even if their resume was up to that level)

Princeton
S-Factor: 12-seed
Creme: 9-seed

I'd like to say Princeton's downfall in the S-Factor was their loss to Harvard, the lone blemish against a dominating Ivy League performance, but it would be untrue: the S-Factor has never had Princeton higher than a 12 seed. Princeton's impressive 26th ranked RPI is offset by the Ivy League's unimpressive 18th (of 31) conference RPI. 

S-Factor and Duke: A Love Affair

Okay, so it can no longer be avoided: when the final model run takes place one week from today, the S-Factor is going to end up showing Duke as a number one-seed. Either Connecticut or Stanford, almost unanimously shown as one seeds by other bracketology sites, is going to be shown as a two-seed.  Connecticut will be no lower than #4 overall if they win the Big East tournament, but if they lose in the championship game or before, they will almost certainly be shown where they are right now, in the #5 overall spot.

I outlined the case for Duke back in February. Since then, two bracket-changing events have happened: Duke lost to 50th-ranked-in-RPI Miami, and Duke killed it in the ACC tournament, triumphing in the championship by 19 points over North Carolina.  On the one hand, that loss to Miami is the only loss by any of the top 5 teams (Baylor, Stanford, Notre Dame, Connecticut, Duke) to a team outside the top 25. On the other hand, Duke won both the regular season and the conference tournament of the ACC, and they went 5-0 against top 25 teams since Chelsea Gray's injury.

Still, Connecticut and Stanford seem like objectively better teams.  They have losses only to teams that will be #1 or #2 seeds in the tournament, and they both have more blowouts of 20+ points (Connecticut 24, Stanford 18, Duke 16, none since Chelsea Gray's injury).  Connecticut at the very least should definitely be ahead of Duke, if for no other reason than the 30 point blowout they handed to Duke.

Now in:
St. John's
UT Martin
Seattle
Stetson
Navy


Now out:
Illinois
Eastern Illinois
Utah State
Florida Gulf Coast
Army

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big East: 8
SEC: 7
Big Ten: 6
Big 12: 5
ACC: 5
Pac 12: 4
Atlantic 10: 4
Missouri Valley: 2

Last Notes Before the Conference Tournaments

 - The Big 12 regular season wrapped up on Tuesday, and the conference tournament starts tomorrow in Dallas.  After West Virginia's unexpected loss to Texas on Tuesday, for the first time all season, the S-Factor is showing only five Big 12 teams to make the tournament: Baylor (1), Iowa State (5), Oklahoma (6), Texas Tech (8), and Oklahoma State (11).

 - Backing into West Virginia's place in the tournament for now is Illinois, but St. John's is a much more likely candidate for a slot in the field. With an impressive 11-5 record in the Big East, all but three of their 11 losses coming against NCAA tournament teams, 34th ranked RPI, and an important first round hosting slot, St. John's is pretty much a no-brainer for a tournament bid (an anomalous loss to RPI 203 Seton Hall is currently costing them about 5-6 S-Factor points, which would have put them somewhere around an 8-seed in the S-Factor had they won). 

 - I think Illinois, South Florida, St. Joseph's, and Oklahoma State are the bubbliest teams right now that I have shown in the field.



 - Conferences where the conference tournament has little chance of altering the selection of at-large bids: SEC, ACC, Pac-12.  The SEC is very likely getting 7 teams in: there is a huge gap between 7th place Vanderbilt (9-7 SEC) and 8th place Arkansas (6-10 SEC).  Likewise between 5th place Miami (11-7 ACC) and 6th place Virginia (8-10 ACC), and between 4th place Colorado (13-5 Pac-12, 23 RPI) and 5th place Washington (11-7 Pac-12, 83 RPI). 

Now in:
Illinois

Now out:
West Virginia

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big Ten: 7
Big East: 7
SEC: 7
Big 12: 5
ACC: 5
Pac-12: 4
Atlantic 10: 4
Missouri Valley: 2

Bubble Poppers: At-Large Bids from Small Conferences

The conference regular season has now wrapped up in 15 out of the 31 automatic-bid-producing conferences, and conference tournaments begin this week in some of those 15.  With conference tournaments comes the chance that a top-seeded team will lose and forfeit the automatic bid that bracketologists have bestowed on it for so long.  For teams on the bubble, this may be bad news if the losing team is good enough to qualify for an at-large bid. One less slot for the South Floridas of the nation.

Here are 10 teams that could pop some other team's bubble if they lose in their conference tournament:

1. Delaware (26-3, 17-0 Colonial)
16th ranked in the latest AP poll and with a winning streak dating back to 2012, the Blue Hens are not missing the tournament this year.  But if the unthinkable happens and they lose in the Colonial tournament, the CAA will get two teams in the field when they would have only gotten one in otherwise.

2. Green Bay (24-2, 14-0)
20th ranked Green Bay has only two losses this season, none since December 5. Though their strength of schedule is abysmal, their consistency will likely be rewarded by the selection committee, even if they lose.

3. Gonzaga (25-5, 15-1 WCC)
Gonzaga started the conference season as one of three or four contenders for the West Coast Conference regular season crown. Since their loss to St. Mary's on January 10, the Bulldogs have gone undefeated while their conference contenders (BYU, St. Mary's, San Diego) sort of fell off, making the West Coast Conference a one-bid conference, unless Gonzaga loses.

4. Creighton (21-6, 13-3 Missouri Valley)
Creighton is the only team on this list that the S-Factor does not currently show as an automatic bid, but as an at-large bid.  Their RPI (26th ranked) is impressive, but their selection as an at-large bid is by no means certain given how rough the Valley's regular season was to them.  Still, wins against Nebraska and South Florida continue to look good for the Blue Jays, and I think they will have a good chance at getting an at-large bid. 

5. Toledo (26-2, 14-1 MAC)
With all the wild results from this weekend and Thursday, Toledo slipped into the AP rankings this week to #25.  Toledo is like a light-version of Green Bay: almost as dominant in conference (just one loss) almost as lengthy of a winning streak (last loss on January 10), and a strength of schedule that is slightly worse (the 222nd most difficult in the nation).  Should they lose, the Rockets still stand a good chance at getting an at-large bid. Maybe.

6. San Diego State (22-5, 13-1 MWC)
The Mountain West Conference lost a lot of its luster when TCU and Utah left, which is why the MWC is only getting one team in the field of 64 if San Diego State wins the tournament.  The MWC tournament though is notorious for upending the top seed, which has lost in six of the last seven conference tournaments.   San Diego State's last loss was on January 9, and their RPI of 36 may be enough to get them into the NCAA tournament without having to win the MWC tournament. Maybe.

7. Chattanooga (26-3, 19-1 SoCon)
Chattanooga had that monster win against Tennessee to open the season but lost 3 games against beatable opponents. Their 46-ranked RPI will probably keep them from the big dance if they lose the Southern Conference tournament. Maybe.

8. Florida Gulf Coast (25-5, 18-0 Atlantic Sun)
Florida Gulf Coast, still in only their second NCAA tournament-eligible season, dominated the Atlantic Sun Conference, and they went 2-3 against the big six conferences, including a win against LSU that is looking better and better as the season progresses. Still, the Atlantic Sun is a terrible conference (28th of 31 in conference RPI terms) and two bids from it seems unlikely.

9. Quinnipiac (26-2, 17-0 NEC)
The unexpected dominance of the Northeast Conference by Quinnipiac  this year might be enough to earn the Bobcats a bid to the NCAA tournament if they lose in the conference tournament. But like Toledo, their SOS is abysmal, and they'd basically be relying on a 3-point win against St. John's to get them in should they lose the NEC tournament.

10. Marist (23-6, 18-0 MAAC)
Though it hasn't happened in eight years, we must at least assume that Marist failing to get the automatic bid in the MAAC (Marist, Automatic, Always! Conference) is a possibility.  If that happens, could they get into the NCAA tournament anyways? I say it's unlikely given their six losses, their 49th ranked RPI, and their best win being over Princeton.

New Human-Made Bracket Guess

I've used my puny human brain to craft a new bracket prediction:

This differs from the S-Factor in the following notable ways:

1. The S-Factor favors Creighton and Duquesne to get in, I favor Iowa and Miami to get in. Iowa gets in because they have many more impressive wins than the other three bubble teams I mentioned, despite their February slump. Miami gets in because their best long-ago win (Penn State) is more impressive than Creighton's best long-ago win (Nebraska) and Duquesne's best long-ago win (Delaware). 

2. The S-Factor still has Duke as the #3 overall, a shade ahead of Connecticut. Connecticut will definitely pass them by the time the season is done (they have more basketball left to play than does Duke), and I believe Stanford is a slightly more deserving team of the final #1 due to their win over Baylor.

3. The S-Factor has Gonzaga as a 9 seed. I bumped them up to a 7 seed so that Notre Dame didn't have to play on someone else's home court. I chose to bump high to a 7 rather than low to a 10 because I think it's more fair to make 10 seeds play away games than it would be to make 7 seeds play away games.  Note: this applies to LSU as well, though S-Factor has them in at a 7 seed  anyways.

4.  I think the committee will be a lot kinder to Green Bay (assuming they win out and finish the season with 2 losses) than the S-Factor is. I stuck them in as a 10 in this bracket, but I think if they win out, an 8 seed is their absolute floor and even a 6 seed wouldn't be surprising.

The Case for Duke

In today's bracketology update, Charlie Creme says that the idea of Duke losing its 2-seed will have to be put on hold for now.  I'm going to go one further: why not a 1-seed?

The S-Factor was impressed by Duke's wins over Maryland and Florida State, enough that they are now slotted as the third #1, ahead of Connecticut, the only team to beat the Blue Devils this year.  The S-Factor knows nothing about Chelsea Gray's injury, of course; it only sees a one-loss team, undefeated in the ACC, with five wins over top 25 teams.

Since Chelsea Gray went down, Duke has gone 2-0 against top 25 teams (Florida State and Maryland, on the road, by 16).  This should show the selection committee that Duke is a robust team capable of top-level basketball even without their star point guard. 

Ordinarily this sort of resumé would be strong enough to pencil Duke into the #1 seed, barring a slip-up in the ACC tournament.  But most every source (Creme, the AP poll, RPI, RealtimeRPI's power rankings, pilight's incredible Field of 64 model) puts Stanford ahead of Duke.  Stanford, the most reliable team in past ten years, is once again the odds-on favorite to win the Pac-12. They also deserve accolades for managing to knock off Baylor this year, a feat achieved by no other team since 2011.  Basically their one big knock is that they have now lost twice at the formerly impregnable Maples Pavilion since then (Connecticut and Cal), whereas Duke has only lost once, albeit spectacularly, to Connecticut on the road.  

If the S curve holds out (still a big if), Stanford and Duke will be the #4 and #5 teams and will probably meet in the same regional, which will probably be Spokane.  I don't think there would be a geographic-proximity reward for Stanford.  First, Spokane is 900 miles from Stanford, farther away than Chicago is from New York, though it is true that eastern Washington is probably more familiar with Pac-12 teams.  Second and more importantly, the selection committee hasn't shown a history of artificially boosting Stanford's seed although Stanford usually plays somewhere in the west.  There's no need for that.  Stanford and Duke were 1-2 in the Fresno regional last year, but they were reversed for the much-closer-to-Stanford Berkeley regional in 2009. In the 2008 Spokane regional, an ACC team was number 1, and Stanford was number 2. 



Now in:
LSU
Vanderbilt

Now out:
Iowa
St. Mary's


Conferences with multiple bids:
Big 12: 6
Big 10: 6
Big East: 7
SEC: 7
ACC: 5
Pac 12: 4
Atlantic 10: 4
Missouri Valley: 2
 

Descending Teams

A few weeks ago I took a brief look at the ascendant teams from each conference, teams that had recently demonstrated surprising feistiness.  This post is about the descending teams with the most recent negative movement in the College Women's Hoops S-Factor in each of the big conferences.

Big Ten
Descending team: Purdue

At the beginning of February, Purdue had amassed a 7-1 conference record and was challenging Penn State for the conference lead.  Since then they have lost four out of their last five, most recently to last-place Indiana, and they are now tied for fourth in the conference with two other teams.  The fact that they beat some very good competition in January buoys their rankings and they are more likely than not still going to be in the tournament.





Big East
Descending teams: Rutgers, Georgetown

Rutgers is currently on a three-game losing streak, and Georgetown is on a four-game losing streak. Right now they seem like the ninth and tenth best teams in a conference that will get a maximum of eight teams in.








ACC
Descending team: Miami

Miami has been on a long slow slide ever since the conference season began.  Since the beginning of January, they have yet to put together a three-game winning streak. It's not that Miami has underperformed really -- all six conference losses have come to the teams in the top half of the ACC -- they just have failed to have an unexpectedly good performance against a top team like they did against Penn State way back in November.  Penn State was unquestionably a great win for the Hurricanes, but they have not followed up with another one since then. 




SEC
Descending team: Vanderbilt

For the first time all season, the S-Factor is showing Vanderbilt out of the tournament.  Like Miami, Vanderbilt's conference losses have come against teams in the top half of the SEC, but Vanderbilt has kept failing to impress since their December 16th win against an Oklahoma team playing for the first time without Whitney Hand.  Vanderbilt has four more conference games, and three of them seem like foregone conclusions (Texas A&M, at Kentucky, home against 3-9 Auburn). Tonight's game against Florida in Gainesville seems like it could be a season-changer for the Commodores: win and they're in, lose and who knows.



Big 12
Descending teams: Oklahoma State, Kansas

After writing a post on Monday claiming that the middle six teams fighting for second place in conference would probably not lose games against the Big 12's basement dwellers even on the road, this is exactly what happened a mere two days later to the Cowgirls and the Jayhawks.  Kansas had a real opportunity to build momentum and their first three-game winning streak since early December, but they blew it.  Oklahoma State, which feasted on cupcake teams in the non-conference season, was relying on a winning record in the Big 12 to overcome their poor strength of schedule, but then they unexpectedly lost to sub-100-RPI TCU.  Now both teams have to win 3 out of their last 4 to be above .500 in conference, and I think there's a good chance that a team with a 9-9 record in the Big 12 this year won't make the tournament. 




Pac-12
Descending teams: None
As opposed to the Big 12, nothing unexpected ever happens in the Pac 12.  Stanford's 10-year longest-in-the-nation automatic tournament berth streak is evidence of this boring phenomenon.  As such, there is no tournament-quality team that has suffered any recent unexpected setbacks. Honorable mention goes to Arizona State, which in most seasons is among the top three or four teams in conference but has had a bad year despite the return of head coach Charli Turner Thorne.

Sorting Out the Big 12

The Big 12 is a difficult problem to tackle from a tournament selection standpoint.  Baylor is obviously the best team in the league and has sewn up the regular season. No one else in the league can beat them.  TCU is pretty obviously the worst team in the conference, though Kansas State and Texas are certainly not tournament bound either.  This leaves six teams in the middle who keep failing to differentiate themselves.

It seemed like there was a little bit of distance between the top and the bottom of the pack before this last week.  The top teams were Iowa State and Oklahoma, the bottom teams were West Virginia and Kansas, and the middle was occupied by Texas Tech and Oklahoma State.  This stratification ended this week. The top teams went 1-3, the bottom teams went 3-1, and the middle teams went 3-1.  So now these six teams all have between 5 and 7 losses in conference.

The problem lies in tournament selection. It is not unprecedented for the Big 12 to get 7 teams into the tournament. It is unprecedented for a conference with only ten teams to get 7 teams into the tournament.  There's no rule against having 70% of a conference attend the big dance though, and the tournament selection committee may have a very difficult time justifying excluding one or two teams given the similar resumes of all six.

Assuming all six lose matchups against each other on the road (and also Baylor wherever) and win all matchups against each other at home (and also TCU, Texas and Kansas State wherever), the final standings in the Big 12 will look like this:

1. Baylor (18-0)
2. Iowa State (13-5)
3. Texas Tech (12-6)
4. Kansas (10-8)
4. West Virginia (10-8)
4. Oklahoma (10-8)
4. Oklahoma State (10-8)
8. Kansas State (4-14)
9. Texas (3-15)
10. TCU (0-18)

Given the ease of remaining schedule, Iowa State has the inside track to second place in the conference, but nothing is certain: the Cyclones just lost at Hilton to West Virginia.


____

Now in:
Iowa
Army
Oral Roberts

Now out:
Duquesne
Navy
Sam Houston St.


Conferences with multiple bids:
Big 12: 7
Big 10: 7
Big East: 6
SEC: 6
ACC: 5
Pac 12: 4
Atlantic 10: 3
Missouri Valley: 2
West Coast: 2

A Non-Automated Bracket Prediction

Man, it's been awhile. Move over, S-Factor. Time for a bracket prediction by a human!

Last 4 in: Charlotte, Vanderbilt, Iowa, Washington
First 4 out: West Virginia, St. Mary's, Creighton, Rutgers

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big 12: 6
Big East: 6
Big Ten: 7
SEC: 7
ACC: 5
Pac-12: 5
Atlantic 10: 4


Some comments:
1. Three of the four #1 seeds are Notre Dame, Connecticut and Baylor. No one even debates this.  The fourth #1 seed will go to a winner of one of the other big conferences (Duke in the ACC, Stanford in the Pac-12, unlikely but possibly Penn State in the Big Ten). I chose Duke because I assumed Duke would go undefeated in conference.

2. Anyone who tries to do a bracket prediction and doesn't account for the geographic complexities of first round sites is not doing it right. This year there's a chance for home teams to play at 14 of the 16 sites. I believe Iowa and LSU will get an advantage from the selection committee over other bubble teams like West Virginia and Creighton, even if those other teams have marginally better tournament resumes. 

3. Notre Dame is the only #1 seed that does not host the first and second rounds. Penn State and California are the only #2 seeds that do not host the first and second rounds.  In a typical year, these low seeds would probably be sited on neutral courts rather than on a potential second-round opponent's court, but there are only two neutral courts this year (St. John's Queens, and Ohio State's Columbus). I stuck Notre Dame in Queens, but put Cal and Penn State in nightmare second round scenarios against the home team from Lubbock and the home team from Boulder.  I doubt this will actually occur.

4. San Diego State is not an 11 seed. More like a 13 seed. They got bounced around the most in the name of balanced brackets, no potential intraconference matchups, and geographic necessity.

5. Charlotte gets in because they have a really good chance of going 13-1 in the A10 conference, and they beat St. Joseph's and Duquesne. But they don't play Dayton this year. How do you have 16 teams in your conference and not play at least 15 games, Atlantic "Ten"?  So weird.

Now in:
Charlotte
Toledo
San Diego State
Texas Southern

Now out:
St. Joseph's
Central Michigan
Fresno State
Southern U.

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big 12: 7
Big 10: 7
Big East: 6
SEC: 6
ACC: 5
Pac 12: 4
Atlantic 10: 3
Missouri Valley: 2
West Coast: 2

Automatic Automatics

When the NCAA selection committee sits down in March to discuss which teams will get an invitation to the tournament, 31 teams will already know for sure that they will be in.  In theory we don't yet know which teams will be the 31 that receive automatic bids, as they are determined by the winners of the end of season conference tournaments (with the exception of the Ivy League's bid).  But in practice we can kind of pencil in some of them because they are the teams that seem to dominate the automatic bid year after year (looking at you, Marist and South Dakota State).

Which teams are the most automatic when it comes to automatic bids? I decided to look into the last twelve years of tournament bids to see which teams keep coming back year after year.  I decided (sort of arbitrarily) that a team couldn't be considered dominant unless they won the automatic bid at least half the time over the last few years.  How many years? I didn't know the answer to that. So I looked to see if there was a team in each conference that got the automatic bid at least half the time over the last three years, then over the last four years, then over the last five years, etc. up to twelve years.  Then I counted up the number of times I recorded a teams name (maximum ten) and made a ranked list.  Ties were broken by which team had the longest active streak of getting the automatic bid, then by most recent automatic bid, and then by existence of other dominant teams in the same conference.

(For instance, Arkansas Little Rock, automatic bid recipient from the Sun Belt Conference for the past two years, has therefore won the automatic bid at least half the time in the last three years and four years, for a score of 2. But Middle Tennessee State, automatic bid recipient in 2010, 2009, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004, has won the automatic bid in the Sun Belt at least half the time in the last four years, the last six years (3/6), the last seven years (4/7), the last eight years (5/8), the last nine years (6/9), the last ten years (6/10), the last eleven years (6/11) and the last twelve years (6/12), for a score of 8.  Meanwhile, McNeese State has won the automatic bid in the Southland Conference for the last two years as well, but no other team from the Southland Conference has received the automatic bid at least half the time over any of the time scales I looked at.  While both UA Little Rock and McNeese State have an Automatic Automatic score of 2, I would argue that McNeese State would be slightly more likely, based only on past seasons performance and not on anything in this current season, to get an automatic bid than Little Rock because Little Rock faces stiffer competition from another dominant team while McNeese State does not.  Therefore I placed McNeese State higher on the list than Little Rock.)

Anyways, here's the list:

AUTOMATIC AUTOMATICS
Rank. Score - Team - Conference - comment
1. 10 - Stanford - Pac 12 - each year since 2003
2. 10 - Marist - MAAC - each year since 2006
3. 10 - Connecticut - Big East - each year since 2008
4. 10 - UW Green Bay - Horizon League
5. 10 - Liberty - Big South
6. 8 - Tennessee - SEC
7. 8 - UC Santa Barbara - Big West
8. 8 - Middle Tennessee St. - Sun Belt
9. 7 - Bowling Green - MAC
10. 7 - Chattanooga - Southern Conference
11. 6 - South Dakota State - Summit League
12. 6 - Fresno State - WAC
13. 6 - Prairie View A&M - SWAC
14. 6 - Gonzaga - West Coast Conference
15. 6 - Ohio State - Big Ten
16. 6 - Xavier - Atlantic 10
17. 6 - Montana - Big Sky
18. 5 - Hampton - MEAC
19. 5 - Baylor - Big 12
20. 5 - St. Francis (PA) - NEC
21. 5 - Old Dominion - Colonial
22. 4 - Princeton - Ivy League
23. 3 - Duke - ACC
24. 3 - East Tennessee St. - Atlantic Sun
25. 2 - McNeese St. - Southland
26. 2 - Navy - Patriot
27. 2 - UT Martin - Ohio Valley
28. 2 - Samford - Southern
29. 2 - UA Little Rock - Sun Belt
30. 2 - San Diego State - Mountain West
31. 2 - Purdue - Big Ten
32. 2 - Northern Iowa - Missouri Valley
33. 2 - James Madison - Colonial
34. 2 - Austin Peay - Ohio Valley
35. 1 - Maryland - ACC
36. 1 - Sacred Heart - NEC
37. 1 - Utah - Mountain West
38. 1 - Central Florida - Conference USA
39. 1 - Hartford - America East
40. 1 - Vermont - America East
41. 1 - Lehigh - Patriot
42. 1 - North Carolina - ACC
43. 1 - New Mexico - Mountain West

There are a number of problems with this list, as there would be for any list like this.  There are some teams that have changed conferences recently and would now have a 0% chance at getting that conference's automatic bid (Fresno State in the WAC, Utah in the Mountain West). This list also gives the short shrift to the very recently dominant, like Delaware and Florida Gulf Coast. 

What was interesting to me in researching this was that every single conference has had a repeat winner over the last four years, even in the evenly matched conferences like the Missouri Valley and Conference USA.  If the winner of a conference was determined completely by chance, you'd get a repeat winner over four years only about half the time (assuming a ten member conference), not 31 out of 31 times. Only five of the 31 conferences had three different winners over the last three years, something that would happen 72% of the time if it was done randomly. 





Now in:
Eastern Illinois

Now out:
Eastern Kentucky

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big 12: 7
Big 10: 7
Big East: 6
SEC: 6
ACC: 5
Pac 12: 4
Atlantic 10: 3
Missouri Valley: 2
West Coast: 2

Ascendant Teams - Big Conferences

March is a month away, and the conference season continues to weed the good from the bad. Right now there is a vast middle field where teams could either play their way in or out of the tournament.  These are the teams with the most positive movement in the College Women's Hoops S-Factor in each of the big conferences right now. 


Big 10
Ascendant team: Illinois
The Big Ten is one of the more volatile conferences this year.  One can envision plausible paths to a tournament berth for nine different teams (Ohio State is amazingly not one of these nine).  Currently Illinois is the most ascendant team.  Now at 6-3 in the Big Ten, they should be able to manage a 10-6 conference record or possibly an 11-5.  Wins over Georgia and Nebraska should outweigh losses to Bradley and Illinois State. 












Big 12
Ascendant team: West Virginia

The Big 12 is once again the best conference in the NCAA in terms of RPI, and it has the best team in the nation (Baylor).  But what Baylor lacks is an in-conference foil, the Notre Dame to Connecticut, the Cal to Stanford, the St. Mary's to Gonzaga.  In years past this role has been played by Oklahoma or Texas A&M, but Oklahoma is not as strong as in years past (thanks in part to the many torn ligaments in the knees of their players, including Whitney Hand) and Texas A&M is raising hell in the SEC.  Basically the Big 12 is Baylor, then everyone else, then TCU.  The result is that Baylor is currently on something like a 479-game conference winning streak, and those middle eight teams could win or lose on any given night to any of the others. Last week was a particularly good week for West Virginia, which beat both Oklahoma teams to get back into the middle of the Big 12 pack.  Their next four games will either make or break the Mountaineers: at Texas Tech, at Kansas, Oklahoma State at home, and Iowa State at Hilton.  I can see them going 0-4, 4-0 or anything in between.


Big East
Ascendant team: Rutgers
The Big East is similar to the Big 12 in that there is a clear three-way split of the teams ranging from really really good to really really bad. On top of everyone are Connecticut and Notre Dame; below everyone are Pittsburgh, Providence, Seton Hall and Cincinnati; and in the middle are nine teams that could beat or lose to most any of the other teams on any given night.  The most unstable of these teams seems to be Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights have gone 4-1 in their last 5 games, but they managed to let truly-awful Seton Hall hold them to a season-low 42 points in a loss two weeks ago.  Rutgers has a pretty good path to a 9-7 conference record, which would put them firmly on the bubble for the tournament.







Pac 12
Ascendant team: Washington
The Pac 12's chronic RPI deficiency was supposed to be helped out by the addition of Utah to the ranks, but it has been Colorado that has provided the boost the conference has lacked in years past.  Unfortunately, any increase in competitiveness by an improved Colorado has been offset by a lackluster Arizona State and USC.  Right now the Pac 12 is still only getting 4 teams in, but the Washington Huskies have looked strong lately.  They are on a six game winning streak, but their victories have been over the Pacific Northwest's cupcake trio of Oregon, Oregon State and Washington State, as well as Arizona and the aforementioned disappointing Arizona State.  Still, they have a really good shot at going 12-6 in conference (in part because they only play Stanford, Cal and Colorado once).






SEC
Ascendant team: Missouri
The SEC is made up of five great teams (Tennessee, Texas A&M, Georgia, Kentucky and South Carolina), four pretty awful teams (the ones from Alabama and Mississippi) and five middle teams where anything is possible.  Vanderbilt has the best conference record of these teams (5-4) and currently has the best tournament resume, but Florida, LSU, Arkansas and even Missouri, which just Davided the Tennessee Goliath, have reasonable paths to a tournament berth. 












ACC
Ascendant team: none
The maximum number from the ACC in the tournament will likely be six, barring an amazing seven game winning streak by Georgia Tech. Virginia is currently the team out, but they'll probably finish 11-7 in conference and be back in.
















Now in:
Illinois
Gonzaga
Utah State
Eastern Kentucky
Navy
Montana

Now out:
Georgetown
Virginia
Belmont
Seattle
American
Montana State

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big 12: 7
Big 10: 7
Big East: 6
SEC: 6
ACC: 5
Pac 12: 4
Atlantic 10: 3
Missouri Valley: 2
West Coast: 2

Now in:
American

Now out:
Army

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big 12: 7
Big East: 7
ACC: 6
Big 10: 6
SEC: 6
Pac 12: 4
Atlantic 10: 3
Missouri Valley: 2

Duke Still Has a Lot to Prove

Right now Duke is a number one seed, according to ESPN's Charlie Creme.  And it's tough to argue with their resume: their only loss of the season was to Connecticut this week and before that game their average margin of victory was over 30 points.

But those lopsided victories have mostly been at the expense of some cupcake teams.  Before the Connecticut game, Duke had played just one top 25 team (Cal) and one more top 50 team (Michigan).  By contrast, when Connecticut met Duke, the Huskies were playing their seventh top 25 team this year and their eleventh top 50 team. 

Strength of schedule weakness is the reason Duke is number 12 in RPI (they have played the 72nd most strenuous schedule in NCAA Division 1 this year so far), and it is also the reason that they possess a 3-seed in the College Women's Hoops S-Factor.  But fear not, Blue Devils!  By the end of the season Duke will have played seven top 25 teams (North Carolina twice, Maryland twice, Florida State once) and four teams ranked 26 to 50 in RPI (Miami twice, Virginia once).  Their strength of schedule still won't be as difficult as Connecticut's (on track for 11 top 25 teams and 15 top 50 teams), but clearly Duke's toughest challenges of the season lie in front of them.

Now in:
Albany
Belmont
Middle Tennessee St.
Pacific (1/21)
Duquesne (1/21)
Chattanooga (1/21)
Central Michigan (1/21)
Wichita State (1/21)
Cal Poly (1/21)
Montana State (1/21)
SMU (1/21)
Army (1/21)
Longwood (1/21)

Now out:
Boston U.
Tennessee Tech
Western Kentucky
Georgetown (1/21)
Florida (1/21)
Minnesota (1/21)
CSU Northridge (1/21)
UTEP (1/21)
Montana (1/21)
Davidson (1/21)
Liberty (1/21)
Akron (1/21)
Lehigh (1/21)


Conferences with multiple bids:
Big 12: 7
Big East: 6
SEC: 6
Big Ten: 6
ACC: 6
PAC 12: 4
Colonial: 2
Atlantic 10: 2
Big West: 2
Missouri Valley: 2

Unexpected January Conference Losses: Are They Really Consequential?

The Pacific Tigers are in an interesting spot this year.  They have had a pretty good season so far and a decent resume for a small conference team.  They beat St. Mary's, Seattle and Fresno State, three teams leading their respective conferences right now. They have played two big conference teams this year, Florida and Stanford. They lost big to Stanford and hung close to Florida.  Best of all, their RPI is very high, 29th right now. 

But this past weekend they lost at Cal Poly by one point, 96-95. 

That loss would put them out of the tournament according to the College Women's Hoops S-Factor (Cal State Northridge now owns the automatic bid for the Big West Conference).  But in real life will that one loss by one point in a high-scoring game matter to the selection committee?

The selection committee will only need to make a selection decision about Pacific if Pacific loses their conference tournament in March, which in itself will be another mark against letting Pacific into the big dance.  So maybe one random loss in January won't be very consequential after all.

Now in:
Virginia
Texas Tech
St. Mary's
CSU Northridge
Akron
Fresno State
Davidson
Central Arkansas
Tennessee Tech
Seattle
Lehigh
Southern

Now out:
Pacific
Duquesne
Chattanooga
Toledo
San Diego State
Gonzaga
Ohio State
Lamar
Louisiana Tech
Murray State
Holy Cross
Prairie View A&M

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big 12: 7
Big East: 7
SEC: 7
Big Ten: 7
ACC: 6
PAC 12: 4
Colonial: 2