Final Update: March 14

This is the final update of numbers for the 2015-2016 season. I've also got a final non-automated human-generated bracket prediction on the Bracket Prediction page. Spoiler alert: it looks like this:

(click on the image for better viewing)


I can't recall any year where so few #1 seeds from conference tournaments earned automatic bids to the NCAA tournament. But almost all of these upsets came in conferences where only one team was going to get a bid anyways. The exception is the West Coast Conference, where San Francisco's two-point victory over the BYU Cougars in the championship game effectively means that one fewer bubble team is going to get into the tournament. The popped team, in the S-Factor's opinion, is North Carolina State. Call me skeptical.



Now in:
San Francisco
Army
Missouri State
Troy
Buffalo
Jacksonville
Robert Morris
Alabama State

Now out:
North Carolina State
Florida Gulf Coast
Central Michigan
Arkansas Little Rock
Northern Iowa
Bucknell
Southern U.
Sacred Heart

Conferences with multiple bids:
SEC: 9
(1) South Carolina
(3) Kentucky
(4) Florida
(4) Mississippi State
(5) Texas A&M
(6) Georgia
(7) Tennessee
(8) Missouri
(10) Auburn

ACC: 5
(1) Notre Dame
(3) Louisville
(4) Syracuse
(5) Florida State
(7) Miami (FL)

Big 12: 5
(1) Baylor
(2) Texas
(5) Oklahoma 
(6) Oklahoma State
(6) West Virginia

Pac 12: 5
(1) Oregon State
(2) Arizona State
(3) UCLA
(3) Stanford
(5) Washington

Big Ten: 4
(2) Maryland
(4) Ohio State
(6) Michigan State
(9) Indiana

Atlantic 10: 5 lol nothing matters
(7) George Washington
(8) St. Bonaventure
(8) Duquesne
(10) Saint Louis
(10) VCU

Big East: 3
(7) DePaul
(9) St. John's
(10) Seton Hall

Ivy League: 2
(9) Pennsylvania
(9) Princeton

American: 2
(2) Connecticut
(11) South Florida

West Coast: 2
(8) BYU
(12) San Francisco

February 14 Update: West Coast is the Best Coast?

The S-Factor shows four teams from the West Coast Conference getting into the tournament as of this moment: (5) Gonzaga, (9) BYU, (10) St. Mary's, and (10) San Diego.  This will not come to pass.  The West Coast Conference will be a one bid conference (assuming Gonzaga wins the WCC tournament).

Gonzaga is the one team from the West Coast Conference that has the chops to justify an at-large berth.  Their only conference loss was a one-point game at St. Mary's way back in December (apparently the West Coast Conference plays conference games in December).  Their non-conference season was full of RPI-boosting teams that aren't quite cupcakes (Ohio State, Washington State, UT-Martin, Idaho), though they haven't beaten a non-conference top-50-RPI team.

BYU right now is in a distant second place in conference, three games behind Gonzaga.  Their best non-conference win was their opener against South Dakota State, but they've suffered four losses to conference opponents, only one of which was Gonzaga.  Like Gonzaga, they only faced three sub-200-RPI opponents, which keeps BYU's RPI in the 50's.

St. Mary's used to be the likely choice for a second berth into the tournament from the West Coast Conference.  However, that was before they lost 2 in a row and 3 out of 5 to West Coast also-rans Pacific and Loyola Marymount.  Yet they are still 40th in RPI because they too avoided too many sub-200-RPI teams, battling just 3 in non-conference play.

San Diego was ahead of even Gonzaga in the S-Factor before the conference season started.  Their win over Arizona State is by far the best win by any team in the conference.  They were undefeated until January 8th at Portland, but since then they've gone 4-6 against conference opponents. They still have a top 50 RPI.

If these four opponents ran the table on every other team in the league and suffered losses only against each other, one could make a strong argument that they are all deserving of consideration to the tournament and that the West Coast Conference has somehow clawed its way into the Atlantic 10-Memorial Best Mid-Major Conference spot.  But the three non-Gonzaga teams on this list have suffered losses against Pacific (86), Portland (136), San Francisco (152), and just last night, Loyola Marymount (211).

This could also be taken as an argument for the strength of the conference as a whole from top to bottom, similar to the reason why the Big 12 was the best RPI conference in women's hoops for so many years. Last year, the Big 12's reputation for strength led to the tournament selection committee choosing 70% of their teams.

But the Big 12 Conference and the West Coast Conference are not similar in the eyes of the selection committee.  No matter what the RPI numbers say, wins against Texas Tech and Kansas State sound a lot better than wins against Pepperdine and Santa Clara.

This is not a monolith of power atop the Pacific Time Zone's best mid-major conference.  This is just a conference with an abnormally high RPI mucking up my prediction formula.

___________________________

Now in:
Florida State (good win at Syracuse last night puts them back in)

St. Joseph's (speaking of abnormally high RPI)

Auburn (easy schedule coming up, could finish 9-7 in the SEC)

Rutgers (finally overcame that Memphis loss in my formula)

Now out:
UTEP (bracket churn)

Bowling Green (Ohio State dropped out of the top 50, which means BGSU no longer has any top 50 wins)

Indiana (3-7 in their last 10)

St. Bonaventure (7-game winning streak came to an end on Wednesday)

ACC Teams:
(1) Notre Dame
(2) Duke
(3) North Carolina State
(4) Maryland
(5) North Carolina
(7) Syracuse
(8) Florida State
(11) Georgia Tech

AAC Teams:
(1) Connecticut
(2) Louisville
(11) Rutgers

Atlantic 10 Teams:
(8) Dayton
(9) St. Joseph's

Big East Teams:
(6) St. John's
(8) DePaul
(10) Villanova

Big Ten Teams:
(2) Penn State
(4) Iowa
(4) Purdue
(6) Nebraska
(9) Michigan State

Big 12 Teams:
(3) Baylor
(3) West Virginia
(6) Oklahoma State
(6) Texas

PAC 12 Teams:
(1) Stanford
(5) Arizona State
(7) California
(11) USC

SEC Teams:
(1) South Carolina
(2) Tennessee
(3) Texas A&M
(4) LSU
(5) Kentucky
(7) Vanderbilt
(8) Florida
(10) Auburn

West Coast Teams:
(5) Gonzaga
(9) BYU
(10) St. Mary's
(10) San Diego

Atlantic 10 Ruling; Mountain West Drooling

Of all the mid-major conferences (defined as conferences that are not the Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10, Atlantic Coast and Southeast Conference), two of the 26 (counting the Great West) rank higher than all others in terms of the number of at-large bids garnered over the past few years: the Atlantic 10 and the Mountain West. It seems like it's a rare year when the Atlantic 10 doesn't get three teams into the NCAA tournament, and the Mountain West is so full of parity that the annual conference tournament is often completely up for grabs.

But this year there is no question as to which conference is better. The Atlantic 10 is having a great year as a whole. As of right now, eight teams from the 14-team conference are ranked in the top 75 of RPI. Three Atlantic 10 teams are in Charlie Creme's field of 64, and two more are on the cusp. While the College Women's Hoops S-Factor only lists two, the S-Factor is unreasonably stingy to mid-major conferences at this point in the year. Xavier is being talked about as a 2 seed; Duquesne has been on everyone's list since they beat Ohio State; Temple, Charlotte and Dayton are all very close to being in the big dance; and St. Joseph's, St. Bonaventure, and Richmond have all been competitive in their biggest games.

The Mountain West, however, has been pretty weak as a conference whole. Many of the traditional powers are having off years. Both the Utes of Utah and the Lady Lobos of New Mexico lost a lot of games in a difficult non-conference schedule, but kept losing once the conference season began. San Diego State has achieved an 8-8 record so far with their best win coming against Dayton and a loss to the non-aligned Roadrunners of Cal State Bakersfield. BYU and Wyoming are the only two challengers to what is looking like a dominant run by TCU this year. Wyoming was crushed by TCU last week, and BYU travels to Fort Worth to play the Horned Frogs tonight. With only a single top-50-RPI win in the entire conference this season (that being TCU's victory over 50th ranked Oklahoma earlier this year), the Mountain West is looking like a one-bid conference this year.

Now in: Vanderbilt
Now out: Missouri State

Conferences with multiple bids:
Big East: 9
ACC: 7
Big Ten: 7
Big 12: 6
SEC: 5
PAC-10: 4
Atlantic 10: 2