Jerry Palm's new bracket projection is out...

[YCN]

It's pretty interesting. Here's where the Big 12 teams currently stand, with just two weeks until the tourney begins (wow!).


#3 seeds:
Baylor - at Fresno (KC)
Texas - at Dallas (Philly)
Texas Tech - at Dallas (Chattanooga)

#5 seeds:
Kansas State - at Seattle (KC)
Iowa State - at Seattle (Chattanooga)

#10 seed:
Oklahoma - at Chapel Hill (Chattanooga)

#12 seed:
Nebraska - at Storrs (Tempe)

Last week OU was a 12-seed, but that was because there wasn't any place to put OU as an 11-seed, of which I believe Palm had them second. This week I'm guessing that they are the first 11-seed, and thus the bump up to 10 to get somebody else out of a matchup not allowed by the placement rules, or else to keep a slightly higher seed closer to home.

I'm in disagreement with Chipper and with Palm to some degree. I don't think that Nebraska is a 12-seed, but I wouldn't have them higher than 11. That may actually mean that Palm and I rank Nebraska the same way. There was only one place that Nebraska could go as an 11 under Palm's current forecast, and if they weren't the highest 11, and I don't think they were, they had to drop to 12 to get to a spot to play. In fact, it's possible that both NU and OU are both true 11's or even 12's, but most likely is that OU bumped up from 11 and NU down.

The restrictions of having teams guaranteed to be on certain courts under this new pod system are going to make for some really strange matchups this year, and far more travel than necessary or wanted. It's time to get rid of home court guarantees in the tourney, because of the inherent unfairness of the existing system.


I believe that Baylor isn't a 1 seed right now, but if they win out through the Big 12 tournament they will be. As good as Stanford is, and they may well be better than Baylor, you have to seed teams based upon their performances this year, and Stanford will not have a better resume if Baylor continues to win. I think that Rutgers, while a very good team and certainly deserving of a 3-seed, is questionable as a 2. Tennessee, Ohio State and North Carolina are not.

I believe that KSU deserves to be a 4 ahead of NC State and DePaul; that Iowa State and Florida State at 5 may be overrated; Vanderbilt as a 7 doesn't deserve that good a seed; that Utah being swept by New Mexico probably ought to get them a 9 or 10.

Oh well, just my thoughts. Plenty would disagree. Easiest road to the Final Four? Temple through College Park and back to Philly.

[dem]

It's interesting to compare the projected Big 12 seeds to the current and projected RPI's. (For comparison, in brackets I also show "nominal" ranking spots figured according to the seeds.)

Baylor, 3 seed [9-12]
current RPI: 9
projected RPI: 9

Texas, 3 seed [9-12]
current RPI: 12
projected RPI: 11

Texas Tech, 3 seed [9-12]
current RPI: 10
projected RPI: 12

Kansas State, 5 seed [17-20]
current RPI: 25
projected RPI: 24

Iowa State, 5 seed [17-20]
current RPI: 34
projected RPI: 33

Oklahoma, 10 seed [37-40]
current RPI: 36
projected RPI: 48

Nebraska, 12 seed [45-48]
current RPI: 50
projected RPI: 53

It's probably fair to allow about 4-5 ranking spots of "wiggle room" to accommodate the location and bracketing rules, so that leaves two obvious questions: why are Iowa State and Oklahoma seeded so "high" (meaning, "above projected RPI rank")? [Not that I would complain if it works out this way.]

Without doing an exhaustive review of the detailed Won-Lost-vs.-top-100, etc. records of all the contenders, it's pretty hard to answer this. Off the top of my head, I would say that Iowa State's RPI is artificially degraded (relative to their "true strength," so to speak) due to the excessive number of really bad teams played during the non-conference season (e.g., 4 wins against RPI 263 or worse). When you beat an RPI 300 team, in almost all plausible cases, you COULD have beaten an RPI 200 team that day also, but your RPI takes a much more severe hit in the first case. This is not smart scheduling, sez me, and I really don't know how and why it occurred. (Fennelly has said something like "It wasn't supposed to work out that way," but anyway it did.)

Oklahoma has some of this sort of thing on its pre-conference record also, but not as much. Now, it's kind of hard to believe that Palm has really inspected everyone's detailed W-L vs top 25, top 50, top 100, etc. record so carefully as to pick up discrepancies like this, but maybe he has. I'm not even sure the Committee does that careful a job, but I hope they do.

The Baylor, Texas, and Texas Tech resumes (W-L vs. top 50) look very impressive, but I'm afraid those of Kansas State and Iowa State look kind of skimpy to me. It may be that those teams would have to make some additional noise in Kansas City to hold those #5 seeds. Fortunately, Kansas City is essentially the home court (away from home) for both of them!