Sunday, March 13, 2016

NIT field/analysis

I'm still gonna hit the NCAA committee hard, but tonight, let's complete the NIT analysis.

The actual field:
1) St Bonaventure vs. 8) Wagner
4) Creighton vs. 5) Alabama
3) Virginia Tech vs. 6) Princeton
2) BYU vs. 7) UAB

1) Valparaiso vs. 8) Texas Southern
4) Florida St vs. 5) Davidson
3) Georgia vs. 6) Belmont
2) St Mary's vs. 7) New Mexico St

1) Monmouth vs. 8) Bucknell
4) George Washington vs. 5) Hofstra
3) Ohio St vs. 6) Akron
2) Florida vs. 7) North Florida

1) South Carolina vs. 8) High Point
4) Georgia Tech vs. 5) Houston
3) Washington vs. 6) Long Beach St
2) San Diego St vs. 7) IPFW

My performance:
31 of 32 teams correct
14 of 28 teams seeded correctly (remember, we knew the 1 seeds going in)
21 of 28 teams within 1 seed line

Seeding kinda sucked, but at least I got 31.  Missed William & Mary, in favor of Long Beach St.  I'm very suspicious of their selection, given they play on the west coast, and that UC-Irvine was a legit NIT bubble team and finished higher than LBSU in its conference.  I think they missed but it's not a major sin.

Princeton as a 6?  Yea.  I like that.  Their RPI was inflated, and honestly didn't deserve a bid if you were to ignore the RPI.  That 6 seed feels like a compromise.  This seemed to happen to Akron too, getting docked big in seeding when you only had the RPI in your favor (Akron obviously had the autobid though).

Part of me wonders if they docked Akron a seed line to match up with OSU.  Many of these first round games line up geographically, but a few don't.  Further, later-round matchups are really random.  Seems like after the first round, the NIT doesn't care about geography,  Which is probably a fair plan.

Hofstra as a 5 was my big miss...why do they disrespect the Colonial?  They're a good team.  I'm not sure how they just plain old missed on this one.  A few mid majors are low seeds, but Hofstra's really the only one with a major issue.

I give the NIT an A-.  Hofstra feels like too big a miss, and LBSU too awkward a selection, to make it a pure A.  But for the most part, sanity ruled the day.

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