NCAA tournament 2018: Arizona State was the only team to stump our bracketologist

In my final projection post on this Selection Sunday, I expressed my concern about struggling with bracketology this season, thanks to the selection committee’s inclusion of advanced metrics and the reorganization of quality wins into controversial quadrants.

Those were wasted words, as it turns out, as my performance in projecting the 2018 NCAA tournament field was remarkably consistent when compared to the previous two seasons.

Before writing this post, I listened to committee chair’s Bruce Rasmussen’s interview on TBS, which was enlightening in that it didn’t really do much to make me think things changed all that much. For starters, I’m glad I had second thoughts on keeping both the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders and Saint Mary’s Gaels in, based concerns surrounding the Blue Raiders’ a lack of brand-name wins for the Blue Raiders and the Gaels’ overall atrocious schedule. Non-conference scheduling still matters (which is great for my offseason).

Change the terminology all you want and throw in some new metrics, but clearly quality wins — no matter when they happen — remain important. As for how you finish, well, let’s just say the committee isn’t going to start investigating tanking any time soon. This combination of factors helps explain why Arizona State got in with early wins over two No. 1 seeds, the Kansas Jayhawks and Xavier Musketeers, despite a 1-5 finish in which they only defeated the woeful California Golden Bears. As for USC, their victories over Middle Tennessee and the New Mexico State Aggies, their best by RPI, apparently didn’t resonate with the committee in a year when the Pac-12 was down. The Trojans’ strong 6-2 finish went for naught, likely because they didn’t defeat a single at-large-worthy team in that span.

Like Arizona State, the Oklahoma Sooners earned their place despite a lousy finish, with their overall body of work, featuring six Group 1 victories, overcoming their 2-8 February and March “run”. Another example is the Alabama Crimson Tide’s position on the nine seed line, a relatively safe spot, despite their five-game pre-SEC tournament swoon.

On the flip side, bad losses continue to not matter as much as we might like. Take the Syracuse Orange, for example. Sure, they lost a pair of Group 3 games to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and Wake Forest Demon Deacons (who the Orange later defeated twice). But their late wins over the Louisville Cardinals, Clemson Tigers, and Miami Hurricanes likely gave Jim Boeheim’s team the final spot. Conversely, while the Orange’s ACC rivals from Louisville avoided the supposedly dreaded bad loss — not falling to a team with an RPI worse than the N.C. State Wolfpack’s 64 — they also didn’t pick up a win better than a sweep of the 54th-ranked Florida State Seminoles.

So next year, when I start talking about a team’s poor finish knocking them out, just kindly tweet at me to think back to this year and shut up.

As for the bracket itself, looking at the seed list and doing some quick math, the committee stuck with its guideline of having the strongest and weakest regions separated by no more than five total points. However, the Kansas Jayhawks have the toughest path in the Midwest Region. The third-ranked top seed might have to defeat the top-ranked four seed (Auburn Tigers) in the regional semis, then either the top-ranked three seed (Michigan State Spartans, what a surprise) or second-ranked No. 2 (Duke Blue Devils) to get to San Antonio. Even though the totals of the other three regions’ top four seeds all equal 35, the No. 1 overall seed, the Virginia Cavaliers, have arguably the second easiest path of the four anchors. Sure, the three seed in the South, Tennessee Volunteers, is the second-ranked team on that line, but the two and four seeds, the Cincinnati Bearcats and Arizona Wildcats, are the two lowest-rated on their respective lines.

Keep this in mind when filling out your bracket. I’ll make my picks in the coming days to guide you toward what not to do.