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The Wiz's Final Dance Chance Report


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First. some breaking news this morning....3/7/21 ....This is from  CBS/NCAAB site

Bubble Watch: What Drake Needs To Do In The Atlantic 10 Tournament

First rule is double check what you read.

As for the Bills chances  for a bid ...we have entered the NCAA Twilight Zone. which is a scary place with uncertain outcomes  and somewhere you don't want to be. Our chances this morning are 50-50....Yesterday , I mentioned that a loss would drop us to 52%. The fact that we lost by 10+ pts dropped us to 50%.

We are now the last 4 ...not the last 4 in or the last 4 out ...but 1 of the last 4...somewhere between the last 2 in and the last 2 out...Big Dance Twilight Zone.  Our fate now is entirely out of our hands.  While there still could be some movement, depending on  if remaining teams we have played win or lose, the overall model show not much movement for us in the coming days. This puts us in the dreaded NCAA Selection committee cloud...that final 10% that is outside the NET model or any other metrics. Where the Selection committee goes into deep thought and comes up with "deserving " teams.

So now we come to a quantum physics type problem.....To go back to the coin toss (50-50) analogy...We flipped the coin and it landed on neither heads nor tails...it landed on its edge....and will stay on its edge till next Sunday when the Selection Committee, tips the coin and judges who is worthy.

So do we have a chance?....Stranger things have happened....think back to last Monday when 17 pt favorite Richmond lost at home to St. Joe to give us a double bye. 

You may have to get out your rabbit's foot and rub the Billiken's belly with it this week.

 

 

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First let me say nothing has changed at this point from the original post...still 50-50

This post is mainly for the bubble watchers...the games that might affect The Bills chances to be selected.

Good means it helps our chances ...bad means it doesn't

 

Xav over But by 5....bad

Fres over NM by 6....then Col St  over Fres by 10...bad

Boise over Nev by 5....bad

UNLV over Air F by 4....then UT St over UNLV by 6...bad

St. J and SHall...even ...SH needs to win this game and lose the next.

NC St and Syr... even...NC St needs to win

Ole Miss over SC  by 6....Bad

UCF over E Car by 5...then Mem over UCF by 6....bad

 

So it doesn't look good for the bubble watchers....The good news is that the model is still showing at 50 -50 and the computer has taken the above games into account.

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I see a lot of speculation  on the board and the media and the bracketologists about who is in and who is out.  As you all know, I love data and stats and numbers.  Unfortunately for Bills fans, this is not about numbers. The NCAA selection committee uses the NET as its main model for selecting teams.  But in the overall formula the NCAA has discretion (about 15% ) to  choose teams they think are deserving. That works out to to about 10 teams...so roughly #45 to #55.  Again this is not exacting. If Duke is #58 ...they are probably in the discussion. If Grambling is at 44 , they are probably not.  Remember this is subjective....so it could be 12 teams fighting for 7 spots or just 3 teams fighting for 1 spot. The Committee itself doesn't know until they actually start taking ballots.  That is what they do in the days leading up to Selection Sunday....  Voting 100s of times to try and whittle it down. So is the whole thing a sham...No...If you are #35, you are probably in and there is no discussion. If you are 45 and you are 9-1 in the last 10 games and you finished 2nd in your tourney and lost to your League champ...you are probably in.

Bottom line...It is all speculation when you are in  the final few...It is great for media  as it draws eyes to whoever is writing.  Will an extra game matter?  Probably not...You can't get a team high enough to play you that would move the needle enough. And when you play teams that are equal to you the numbers tend to stay the same. What about all the other teams around you losing...see the above forecast in this thread...not likely.

So it's time to get out your rabbit's foot and  pray to the Billiken god or if you are a quantum physics person...think and it shall be.

 

billiken_roy and A10Ref like this
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SLU's NET, updated, remains at 45.  Per the NET, SLU would have the 32nd of the 37 NCAA At Large bids.

SLU needs to be pumping its NET on the airwaves and in cyberspace.  I can see SLU is rightly engaged in lobbying efforts.  It is dog eat dog now.

Does anyone really think Drake is better than SLU?  Of course not.  You should not get IN by playing a bunch of assorted cupcakes and cream puffs.  With Drake's non-conference schedule including all those Summit teams, uniting the Dakotas, etc., how about making Drake play Summit Tourney "Champ" Oral Roberts for the Summit's automatic bid.  Of course, that is not happening;  I'm trying to make a point.

Duke is regrettably back in the picture at 51.  Duke would, believe it or not, be the last team IN per the NET.  Louisville 52 would be the first team OUT;  I believe Louisville is IN.  I believe we should be rooting for Louisville to beat Duke today.

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Wiz, if the question is: Do we have a chance? We surely do. If the question is are we going to get it? The answer has to be who knows?

Remember that you have a chance (with extremely bad odds) whenever you get a PowerBall ticket. We are in play but the odds are not in our favor although they may well be neutral. Unfortunately this is the area where bias plays a significant role in the process.

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5 minutes ago, shempie said:

The A10 commissioner is on the selection committee. She has to leave the room when A10 teams are discussed but lets hope she is pushing hard for 3 bids and SLU. 

im not a big fan of brenda.   not against her but she really hasnt made or pursued anything to advance the conference much imo.   almost like the A10 is just a preferred waiting area for programs.  prove me wrong brenda. 

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39 minutes ago, shempie said:

The A10 commissioner is on the selection committee. She has to leave the room when A10 teams are discussed but lets hope she is pushing hard for 3 bids and SLU. 

Here is the committee.  Ten members.  Four are from power conferences and six from non-power conferences.  I would hope that before they go into the room, that the non-power conferences would have an "understanding" about who they are going to support.  That being said, the representatives from one bid conferences may not care enough to be involved in that sort of cooperation.

Mitch Barnhart
Division I Men’s Basketball Committee chair and director of athletics at University of Kentucky

Other Committee Members Include:

  • Mike Bobinski, vice president and director of athletics, Purdue University
  • Tom Burnett, commissioner, Southland Conference
  • Lawrence R. Cunningham, director of athletics, University of North Carolina
  • Charles McClelland, commissioner, Southwestern Athletic Conference
  • Bernadette McGlade, commissioner, Atlantic 10 Conference
  • Michael O’Brien, vice president and director of athletics, University of Toledo
  • Jamie Pollard, director of athletics, Iowa State University
  • Chris Reynolds, vice president for intercollegiate athletics, Bradley University
  • Craig Thompson, commissioner, Mountain West Conference
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The A-10 Commissioner, the Mountain West Commissioner, and the guy from Bradley should all be on board, but the guy from Toledo, the guy from the SWAC, and the guy from Southland Conference may not be as on board with helping the mid majors get extra bids.

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I was going to write a wrap up to this thread I started a week ago but I have nothing new to add.  I wrote this after the St. B game (which seems like a year ago)...a lot has happened in a week BUT nothing has changed.   We are still 50-50 and it is up to the Selection Committee to determine our fate. The only change has been that the brackotologists have come around to thinking our selection chances are  50-50.  You read it here first.

So what does bubble hell look like?....#1... the final outcome is out of our control.  #2 ...Brackotologists don't know the outcome...Yes they know the Zags are  in...but so do you. They have no idea on the 100th round of voting to determine  the 68th team what factor will be the decider.  Could be something non basketball like...as in who has the largest TV market...or we need to fill a couple of extra spots due to Covid or maybe even simpler ...which team is closest to Indy or we like the color blue....#3.. You find yourself watching basketball games that you would never watch in a million years......Teams that are worse than the Bills  AND you are actually rooting for one of them....#4 Time...time  moves slower when you are in bubble hell....the week goes by like the final minute of a tied basketball game.

Bottom line ...You will have an answer tomorrow.  In the meantime , you can reread the original post below ...in slow motion while sipping a warm beer...part of bubble hell.

 

 

First. some breaking news this morning....3/7/21 ....This is from  CBS/NCAAB site

Bubble Watch: What Drake Needs To Do In The Atlantic 10 Tournament

First rule is double check what you read.

As for the Bills chances  for a bid ...we have entered the NCAA Twilight Zone. which is a scary place with uncertain outcomes  and somewhere you don't want to be. Our chances this morning are 50-50....Yesterday , I mentioned that a loss would drop us to 52%. The fact that we lost by 10+ pts dropped us to 50%.

We are now the last 4 ...not the last 4 in or the last 4 out ...but 1 of the last 4...somewhere between the last 2 in and the last 2 out...Big Dance Twilight Zone.  Our fate now is entirely out of our hands.  While there still could be some movement, depending on  if remaining teams we have played win or lose, the overall model show not much movement for us in the coming days. This puts us in the dreaded NCAA Selection committee cloud...that final 10% that is outside the NET model or any other metrics. Where the Selection committee goes into deep thought and comes up with "deserving " teams.

So now we come to a quantum physics type problem.....To go back to the coin toss (50-50) analogy...We flipped the coin and it landed on neither heads nor tails...it landed on its edge....and will stay on its edge till next Sunday when the Selection Committee, tips the coin and judges who is worthy.

So do we have a chance?....Stranger things have happened....think back to last Monday when 17 pt favorite Richmond lost at home to St. Joe to give us a double bye. 

You may have to get out your rabbit's foot and rub the Billiken's belly with it this week.

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I feel like it's been a lost week.

But at least on the Bubble, nothing catastrophic to SLU's chances has happened, not yet.

We still have to survive the Big East and Pac-12 tonight, and the American Athletic Rodeo in Ft. Worth today and tomorrow.

If we survive, then does someone behind closed doors in Indianapolis flip a coin?

If so, (a) who gets to flip the coin;  (b) who gets to provide the coin;  (c) who calls heads or tails?

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2 minutes ago, Bay Area Billiken said:

I feel like it's been a lost week.

But at least on the Bubble, nothing catastrophic to SLU's chances has happened, not yet.

We still have to survive the Big East and Pac-12 tonight, and the American Athletic Rodeo in Ft. Worth today and tomorrow.

If we survive, then does someone behind closed doors in Indianapolis flip a coin?

If so, (a) who gets to flip the coin;  and (b) who gets to provide the coin?

And more importantly ....who keeps the coin.

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Here’s my objective, but at best, subjective view of our chances. As of this moment, a survey of the best bracketologists has us ranked 68-70 on the S curve. Even if all 6 of the games today that can influence our chances go our way, we’re still the last team in. The question is, what are the odds that they all go our way? Taking our current status as 68-70, and 6 games going our way, I don’t see the odds any better than 33%.

We need:

CINCY to shock Wichita State (Wich -4)

LSU to upset Arkansas (Ark -3.5)

HOUSTON to ground Memphis (Hou -7.5)

SAN DIEGO STATE to crush Utah State (SD -2)

and CREIGHTON to fly past Georgetown (Creigh -9)

edit: Left out that COLORADO needs to beat Oregon State (Colo -9)

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I think the last 3 on your list are the only meaningful ones.  

lsu winning would be nice but not required 

Wichita St might as well just win to ensure cincy doesn’t steal a bid.  They are in.

Oregon st, Georgetown and Memphis need to lose.  All about 8 point underdogs.

this is the absolute best we could have hoped for so far. 

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lsu solidifies if not strengthens our biggest non conference win.   might add to our overall net.  

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Looks like I’m wrong on the Cincy-Wichita State winner. No excuses, but I’ve just worked nine sraight days and thought the Shockers were closer to the bubble than that. Last I looked before getting to work yesterday was USF leading. No surprise they couldn’t hang on but that’s what losing teams do.

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Sunday is tomorrow, they may have to do some final adjustments of the roster, but most of it is basically done. Add the winners of the league tournaments and there are precious few spots left. Something unexpected may happen, like one of the teams sidelined for Covid and testing daily lacking the required minimum of 5 clean players to enter play. I really do not expect this to  happen but the devil is in the details so we will see. I think we may have improved our chances of getting invited this past week, but the selection is totally out of my control (and that of the hundreds of "experts" out there ). We will see tomorrow.

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2 hours ago, billikenbill said:

Looks like I’m wrong on the Cincy-Wichita State winner. No excuses, but I’ve just worked nine sraight days and thought the Shockers were closer to the bubble than that. Last I looked before getting to work yesterday was USF leading. No surprise they couldn’t hang on but that’s what losing teams do.

I agree with your first take.  I don't think Wichita State is solidly in the field.  A lot of people are overlooking the fact that they finished #1 in the AAC so some bracketologists have them as the default AAC auto-bid winner until they lose.  We want Cinci to win and then lose to Houston.  That is the best result for the Billikens chances.

That being said, most important we need G-Town, Oregon State, and Memphis to lose.

Edit: Also note that if you are projecting Wichita State as the AAC auto-bid winner then you would not have then in the First Four games and thus you'd probably be giving them an 11 seed (unless you have then behind Western Kentucky, Colgate, or some other 1 bid conference champ) which is where most of the entries in the BracketMatrix have them.

Edited by RUBillsFan
billikenbill and Zink like this
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Watching Cincinnatti, how in the heck do they have a record of 11-10? Both of these teams have crazy athletes on the floor. Either can beat Houston. 😳

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