Others have made a good point that we seem to do better, relative to a team's overall strength, against teams that are "defense-focused". UCLA is 2nd in KenPom defense but 22nd in offense. Texas is 11th in defense but 18th in offense.
You can almost completely ignore how many points we score to know whether we won or not. Here's a breakdown by points
allowed in regulation:
- 69 or fewer - 17-0 (1 OT)
- 70 exactly - 2-1 (1 OT).
- 71 or more - 0-11.
By contrast, here's the same breakdown by points
scored in regulation:
- 69 or fewer - 6-7 (1 OT)
- 70 exactly - 1-0 (1 OT).
- 71 or more - 13-5
Now I'm sure some of that is luck, and I wouldn't assume it's entirely predictive - I'm sure we could win 80-75 or lose 60-65 next weekend. But I think it does emphasize the point that we go as our defense goes.
Based on that idea, here's another breakdown of our potential opponents. I'm now assuming we'll be a 9 or 10 seed, so "over" and "under" seeded are relative to a 7 or 8 seed and a 1 or 2 seed. If we fall to an 11 and draw TCU as a 6, they'd be kind of over-seeded as a 6, but under-seeded to where we feel we are now.
Here's the first round. The bad news, is, I don't see a lot of potential matchups that are criminally over-seeded as a 7 or 8. The good news is, only a couple of those are offense-heavy teams like Penn State.
| Under-seeded (bad) | Reasonable seed | Over-seeded (good) |
Offense-Dominant (bad?) | West Virginia (17th, 16 O / 52 D)
Kentucky (22nd, 14 O / 66 D) | FAU (27th, 30 O / 39 D) | |
Balanced | | Texas A&M (25th, 32 O / 37 D)
Memphis (32nd, 40 O / 41 D) | USC (36th, 43 O / 45 D) |
Defense-Dominant (good?) | Creighton (12th, 24 O / 14 D)
Arkansas (19th, 44 O / 18 D)
TCU (24th, 50 O / 23 D) | Duke (26th, 48 O / 28 D)
Boise St. (28th, 66 O / 17 D)
Auburn (30th, 53 O / 29 D) | |
For the 2nd round, I put Houston as "under-seeded" because they're a cut above everyone else, per the metrics. Purdue is fairly balanced; otherwise, there are 4 offense-dominant teams and 4 defense-dominant teams near the top.
| Under-seeded (bad) | Reasonable seed | Over-seeded (good) |
Offense-Dominant (bad?) | | Gonzaga (7th, 1 O / 74 D) | Arizona (10th, 4 O / 55 D)
Marquette (13th, 8 O / 62 D)
Baylor (14th, 2 O / 101 D) |
Balanced | Houston (1st, 5 O / 5 D) | Purdue (6th, 11 O / 24 D) | |
Defense-Dominant (good?) | | UCLA (2nd, 22 O / 2 D)
Alabama (3rd, 20 O / 4 D)
Kansas (8th, 27 O / 8 D) | K State (23rd, 56 O / 20 D) |
So based on this, I still think some ok matchups would be:
- 9 seed in Des Moines with Duke/Kansas. (If you like storylines, that gives you a potential Duke-KU second round plus the Grandison angle in the first game...)
- Same as above but Boise St. or Auburn sneaks up to the 8
- Dropping all the way to an 11 with TCU (6) and K State (3)?