Week of 2/10 Bracketology

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#26      
OrangeBlue98
I know that it's generally not normal to look at a team's injury/illness situation when seeding, but I wonder if that becomes a sort of "tie-breaker" if and when the committee looks at Illinois compared to other teams who may hypothetically be very similar. My guess is that it's not a factor since that's one of those variables that is considered to even out over the course of a season, but a savvy committee member or might look at that and at least have some sort of subconscious bias about what Illinois has had to go through the last few weeks.

Basically, the one bad stretch of the season occurred with KJ clearly not 100%, Ivisic out, and several other illness/injury issues sweeping through the team. When this team was 100% healthy, they had some very impressive wins and some decent losses against really good teams. Again, that may be a subconscious item, but it's not always a totally objective process to set a tournament bracket.
 
#30      
Fighter of the Nightman
Illinialldayeveryday said:
I think we are pretty much 1 win away from not even being close to Dayton. huge 2 wins and now we can start to get some momentum.
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Yep. Let's assume we can get a huge win vs. MSU on Saturday. The difference between our resume after the low point of the Nebraska loss...

14-7 overall
#14 NET Ranking
4-6 vs. Quad 1
4-1 vs. Quad 2

... and our resume this coming Sunday are VERY significant.

18-8 overall
#10-11? NET Ranking
8-6 vs. Quad 1
4-1 vs. Quad 2

In a little over two weeks, we could double our Quad 1 wins, have begun a streak of winning 4 of our last 5 and we'd still have 4 Quad 1 opportunities in front of us at the time when we are hopefully coming together to play our best basketball. Last night was really important to keep the momentum building, but Saturday is another even more important line in the sand to be drawn. We have to beat Sparty.
 
#31      
21ChampaignSt
We have 7 Q1 wins.
Last year we had 8 total.
In 2022 and 2023 we had 8 combined.
There are some good teams like Duke and maybe even Florida and Houston that might not get to 8 Q1 wins.

As long as we don't lose out or something, we are solidly in as a single digit seed.
 
#34      
Fighter of the Nightman
Second place is 1st loser said:
Not sure, but we will find out how much the NET rankings figure into things.
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Yep. This OBVIOUSLY isn't how it will work out, but these are the top 16 teams seeded simply by nothing other than their NET Rankings, but with their current bracket matrix average seed in parentheses.

1 Seed
#1 Auburn (1 Seed)
#2 Duke (1 Seed)
#3 Houston (2 Seed)
#4 Florida (2 Seed)

2 Seed
#5 Tennessee (1 Seed)
#6 Alabama (1 Seed)
#7 Iowa State (3 Seed)
#8 Texas Tech (4 Seed)

3 Seed
#9 Purdue (2 Seed)
#10 Arizona (3 Seed)
#11 Kansas (4 Seed)
#12 Texas A&M (2 Seed)

4 Seed
#13 Illinois (6 Seed)
#14 Gonzaga (9 Seed)
#15 Kentucky (4 Seed)
#16 Wisconsin (3 Seed)

Gonzaga is obviously the furthest off, with a NET Ranking of #14 but an average 9 seed. :oops:
 
#35      
steelmen72
The seeding is irrelevant. People say it is easier to have a high seed and have an easy first round game. Illinois playing as a 4 or 5 seed will play against a veteran 12 or 13 seed team. I've always said that being this young will bite them in the butt come the BIG DANCE!! No matter your seeding you still have to WIN 6 GAMES TO BECOME NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!!
 
#36      
jrichisamazing
Fighter of the Nightman said:
Yep. This OBVIOUSLY isn't how it will work out, but these are the top 16 teams seeded simply by nothing other than their NET Rankings, but with their current bracket matrix average seed in parentheses.

1 Seed
#1 Auburn (1 Seed)
#2 Duke (1 Seed)
#3 Houston (2 Seed)
#4 Florida (2 Seed)

2 Seed
#5 Tennessee (1 Seed)
#6 Alabama (1 Seed)
#7 Iowa State (3 Seed)
#8 Texas Tech (4 Seed)

3 Seed
#9 Purdue (2 Seed)
#10 Arizona (3 Seed)
#11 Kansas (4 Seed)
#12 Texas A&M (2 Seed)

4 Seed
#13 Illinois (6 Seed)
#14 Gonzaga (9 Seed)
#15 Kentucky (4 Seed)
#16 Wisconsin (3 Seed)

Gonzaga is obviously the furthest off, with a NET Ranking of #14 but an average 9 seed. :oops:
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A Gonzaga UConn 8/9 game would be pretty wild, and would have me very pissed off if I was that 1 seed.
 
#37      
Illinialldayeveryday
Starting to pay attention to teams like Nebraska/Ohio State/USC for BTT seeding. If we keep winning it won't matter I guess but would like to avoid the dreaded 8/9.
 
#39      
Fighter of the Nightman
Illinialldayeveryday said:
Starting to pay attention to teams like Nebraska/Ohio State/USC for BTT seeding. If we keep winning it won't matter I guess but would like to avoid the dreaded 8/9.
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For me, whether or not we rise to the occasion and beat MSU this weekend is the official test of "have we turned the corner?" If we beat MSU, as I believe we should and with plenty of motivation on the line, then we get to 18-8 (10-6), and I think this is sort of the bare minimum to avoid some heavy disappointment to end the year:

1. Protect home court and absolutely under no circumstances lose to Iowa.
2. Go at least 1-2 in the 3 games of at Wisconsin, at Michigan and vs. Purdue. Whether that's the standard "protect home court, lose tough road games" route or rather dropping yet another home game to Purdue but keeping our winning streak alive vs. Wisconsin/Michigan with a big road win, they're all Quad 1 wins.
3. "Expect" to lose to Duke at MSG, and play with house money. Obviously, this won't affect BTT seeding.

That path leads us to 20-11 (12-8). Running that through the BTT simulator (and putting my own guesses in for the other games), we get the #6 seed and play the winner of Ohio State and Rutgers. If I switch one of the games in my Category #2 to a win, we actually get all the way up to a #3 seed. :oops:
 
#40      
2qtslow
Our actual chances may not be all that great, but it takes surprisingly little fiddling with the simulator to get us a double-bye for the BTT.
 
#41      
Calvin
Fighter of the Nightman said:
Another Bracketology note ... I am not sure how this compares to past seasons,
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Good info, but I think one of the problems with reducing comparisons to Q1 records is there's a HUGE variation in Q1 wins. Knocking off a #1 seed, especially on the road, is going to carry a lot more weight than someone down in the 5-7 seed range. I think Evan Mya had a post about this with a proposed metric for quality of win. I think that will happen eventually given the drive to metrics, but right now it's an adjustment the committee makes.
 
#42      
Fighter of the Nightman
Calvin said:
Good info, but I think one of the problems with reducing comparisons to Q1 records is there's a HUGE variation in Q1 wins. Knocking off a #1 seed, especially on the road, is going to carry a lot more weight than someone down in the 5-7 seed range. I think Evan Mya had a post about this with a proposed metric for quality of win. I think that will happen eventually given the drive to metrics, but right now it's an adjustment the committee makes.
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Very true, and I will admit I didn't feel like digging much deeper! :ROFLMAO: Picking up a win vs. the likes of Duke on a neutral floor (I still believe the Selection Committee loves that neutral court record, as it emulates an NCAA Tournament environment) would no doubt be super valuable and not just any old Quad 1 win.

Just for an interesting example in the other direction, look at last season's #3 seed resume arranged by Quad record like I often do for this year:

RESUME
25-8 overall record
#13 NET Ranking
7-6 vs. Quad 1
6-1 vs. Quad 2
7-1 vs. Quad 3
5-0 vs. Quad 4

*Note - I removed our BTT Championship win against Wisconsin, as it is infamously too late to be considered by the Committee ... so one fewer Quad 1 win than our official NET sheet showed on Selection Sunday.*

RESULTS BY QUAD
Quad 1
L at #3 Purdue
L vs. #3 Purdue
L at #7 Tennessee
L vs. #14 Marquette
W at #21 Wisconsin
W vs. #24 Michigan State
W vs. #33 Nebraska (BTT in Minneapolis, MN)
W vs. #39 FAU (New York, NY)
W at #49 Ohio State
W vs. #49 Ohio State (BTT in Minneapolis, MN)
L at #53 Northwestern
W at #62 Iowa

Quad 2
W vs. #33 Nebraska
W vs. #53 Northwestern
W vs. #62 Iowa
W at #82 Maryland
L at #86 Penn State
W at #103 Rutgers
W at #133 Michigan

Quad 3
L vs. #82 Maryland
W vs. #89 Minnesota
W vs. #98 Indiana
W vs. #103 Rutgers
W vs. #125 Colgate
W vs. #126 Oakland
W vs. #133 Michigan
W vs. #158 Missouri (St. Louis, MO)

Quad 4
W vs. #257 Southern
W vs. #260 Western Illinois
W vs. #302 Valparaiso
W vs. #311 Eastern Illinois
W vs. #324 Fairleigh Dickinson

First off, one thing that jumps out is how thankful we should be that the Big Ten has WAY better metrics this year! As of today, zero of our conference games will be considered Quad 3, whereas FIVE were last year. However, what jumps out at me is the lack of a "marquee win."

And I remember that complaint against that team last year for why we wouldn't get above a #4 seed, especially after we let that last home game vs. Purdue slip away. For reference, we had 3 wins vs. the NET top 35 last year, and this year's team already has 5, with 5 more opportunities on the table. It seems like last year we truly built a "#3 seed resume" by just stacking good-not-fantastic wins and having a pretty good record ... I think this year's path might be somewhat of the opposite, haha. That is to say, we might finish with double digit losses and still have a shot at a #3 seed because we beat Duke at MSG and knocked off Wisconsin in Madison or something like that.
 
#43      
Piotyr
I took two weeks off tabulating this because Illinois took two weeks off midseason for some unknown reason (and a lot of illness was sweeping through the team).

Here is some updated B1G efficiency margin:

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Notes:
- Illinois holding steady at 4th despite a terrible two weeks of EM. The defense has fallen off quite a bit but the offense has actually picked up of late.
- Purdue has surged in front with MSU's recent struggles. Nobody really running away with it though.
- Michigan still kind of a paper tiger at this point, winning a lot of close games.
- Northwester is whatever the opposite of a paper tiger is, losing a lot of close games.
- If the B1G tournament started today, Penn State, Washington and Northwestern would not qualify.
- Oregon and Nebraska have been on the wrong end of some beat downs in conference, but are still safely in the NCAA tournament field as of now.
- Overall, I think 10 teams are safe bets for the NCAA tournament: ORE, NEB, PUR, MSU, WIS, ILL, MD, UCLA, MI, OSU.
- Indiana and USC could still make runs to get NCAA resumes, but Indiana just finally got their first good win and has looked terrible for a month, and USC was nowhere near the bubble when conference play started.
- Iowa and Rutgers just barely hanging onto the idea they could play their way in, but they have a long way to go.
- Penn State has basically free falled since they lost at Illinois. Non-competitive for weeks.
 
#44      
jrichisamazing
At the moment there are 4 teams I definitely don't want to play until the elite 8 or later.

Auburn, Alabama, Houston, and Florida.

I'm not saying we can't beat any
of those teams, but those 4 have earned a right to be in a class of their own. Some people would put Duke in this group, but I don't think they have been tested enough.

All this to say.... it would be really nice to get hot and sneak up to that 3 seed.
 
#45      
Second place is 1st loser
I'm interested to see wst this tournament preview shows. I know that Brad is really leaning on our NET and hoping there's knowledge about our injury/illness stretch. We'll see what the NET actually means in the big picture.
 
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