Category: Iona

Why Iona reminds me of VCU

Last season, after losing in the CAA Tournament, VCU got shuffled off the First Four in Dayton. The Rams barely made the field and fans were lashing out about how Shaka Smart’s team managed to get into the field over some more deserving candidates. Then the games started and the critics shut up. VCU rattled off five straight victories before falling to Butler in the Final Four.

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Wagner left out of NIT, finishes 25-6

The NIT bracket is out. Iona isn’t on it. Wagner isn’t either. The difference is the emotions those two teams are feeling right now.

For the Gaels’ it’s about relief and a second chance. Their selection as an at-large bid, just the second in MAAC history, is an opportunity to make good on all the promise the season has held for them. The First Four in Dayton on Tuesday night against BYU will be a showcase for the Gaels. But more on that later.

For the Seahawks’ there is probably disappointment on Staten Island tonight. Even with 25 wins, the most of any team not selected to play in either the NCAA tournament of the NIT, it’s a tough reality to grasp.

The NIT Selection Committee, much like their cousins in the NCAA selection room, are charged with picking the best teams they can for at-large bids. The unfortunate thing is that they don’t know how many they’ll get to pick until late in Championship Week. This season 11 teams earned automatic berths by winning their conference’s regular season title and failing to win their conference tournament.

Five of those teams ended up on the bottom two seed lines, meaning they wouldn’t have gotten in any other way. One wonders if Stony Brook had beaten Vermont on Long Island on Saturday morning if things would’ve been different for the Seahawks.

Charged with picking the “best” remaining 21 teams, the committee did about the best job it could. (I’ll talk about La Salle and Cleveland State in my next post.)

Part of Wagner’s problem was that their opponents during non-conference play couldn’t hold up their end of the bargain. Princeton and Penn did compete for an Ivy League title, but Pittsburgh crashed, Santa Clara fell apart (not winning another game) and Air Force stumbled after the Seahawks beat them. It made the resume a little less impressive. Instead of a Top 50 victory Pittsburgh became barely a Top 100 win.

You do the best you can at the beginning of the season to make a schedule that: 1) Is achievable with the current team. 2) Is competitive. 3) Will put you in a place for a postseason bid. Wagner did almost everything they could’ve done, but for the Seahawks it just wasn’t quite enough.

It’s sad that not getting selected means the end of the road for teams like Wagner. Two other NEC teams, Robert Morris (CIT) and Quinnipiac (CBI), will be playing postseason basketball outside of the NCAA tournament. Wagner decided not to pursue postseason basketball after getting passed over by the NIT. It’s understandable, but it means a swift, unexpected end to a season that went so far and meant so much.

Final NIT Bracket Prediction

Here is the final projected NIT bracket. If I’m reading NIT-ology correctly we’re going to differ on four teams. I’m taking Iowa, Princeton, Denver and Illinois State and he’s taking Weber State, Illinois, Pittsburgh and Maryland. (Because Arkansas is getting bumped in his bracket by St. Bonaventure’s win.) We’ll see what happens tonight at 9 p.m.

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NIT Bracketology: March 11

Here we are once again. Selection Sunday is upon us. For this bracket I did a complete scrub of all the seeds. I also started taking into account the fact that some major conference teams can make offers to host that the NCAA just can’t turn down. In the back of my head the Iowa quote about making a competitive offer keeps coming up. The Hawkeyes are definitely in the field in my opinion — they just have so many good wins it’d be hard to turn them down — but for the first time I have them playing Round 1 at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

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The Bubble Battle

This is obviously a work of satire. Enjoy nonetheless.

Announcer: Welcome to Bubble Battle! It’s the reality show where your favorite college basketball team has a chance to put up or shut up once and for all. During the next 10 weeks these 10 teams will play a round-robin “bubble conference” schedule. We’ll show you the results in just a minute, but first let’s meet the contestants.

<Pans around the room, see a bunch of head coaches sitting in chairs on stage>

Announcer: First up are the Seton Hall Pirates. They’ve got one good win, over Georgetown, but having played in the Big East are sitting right around the bubble. They didn’t even finish .500 in conference, even with the conference tournament, but head coach Kevin Willard thinks his team should be in.

Willard: We challenged ourselves this season. With wins over VCU, Connecticut and Georgetown at least we beat a couple NCAA teams.

Announcer: Next up is Tim Cluess and his Iona Gaels. Iona has the best offense in the field, but were inconsistent during MAAC play and ended up losing in the semifinals to Fairfield, which is playing in the CIT. Their best wins are over Denver, Nevada and Saint Joseph’s — none of which will be in the NCAAs. Still, they feel they’re deserving of an at-large bid.

Cluess: I think we’ve got a lot of talent on this team. We’re better than the eight or ninth team in the Big East. I’m glad we get a chance to prove it.

Announcer: I’m sure you all recognize Northwestern’s Bill Carmody, South Florida’s Stan Heath, N.C. State’s Mark Gottfried and Cal’s Mike Montgomery. They’ve all been here before. <All nod solemnly> Welcome Marshall’s Tom Herrion, Drexel’s Bruiser Flint, and Dayton’s Archie Miller to the show as well. <Applause> I almost forgot, Miami’s Jim Larranaga is over there in the corner. He’s switching sides this season and got lost in the transition. <Larranaga waves and smiles awkwardly>

Announcer: Well, you all know why we’re here, so why don’t we get the games started? As you know, you’ll be playing 10 weeks of round-robin basketball. Those games alone will determine your status on the NCAA bubble. Same games, same courts. No excuses. Anyone have any questions?

Audience Member: A results oriented process? This surely isn’t run by the NCAA?

Announcer: Nope, this tournament isn’t run by the NCAA. It’s actually sponsored by the People For Common Sense (PFCS), who eventually hope to bring you the CBBCL. Unfortunately, this is the best they could do.

Carmody: But the bids count, right? You’re not going to stick my team in the First Four afterwards so everyone can say we’ve never been a part of the NCAA Tournament’s Top 64, right?

Announcer: Of course they count. Now lets get things started. Here’s a montage of all the games. <Long montage plays with basketball games going in the background, tip-ins, buzzer beaters, all sorts of lucky shots, eventually it fades to black>

Announcer: And here are the final standings. Remember the Top 5 teams from this group are expected to make the tournament. Finishing in a tie for first with 12 wins apiece, Cal and Iona. Congratulations to both of you, by winning 2/3 of your games this season you’ve advanced to the NCAA tournament.

Cluess: Always glad to have the opportunity, thanks for supporting smaller programs everywhere.

Announcer: Finishing in third place with 11 wins is Drexel. Congratulations to the Dragons. And winning a three-way tie for fourth place with nine wins are South Florida and Dayton. Congrats to the dancing Bulls and Flyers.

[table=22]

Larranaga: Hey wait, we won nine games too. What about us?

Announcer: You really think any of this is fair? The games were decided by an average of two points. So about 12 points total separates first place Cal from 10th place Northwestern and you think this is fair? It’s like you’d rather a committee figured out what teams get at-large bids.

Carmody: I sort of like the idea of a committee. Process breeds good results.

Willard: Yeah, humans understand the emotions of playing in a college basketball game so much better.

Herrion: Or we could expand to 72 teams?

Carmody: Then we’ll never win.

<Announcer walks off stage>

Using Roland Ratings to Determine Team MVPs

I don’t believe in +/- too much at the collegiate level, but sometimes derivative statistics can provide some interesting jumping off points. One of those is +/- for lineups. Another is Roland Rating. Basically, Roland Rating is the difference between a team’s +/- when a player is on the court and off of it. It’s a way of judging how valuable player is if you’ve got a large enough sample size. Let’s see what it says about each of the NYC teams and who the most valuable players are.

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What does best mean?

What does best mean?

This season more than any other we seem to be stuck in a crossfire from the age old NCAA selection debate about the “good mid-majors” versus “middling majors” and at-large bids. The CAA title game is tonight and the team that loses, either Drexel or VCU, is about to join Iona and Middle Tennessee squarely on the bubble.

The problem is that on that same bubble are teams like Northwestern and Seton Hall. The Wildcats are 18-12 and 8-10 in the Big Ten heading into the conference tournament. The Pirates are in the same boat at 19-11 and 8-10 in the Big East. Iona has 25 wins as do the two teams that will take the court in Richmond tonight. MTSU has 24. Should these teams be rewarded for dominance in a mid-major setting?

It’s tough to decide. The NCAA selection committee is charged with selecting the 37 “best” remaining teams for at-large bids. The criteria of that, as we’ve seen in mock selections, comes from a variety of sources — but too often the RPI. Let’s start there.

RPI for the six teams:

  • Iona – 41
  • Northwestern – 48
  • VCU – 49
  • MTSU – 59
  • Seton Hall – 60
  • Drexel – 63

The best and the worst here are separated by exactly 22 spots. Go further down the chain and the difference of 22 spots in the RPI is the difference between TCU (100) and Oklahoma (122). I dare you to tell me which is better. Obviously it has failed to solve the problem. What about two other metrics stat heads love, LRMC and Ken Pomeroy?

LRMC for the six teams:

  • Iona – 32
  • MTSU – 41
  • VCU – 44
  • Drexel – 47
  • Seton Hall – 56
  • Northwestern – 63

Pomeroy for the six teams:

  • Drexel – 41
  • VCU – 46
  • Northwestern – 49
  • Iona – 56
  • Seton Hall – 62
  • MTSU – 63

Average ranking combining all three:

  • Iona – 43
  • VCU – 46
  • Drexel – 50
  • Northwestern – 53
  • MTSU – 54
  • Seton Hall – 59

It is fascinating to me that the team often called the “best” amongst these six teams, and the safest in bubble predictions, Seton Hall, consistently falls in the fifth place position in these metrics and is sixth in average overall ranking. Why they are they the “safest”? Opportunity.

Best in the college basketball world doesn’t mean, “Expected to go furthest in the tournament,” or “Strongest tempo-free resume.” Instead it means, best “resume,” which is a funny word all in itself. Seton Hall’s resume says that on some nights it can beat really good teams like Georgetown, Connecticut, West Virginia and, coincidentally enough, VCU. Then again, SHU’s resume also includes losses to Villanova, Rutgers, DePaul and fellow bubbler Northwestern.

Similarly, Northwestern has beaten Michigan State. Actually, that’s not similar at all. The Wildcats have one Top 50 RPI win and four painfully close RPI Top 50 losses. That’s why, even with the head-to-head result, Northwestern is behind Seton Hall right now.

But those two teams each had 11 chances to get those Top 50 wins. You know how many chances VCU, Drexel, MTSU and Iona had combined? Seven. They won three of them. (Note: Drexel has a chance to get another Top 50 win tonight if it beats VCU.) Unfortunately, all of those teams also had the opportunity, thanks to leagues they play in, to accumulate some bad losses. The four non-BCS teams have four 201+ RPI losses (two each for Iona and MTSU). Their leagues offered the chance for Iona and MTSU to screw up and unfortunately the Gaels and Blue Raiders fell for it. That thin line meant one screw up in their respective conference tournaments left them in an almost helpless situation.

And they’ll be penalized for it too. Because even though the numbers think that Iona might be the “best,” they didn’t have the opportunity to prove it on the court.

Projected NIT Bracket through March 4, 2012

Now there’s actually a reason for me to care about these NIT brackets with Iona and Wagner both hoping to get a bid. The last few teams into the NCAA Tournament here are some combination of Washington, Cincinnati, Mississippi State, Northwestern, South Florida, Texas and Seton Hall. Yeah, talk about a weak bubble. Thus if you’re wondering why the top of the NIT is a mess that’s why. The next bracket will come out on Thursday. All of this is highly subject to change.

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