Whew. What a run-up to the Selection Sunday show, with the final #1 seed in doubt all along. We projected that our Dance Chance would take Michigan if the Wolverines won the Big Ten tournament, and keep Villanova if they didn't.
Michigan lost, leaving Villanova at the 4th rung...but Virginia threw a curve ball at us by passing the Wildcats with their win over Duke, something we hadn't foreseen. But we went with our formula, right or wrong. There's good justification for Virginia, given that they won both the regular-season ACC and the ACC tournament, but that doesn't mean the selection committee will go that direction.
And, as a result of Villanova dropping to a 2-seed, we decided to waffle again on our Big East designation, which means that Providence falls to a 12-seed and Xavier is out. Everyone else has Xavier in, so this is probably adding an error, but our top brackets look better for having Iowa State a 3-seed. We'll use the committee's picks to determine how to classify the Big East in the future.
We'd rather go our own way than to try to follow the "crowd" on the Bracket Matrix; it's the aggregation of true individual opinions that make something like that work. Weeks ago, most people had 5 or 6 Big East teams in the seedings when we had just two. Then that number fell to 3 or 4, and until Providence clinched a berth it looked like just 3 would be in the consensus.
If the committee views the Big East as a power conference, Providence will receive a much higher seed than the 12 we gave them, and Xavier will be in. Villanova will probably take the final top seed in that scenario.
Hopefully no huge conferences split in two next year, so we have an adequate history to use for our formula! And hopefully next year we'll have time to further hone the formula, too.
Comments