All previews: click here for the full 2015 NCAA tournament schedule
Xavier Musketeers
Seed: 6
Record: 21-13
Conference: BigEast
vs.
Mississippi Rebels
Seed: 11
Record: 21-12
Conference: SEC
Date: Thursday, March 19
Time: 4:10 pm Eastern
Location: Jacksonville, FL
Region: West
Channel: TBS
BYU over Xavier was an obvious upset pick, but Ole Miss came back to beat the Cougars. Now we're leaning toward the Musketeers, but the play-in game winners are always extra-dangerous....
Xavier Mississippi
SportsRatings Power Ratings
Strength: #23 Strength: #43
Median play: #22 Median play: #52
Road/Neutral Rank: #39 Road/Neutral Rank: #20
Other Power Ratings
Sagarin(predictor):#24 Sagarin: #44
Pomeroy: #26 Pomeroy: #44
Offense: #28 Offense: #22
Defense: #55 Defense: #125
LRMC: #19 LRMC: #35
BPI: #28 BPI: #36
Power Rating Derivatives
2nd half/season: #28 2nd half/season: #42
Last 6 games: #48 Last 6 games: #67
Injury correction: #23 Injury correction: #45
Consistency: #161 Consistency: #245
Deep Run Rank: #23 Deep Run Rank: #44
Best Shot: #26 Best Shot: #36
Schedule Strength: #10 Schedule Strength: #49
While the BYU/Xavier match looked like a tossup, this one clearly favors the Musketeers. The only advantage we can confer to Mississippi is great road play, compared to Xavier's poor away-from-home play. The Rebels also have the better offense, very slightly, but the gap in defense is considerable. Neither team has played well in the last several games, but Mississippi was #90 (!) before their win over BYU.
- Wins vs. tournament teams (8): Stephen F. Austin+18, Georgetown+17, @Georgetown+13, Providence+9, @Cincinnati+2, Butler+17, =Butler+OT, =Georgetown+2
- Losses to tournament teams (7): @Butler-12, @Villanova-13, @Providence-OT, St. John's-8, @St. John's-1, Villanova-12, =Villanova-17
- Other losses (6): =UTEP-4, =Long Beach St.-3, @Auburn-OT, @DePaul-3, @Seton Hall-8, Creighton-OT
Key Info: Xavier played some of their best basketball early, beating tournament-bound Stephen F. Austin 81-63 and should've-been-tournament-bound Murray State 89-62. But they managed to lose to UTEP and Long Beach State in the Wooden Legacy tournament, and then Auburn before the Big East schedule started. Once in conference, they were even-steven against tournament teams, going 7-7. The Musketeers beat Butler twice and Georgetown thrice, while losing to Villanova three times and St. John's two more. And they continued to lose to bad teams, falling to DePaul, Seton Hall (during the Pirates' slide), and Creighton. Xavier has very balanced scoring—that is, no standouts—but that makes for an efficient offense; 6-10 center Matt Stainbrook leads with 12.0 points and 6.8 rebounds.
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- Wins vs. tournament teams (4): =Cincinnati+12, @Oregon+6, Coastal Carolina+3, @Arkansas+14
- Losses to tournament teams (7): @Dayton-4, @Kentucky-OT, LSU-4, @Georgia-5, Arkansas-1, Georgia-4, @LSU-10
- Other losses (5): Charleston Southern-OT, TCU-12, Western Kentucky-7, Vanderbilt-9, =South Carolina-2
Key Info: Mississippi lost their first game, at home, to Charleston Southern. Within a few weeks, however, they had beaten 8-seeds Cincinnati and Oregon. Still, they were just 9-4 when they hosted Kentucky and managed to take the Wildcats into overtime before falling 89-86, a loss that ranks as the 2nd best game Ole Miss played all year. The best came 3 games later when they crushed 5-seed Arkansas, 96-82. Soon after they went on a six-game winning streak and at 17-7 and 8-3 in the SEC things were looking pretty good, but 5 losses in their next 8 games put their tourney bid in jeopardy. Their gameplay was on a definite downward slide, save for the road win over Alabama in game 30. We didn't review the BYU game but wouldn't have given Ole Miss much of a chance—especially after they fell behind by 17. At that point Ken Pomeroy's system estimated they had a 96% chance of winning. But their comeback might have reversed a slide that was a half-season long. Stefan Moody is the team's leading scorer with 16.6ppg; he had 26 against the Cougars, including 5 of 9 three-pointers.
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Game Analysis: Mississippi showed yet another example of what is becoming the Year Of The Comeback in college basketball. Teams are coming back to win from deficits that were, in the past, considered basically insurmountable. 17 points seems to be a very common pivot; if a team is up by 17, they're in trouble! It happened to BYU just last night.
Mississippi might also become yet another example of the play-in team that makes a run to the final 16, 8 or 4. Play-in teams are never favored to win a game, and they have done much better than expected. VCU went to the Final Four as the first play-in team, and last year Tennessee went to the Sweet Sixteen from the 11 position. Each year, one of the two play-in teams has gone on to win at least one game, and an average of two games. In other words, the average result of the play-in game winner is to win another game and reach the Round of 32.
Like we said, BYU was a strong pick this year, ranking 25th in Strength. But Ole Miss won, and they seem much less likely to upset the Musketeers. That didn't stop unlikely winners South Florida and La Salle from advancing; it seems there is some magic to the Play-in teams. It gives teams new life. Mississippi really didn't really deserve to make the field, either for how they played or who they beat. But the play-in teams are often borderline cases, and once they win a game they get on a roll.
The "giant killers" blog has Xavier the most likely 6-seed or better to be upset, even with Mississippi as the opponent. We're not sure they're really that vulnerable; the main reason we would pick against them, quite frankly, is that they're facing a play-in team. But they did have a habit of losing to marginal teams—certainly teams a lot worse than Mississippi. Meanwhile Ole Miss somehow just beat a team that made 15 3-pointers.
Vegas Line:
Xavier by 3
Power rating: spread
Xavier by 3.2
Game-comparisons: % Chance to win
Xavier: 57.5%
Mississippi: 42.5%
Maybe because of Xavier's propensity to lose to inferior teams, the game-comparison numbers come out a little lower for the Musketeers than the usual 66% that a 6-seed has. Vegas and the Strength power rating both have the Musketeers by around 3 points.
Bottom line: There's enough reason to go with the upset here—Mississippi being a better road team, Xavier losing to bad teams—that we can justify taking the Rebels. Basically we know that one of the play-in teams will advance and by picking both we'll have it covered. Xavier has enough weaknesses that they don't seem like a deep-run team, either. Ole Miss's momentum from the BYU comeback might continue, too, while Xavier's final game was a 17-point loss.
Final prediction: Mississippi 75, Xavier 72
More previews: click here for the full 2015 NCAA tournament schedule.
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