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Auburn Tigers
Seed: 4
Record: 27-7
Conference: SEC
vs.
Yale Bulldogs
Seed: 13
Record: 22-9
Conference: Ivy League
Date: Friday, March 22
Time: 4:15pm Eastern
Region: East
Location: Spokane, WA
Channel: TNT
Auburn is a 4-seed but they're ranked #4 in Pomeroy and BPI. Is the Committee even trying?
Auburn Yale
Power Ratings
Strength: #5 Strength: #95
Median: #4 Median: #96
Markov: #4 Markov: #106
4-year: #7 4-year: #85
Pomeroy: #4 Pomeroy: #84
Offense: #10 Offense: #89
Defense: #4 Defense: #90
BPI: #4 BPI: #66
LRMC: #5 LRMC: #87
Other Measures:
SOS: #55 SOS: #161
Tempo (Offense): #47 Tempo (Offense): #334
Consistency: #300 Consistency: #3
Str + Reliability: #7 Str + Reliability: #54
Str + Potential: #5 Str + Potential: #137
2nd half season: #2 2nd half season: #76
Last 6: #2 Last 6: #96
Injury Mod Rank: #6 Injury Mod Rank: #91
Tourney 4-year: #19 (of 68) Tourney 4-year: #52
Part of seeding teams is to reward good wins. But you have to balance the brackets. You shouldn't have a 5-seed facing the prospect of going up against a top 5 team in the 2nd round. The East bracket is weighed down with Auburn's presence. The Tigers should have been a 3-seed; it's acceptable to have a very strong 3-seed, but a 4 is kind of out of line.
Anyway, rant over: Auburn is only #5 in Strength, so why am I complaining? Lol. Here we have a team that Pomeroy and BPI think should be favored to get to the Final Four, and they could be up against a 1-seed in the Sweet Sixteen (that's UConn, by the way—nice reward for getting the overall 1-seed!)
Maybe Yale can take them off the table. Let's see, very well-balanced Offense and Defense rankings around #90, facing the #10 offense and #4 defense. Strength, Pomeroy, and LRMC all better than 100, and the BPI with the outlier again, at #66. A slow tempo—that keeps games close, good. And #3 in the country consistency...which is great when you're the favorite, not when you're the underdog. They'll have to depend on Auburn's #300 Consistency to make the difference.
I haven't seen yet if Auburn players are complaining about their seed, but if they are, that might be the one thing that gives Yale a fighting chance.
- Wins vs. tournament teams (7): (9)Texas A&M+11, (4)Alabama+18, (6)South Carolina+40, (8)Mississippi St.+15, =(6)South Carolina+31, =(8)Mississippi St.+7, =(7)Florida+19
- Losses to tournament teams (6): =(3)Baylor-6, @(4)Alabama-4, @(8)Mississippi St.-6, @(7)Florida-16, (3)Kentucky-11, @(2)Tennessee-8
- Other losses (1): @Appalachian St.-5
Overview: Auburn got a crappy seed—despite winning the SEC tournament—because they lack Quad 1 wins. Like New Mexico, getting them in your conference tournament—on neutral courts—doesn't seem to matter. Ok, Quad 1 wins are great, but so is making a bracket that is fair to the 1-seed in the region! But Auburn did blow their first shot at a Quad 1 win by losing to Baylor in South Dakota in the opener; after that, their non-conference slate was pretty dismal, but they tried by scheduling Virginia Tech, Indiana, and USC.
As for their prospects? They're looking great right now, but just go back a few weeks and you see their off-the-chart beatdown of South Carolina (101-61) bookended by bad losses to Florida (81-65) and Kentucky (70-59 at home). Their #300 Consistency, in other words, is a red flag to the Final Four, or at least to the championship. But if they can keep playing like they have recently, nothing else matters.
Auburn is led by Johni Broome's 16.2 pounds and 8.4 rebounds per game. Broome was a unanimous first-team all-SEC pick and is a Wooden award finalist.
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- Wins vs. tournament teams (2): =(14)Colgate+18, @(16)Howard+OT
- Losses to tournament teams (3): @(5)Gonzaga-15, @(13)Vermont-1, @(4)Kansas-15
- Other losses (6): =Weber St.-OT, @Rhode Island-4, Fairfield-4, @Princeton-11, @Cornell-3, Brown-OT
Overview: Yale got off to a rocky start, something that happens to a lot of small-conference teams as they schedule tough opponents like 4-seed Kansas, and 5-seed Gonzaga. But to be fair the Bulldogs lots to a lot of teams they should have beaten before the Ivy League season. In conference play they did about as well as could be expected, even beating Princeton once, though the home loss to Brown was uncalled for.
Yale is led by 7-0 Danny Wolf's 14.3 points and 9.8 rebounds per game; he's one of 5 starters in double figures.
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Game Analysis: One team is really good, I mean really good but very inconsistent. The other team is not bad, not great but not bad, and they're really consistent. Who wins?
That's the question for this game. Auburn is so good it's almost an invitation to pick the upset. Someone Yale gets it done. Hell, Princeton went to the Sweet Sixteen after upsetting a 2-seed, so this game is nothing! Except that Auburn is probably better than last year's Arizona, even as a 4-seed.
The key is how Danny Wolf can do against Auburn and Johni Broome. Broome is 6-10 and backup Dylan Cardwell is 6-11, so they have height to counter Wolf. Auburn as a team is #1 in defense against 2-point shots. And Wolf is going to have to stop Broome, too, a tiring task. Yale has several other scorers but Auburn's defense is very sound against the three-pointer, too.
Vegas Line:
Auburn by 12 1/2
Power rating: spread
Auburn by 15.5
Game-comparisons: % Chance to win
Auburn: 86.9%
Yale: 13.1%
Though we keep saying how Auburn has the power rating of a 1-seed, they don't exceed Yale by that much when you look at the odds of winning. Using game-performance comparisons, a team's Consistency matters. Since Auburn is so inconsistent, that raises Yale's odds of winning. Normally a 13-seed has about a 21% chance, so their 13% odds are much lower due to Auburn's high rating. But they're closest to the odds a 14-seed has to beat a 3-seed. If Auburn were consistent, we'd see something around 5% for Yale. And note that the average spread is still pretty big—15.5 points.
Bottom line: This would be a wild upset, and nothing unheard of, as 4-seeds lose about once every tournament. But I have to believe in power ratings. The only way Auburn loses this game is overconfidence after winning the SEC so easily, and having one of their (increasingly rare) outlier downside games. It could happen, but probably not.
Final prediction: Auburn 79, Yale 55
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