đŸ«§ Bubble Watch

I just don’t understand why anything Seth Davis says bothers anyone. Just pretend he doesn’t exist. Nothing he says matters. He is just a blowhard with a microphone. I don’t pay any attention to Lunardi or Palm either. I only look at the Bracketology Matrix.

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Co-sign.

None has a particularly stellar track record, and this is so clearly the kind of thing where wisdom of the crowds is going to be better than any one guess.

When evaluating best wins, worst losses, NET, Quad results, efficiency stats, bracket prediction matrices, etc, it is important to remember a timeless truth


Seth Davis is an idiot.

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Right?! Honestly I hope when it’s all said and done both us and the Sycamores make the cut. I watched them this weekend and they are fun. That said they lost big in their OOC opportunities to get a marquee win. And Bradley wins shouldn’t put them in over us.

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Taking wazzu to the S16 might be Tony’s second biggest achievement outside of the natty. He’s got to beat them to prevent that from being matched or topped.

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Yep, only the last 4 AQs (16 seeds) have to go to Dayton.

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Seth has no clue. Again, my college basketball existence on social media improved so much when I stopped following him and Goodman and the field of 68 goons.

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Matrix/ensemble is usually better than 95% of individual bracketologists. An esemble mean is the way to go in many things.

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FWIW my opinion is:
Win - Lock and out of Dayton.
Close Loss - Very likely in, unless extreme extreme chaos follows.
Blowout Loss- Still probably in, but much more dependent on chaos.

We now (assuming myself and most bracketologists are right) have the inertia of being in the field by a few spots heading into the conference tournaments on our side. I dont think we are the last team or two in the field but probably 3-6 teams in. Assuming we dont pick up a bad loss, our resume will mostly stay the same. Yes a blowout loss will hurt some of our metrics but I dont think the committee will go back at this point and say “Oh UVA’s BPI rose 5 spots we need to kick them out now”.

So the type of chaos that would threaten us if we are 3-5 teams in (remember this assumes FAU and Dayton dont win their conference tournaments already) is say multiple non at large worthy teams wins a major conference. For instance St Marys/Gonzaga dont win the WCC, some team like UNLV sneaks up and wins the MWC. Those are our danger spots. Because the bracketologist consensus may not exactly match the committee. It is usually close but can miss a team or be a few spots off the actual S Curve rank. If the consensus is we are 4th team in, but the committee thinks we are 2 teams in and UNLV wins the MWC and Santa Clara wins the WCC then we fall out unless no at-large bubble teams below us do something special and a team above us picks up a worse loss.

It is one big differential equation. But at the end of the day if I had to put a % on it I would say:
Win: 100%
Close Loss: 90%
Blowout Loss: 60%

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Appreciate the analysis, and agree with it until the 90% vs. 60% at the end. Surprises me to hear that the losing margin in a single game would have such an outsized impact. The committee is supposed to be looking at the season as a whole, with no recency bias. Because we’re so close to the cut line, it makes sense that one W/L may be the tipping point, but as you said, 5 spots in the BPI shouldn’t be a significant factor.

One thing I’ll add, goes without saying, is that this all assumes it’s Clemson we see Thursday. If we lose to Miami or BC, whether close or blowout, the math changes significantly I think, while a win over UM or BC (oh god, UMBC) is probably enough but maybe not the locking event a win over Clemson would be.

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Wouldn’t it be more narrative than recency bias? A close lose and the ‘Every single UVA loss was double digits and the average was x>15 (don’t know the exact number)’ isn’t held against us the same way. It would no longer be true and we would have demonstrated our competitiveness in a neutral court environment. Especially if it’s against a single digit seed Clemson team

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I don’t know. If you took our current resume, and you compared it to the same resume except we lost to Notre Dame by 6
 I don’t think we decide that the second resume is in much better shape.

Fwiw, x is 20
 :grimacing:

And I don’t know if that’s a safe assumption. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Clemson lose to either of those teams.

Oh I think we’d be in much better shape just because that game alone probably cost us 5+ spots in NET, BPI, Sagarin, and KenPom lol either way holy crap 20 pts!!

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I kind of this it’s win & in, lose we’re out, unless chalk prevails in most conference tournaments.

I think its win = round of 64, Lose = dayton

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It is hard to say these days. I think the impact is less now that we are out of the regular season because I do doubt the committee would drop us 3/4 spots based on a blowout loss to Clemson. But if we are only 1/2 spots in the field (theoretically possible) then it could be enough. Plus the subjective eye test would not be in our favor and if it was between us and another team, the committee could be like “UVA got boatraced too many times” and they choose the other team they are considering vs us.

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To a degree. But BC/Miami would still be Q2 so not a bad loss which is the best thing going for us.

BC is NET 96 and Miami NET 99
 Q2 is only for Top 100 teams, so both are VERY borderline. Now of course, if those teams win to get to us (beating the other and then Clemson) logic says their NET would climb with those wins. But WTF knows with the NET’s mystery.

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