I agree with your second point but donât find your scenario in the first paragraph to be very realistic given the competitive nature of sports. Donât know many high level athletes who think âletâs do just enough to winâ
I agree, but I thought that was your premise (that we need to incent them to take that Weds night game seriously). If theyâre already going to take it seriously, then NCAAT seeding is irrelevant to that Weds night game to begin with.
Iâm saying the âyou donât have to win by a lot or look good doing itâ doesnât really follow with human brains in high stress and high skill situations. Thereâs no one that threads the âlet me focus just the right amount to win this game but not an ounce moreâ needle on purpose in that environment. There isnât a negative incentive to âdo just enough to winâ in reality even if you could logically create one
Again I agree. I guess I donât understand your earlier thinking then. How does seeding the top seeds by resume achieve changes within the season?
Because âwe canât afford to lose tonightâ is a valid motivator for human behavior? That will cause teams to be more focused. âWe have to win by 15 tonightâ doesnât work as well. Iâm not sure whatâs confusing about my posts unless I misunderstood your original post?
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Weâre talking past each other somehow, I just donât see how lol. Sounds like weâre mostly in agreement though and can leave it to Quasar to go back to stats nerdery.
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Death to the quadrant system:
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They could fix this if (1) they used a Team Strength metric (like Torvik) to define the quads, and (2) they aligned the Home/Away/Neutral cutoff points (so that e.g. the toughest Q2 home game is comparable to the toughest Q2 away game).
These are both obvious points and they are also very easy fixes!
(They could solve even more issues by relying on continuous metrics like WAB rather than relying on 4 crude buckets, but that wonât happen. They like their committee. But they should at least give their committee accurate comparison data.)
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Per replies, tweeter thinks the primary issue is misalignment of home/neutral/away ranges. (Ranges underestimate the difficulty of playing on the road.) Correcting that would be the easiest fix of all.
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I thought there was talk of readjusting the quadrants or maybe there was at talk of a process to readjust the quadrants
Yes, thatâs an easy fix and you could still use NET to determine the quads.
But imagine a world where they used a continuous metric like WABâŚyou could have a live bubble page with the bubble teamâs WABs and their remaining schedule with the WAB value of each game. And then commentary would have clear takeaways like âthis teams needs to win these games/avoid these lossesâ to earn their way into the tournament. I would never have to hear from Joey Brackets again!
(Sorry, this is my deadest horse that I like to return to every once in a while for a good thwack)
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Youâre preaching to the choir in my case. But I think for most fans, the muddy opaqueness of the committee approach is a feature, not a bug. More teams get to believe they might have a chance, and everyone gets to argue about who should be in and what metrics should matter, and of course how unfair it all is. A system with defined criteria and clear takeaways would ruin everything. 
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Keep the committee but put a camera in there so we can see how they come up with the teams.
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Some have had the idea of a bracket draft. Committee selects and seeds. Better seeds select their matchups and locations. Would be fun.
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Gasaway, I think, suggested that in 2015 late in the season. It was fun because Kentucky was running roughshod over everyone but UVA was newly ascendent (and it was before we lost to UNC in the ACC tournament, probably costing the team a #1 seed), and he phrased it something like:
- Kentucky goes first and picks the #1 seed in the South as expected.
- Then Tony Bennett, picking second for UVA, says âUVA picks⌠the #16 seed in the South! WEâRE NOT SCARED!â
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The only problem is that this approach would render an entire branch of science (bracketology) obsolete! Itâs like tax reform - everyone would probably love it, except the people who make money off the current system, and theyâre the loudest and have the largest platform.
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5th Factor had a follow-up on the above chart. When you break into it home/neutral/away, it becomes clear that the Q1/Q2 overlap is 100% due to misalignment of the H/N/A ranges.
To eliminate the overlap, Quad 1 should be:
Home vs 1-20
Neutral vs 1-45
Away vs 1-90
I assume that varies from year to year, but right now weâre pretty far off.
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It also illustrates the breadth of Quad 1. Quad 1 includes games that a bubble team has a 5% chance of winning, and games a bubble team has a 60% (!) chance of winning. Even the above âadjustmentâ would only tighten that range to 5-50%. Itâs no wonder theyâve added a âQuad 1-A.â
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That last part is pretty wild. I wonder what the ârightâ number of quads is, because itâs probably not 4.
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But too many quads are harder for the human brain to track.
The right answer is to demote 250 teams, standardize the schedule, and just go by W/L. If that still doesnât work go to just 15 teams and have a round robin. Champion is the team with the slowest tempo. Dunno, just spitballing here.
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