Drew Cannon has cracked the Bubble Watch nut! By combining the powers of RPI and Ken Pomeroy he got a very simple formula that does a darn good job of projecting which teams are going to make the NCAA tournament. Around here though I leave that to the professionals. Instead, I like to figure which teams are going to be in the NIT. Turns out Cannon’s formula can be used for that too, since it tells you which teams are on the wrong side of the bubble.
Taking data from CollegeRPI.com and kenpom.com I figured out the magic formula for every team that is currently eligible for the NCAA tournament. Good news. The first 55 teams via that formula make the tournament either through automatic (the top team per conference in the formula) or at-large bids. The last four in, minus Horizon auto-bid Cleveland State and MAAC auto-bid Iona, were: Xavier, Saint Joseph’s, Northwestern and Purdue. I then took the next 32 teams, minus those pesky auto-bids are placed them into an NIT bracket. Here are the results:
NIT Bracket via Cannon’s formula:
1. La Salle
8. Duquesne
4. Stanford
5. Virginia Tech
3. Missouri State
6. Oklahoma
2. Arkansas
7. Mercer
1. North Carolina St.
8. UCLA
4. Mississippi
5. Colorado
3. Marshall
6. Buffalo
2. Pittsburgh
7. Denver
1. Oral Roberts (South Dakota State is Summit champ via the formula)
8. St. Bonaventure
4. Massachusetts
5. Dayton
3. Washington
6. Ohio
2. Northern Iowa
7. New Mexico State
1. Wyoming
8. Nevada
4. Cincinnati
5. LSU
3. VCU (Drexel is CAA champ)
6. UCF
2. Colorado State
7. Villanova
The first four teams out of the NIT from the formula are: Oregon, South Florida, Oregon State and Illinois State. I preserved the S-Curve in its entirety in order for you to see where teams ranked overall. Thus Duquesne is the final team into the NIT. UCLA was the second to last. I’m a bit surprised to see Villanova in and USF out using the formula, but considering how imbalanced their respective Big East schedules have been I guess it makes some sense. The cut-off total in case you’re wondering for the NCAA tournament was 110 and the combined cut-off for the NIT was 185. Do you like this bracket? Questions and comments are appreciated.
I don’t think Oral Roberts would be a 1. Or that they’d have to A-10 teams playing each other first round
Like I noted, I didn’t do any rearranging of these seeds. I wanted to preserve the S-curve that came from Cannon’s formula so that people could see where the teams would fall. There would probably be a lot of rearranging in this tournament. A-10 teams actually end up playing each other twice because of the high number of them in the field and just random chance of where they fall on the curve.
Example: Top 8 teams are – La Salle, NC State, Oral Roberts, Wyoming, Colorado State, Northern Iowa, Pittsburgh and Arkansas. So if you follow the seeds in a snake like pattern you’ll see where they ended up 1-32. Hope that helps explain the reasoning.
Interesting. Wagner is 21-4 and not included. Assuming LIU wins the NEC, Wagner would be eligible for the NIT. Wagner beat Pittsburgh by 5 on the road. Pitt is projected a no, 2 seed. What am I missing?
Actually — In this scenario Wagner is the NEC champ. When you combine RPI/Pomeroy the Seahawks sit around 160, safely inside the NIT field according to Cannon’s formula. Will be updating this today and have a hand one on Thursday.
OK I understand if you have Wagner winning the NEC. If they lose to LIU I think they deserve an NIT bid.