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NCAA Tournament Roundup: Notes on Where the Pokes Stand as of Friday

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I never thought anything would make me more indignant than the process for choosing College Football Playoff teams, and yet here we are two days before Selection Sunday with the RPI looming over our heads. Mike Boynton has made a resounding closing argument, and Oklahoma State’s fate now rests in a (surprisingly optimistic-sounding?) NCAA selection committee.

If the committee is out there listening — I feel like Mark Watney in The Martian — here is Oklahoma State’s lengthy case file (as of Friday afternoon).

Reminder of the quadrants.

Quadrant 1: Home games vs. RPI top 30; neutral games vs. 1-50; away games vs. 1-75.
Quadrant 2: Home vs. 31-75 teams; neutral vs. 51-100; away vs. 76-135.
Quadrant 3: Home vs. 76-160 teams; neutral vs. 101-200; away vs. 136-240.
Quadrant 4: Home vs. 161-plus teams; neutral vs. 201-plus; away vs. 241-plus.

• Oklahoma State has five Quadrant 1 wins and five Quadrant 2 wins. According to OSU media relations, of the 12 teams listed in either the last four in, first four out or next four out section of Joe Lunardi’s current Bracketology (this was on Thursday), only OU has more Quadrant 1 wins (6) than Oklahoma State (5).

If you combine Quadrant 1-2 victories, then none of those 11 teams has more wins than Oklahoma State’s 10.

• Oklahoma State has seven wins over teams ranked in the top 50 of the current NCAA RPI. Four of those seven wins came away from home, and that doesn’t include the Florida State game (FSU is now outside the RPI top 50).

• Oklahoma State has five wins over teams ranked in KenPom’s current top 15 and nine wins over teams in KenPom’s current top 50 this season. ?

• The NCAA RPI rates OSU’s conference schedule as the fourth toughest in the country. Those are just free wins, though.

• This one is astonishing: Every loss on OSU’s schedule is to a team currently among the projected NCAA Tournament field, according to Joey Brackets. OSU also has six wins over projected tournament teams. The worst loss on OSU’s schedule is to RPI No. 62 Kansas State.

• I think what’s working against Oklahoma State a little bit here is that they barely have the most Q1 wins of bubble teams even though they played a LOT of Q1 games. So, for example, is it more impressive to go 3-5 in Q1 games like Arizona State did or 5-12 like Oklahoma State did? ASU has a higher winning percentage, but then again if that’s your argument, you can’t also say that OSU had a weaker schedule because of the nonconference stuff. Conference games matter!

• One other thing that nobody is really talking about is that OU and Texas have slipped to No. 49 and No. 50 in the RPI. If they fall out between now and Sunday, that would not be great because it would take away one of OSU’s Q1 wins.

• Bracket Matrix is a good bookmark leading up to Sunday. Oklahoma State is now in 19 of 80 brackets. Louisville (!) is in 42 of 80. You know, the Louisville team that’s 0-11 against RPI top 50 while Oklahoma State is 7-10. Louisville is also 3-11 in Quadrant 1 games! At least they had a lot of opportunities to lose, though.

• I think I’ve already said everything that needs to be said about the RPI, but I loved Boynton’s points about everything being arbitrary. It is! You’re just randomly drawing these Quadrant lines where the following things are true.

  • Beating Kansas in GIA is equivalent to winning at Tulsa.
  • Winning at Maryland-Baltimore County (!!) is the same as beating Florida, Mizzou or UCLA in GIA.
  • Beating Stony Brook on a neutral floor is better than winning at Prairie View A&M. Those are in different buckets. That is insane.

• This one is from Oklahoma State’s sports information, and it’s worth noting: OSU finished the regular season with eight Big 12 wins. Since the conference expanded to the double-round robin format, four of the five teams to finish 8-10 in Big 12 play earned an at-large big to the NCAA Tournament. I looked at all of those teams here.

• Adam Lunt had some terrific tweets over the last few days exposing the RPI.

• PFB Nate has become a must follow! Middle Tennessee is an abomination!

• Oklahoma State is going to be a pretty fascinating test case one way or another. Either they’ll be the lowest RPI team to ever get in or go to the NIT with 10 (!) Quadrant 1-2 wins (last year’s team had ).

• Why is nobody talking about the fact that OSU has played more games than other teams? OU played 30 regular season games, OSU played 31. If you drop Charlotte off of OSU’s schedule, their RPI is suddenly in the 70s. They’re literally being punished because they scheduled more games. If you add the Charlotte game to OU’s schedule, their RPI goes from No. 49 to No. 57. That’s CRAZY!

• Finally, here are two teams with fascinating resumes. See if you can figure out who they are.

Blind Resumes Team 1 Team 2
Overall 19-12 19-14
Big 12 9-10 9-11
Quadrant 1 5-10 5-12
Quadrant 2 6-1 4-2
Quadrant 3 7-1 2-0
Quadrant 4 4-0 8-0

Team 1? Yeah, that’s Oklahoma State from last year when they were seeded No. 37 in the NCAA Tournament. That team on the right is Oklahoma State from this year … when they’re probably not even going to make the event. All because OSU’s bad teams last year — Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and New Orleans — were top 175 teams and their bad teams this year were not. Boynton was right. Confirmation bias reigns.

 

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