NCAA TOURNAMENT: HOW IN THE WORLD IS THE COMMITTEE GOING TO MAKE AT LARGE SELECTIONS? PART 2 - THE TOP 16 TEAMS

In my preceding article, I questioned the Committee’s ability to use the RPI in this year’s at large selection process.  It may have to turn instead to past history to assure appropriate representation of conferences and regions in its selections.  In this article and the next, I will show how the Committee could make its 19 at large selections using past history to set the overall outlines of the bracket and then use specific teams’ performance this year to fill in the details.

Here are the steps the Committee could go through:

Step 1:  Decide on a group of the Top 16 teams.  These will be tentatively seeded teams, subject to changes if appropriate based on the details of this year’s game results.

For each past year, we know the teams that the Committee ranked within the Top 16 because the Committee seeded them.  The following tables shows the conference distribution of the Top 16 -- the seeds -- since 2013. The first table is for seeded automatic qualifiers, the second is for seeded at large teams, and the third combines the seeded automatic qualifiers and at large teams:

In this table, the highlighted conferences are ones that have had at least one at large selection every year since 2013.  As the table shows, on average the highlighted conferences have had roughly 5 automatic qualifiers that are seeded and the other conferences have had roughly none.  As outside limits, one would expect the highlighted conferences to have no fewer than 4 automatic qualifers seeded and no more than 7; and one would expect the other conferences to have at most 1.

As this table shows, on average the highlighted conferences have had roughly 10 to 11 at large teams that are seeded and the other conferences have had none.  As outside limits, one would expect the highlighted conferences to have no fewer than 8 at large teams seeded and no more than 12; and one would expect the other conferences to have none.

 As this table shows, on average the highlighted conferences have had all of the seeds and the other conferences have had none.  At most, the other conferences have had 1 seeded team and that happened only once.  In other words, history indicates one should expect that the Committee’s Top 16 teams all should come from the highlighted conferences, but with possibly one coming from the other conferences.

The above tables show the reasonably expected distributions of at large selections among the highlighted group and not highlighted group of conferences.  In addition, they show the historic distributions among the particular conferences.  For the conferences grouped together as highlighted, the totals are very good representations of what should be the case this year.  For the particular conferences and regions, the totals should be good, though not as good, representations of what should be the case.  This reflects the fact that although individual team strength varies from year to year, conference and region strength changes only slowly over time and highlighted group strength changes, at most, very slowly.

Thus the tables, in addition to providing a very good tentative picture of what the highlighted and not highlighted group representations should be among the 16 seeds, also provide a good tentative picture of what the individual conference representations should be.  With that in mind, here is what the tentative conference representations should be among the 16 seeds (using rounded off numbers from the above tables as needed):

ACC:  1 automatic qualifier plus 4 at large selections, but with the possibility of the at large selections ranging between 2 and 6

Big 10:  1 automatic qualifier plus 1 at large selection, but with the possibility of no automatic qualifier and of the at large selections ranging between 0 and 3

 Big 12:  1 automatic qualifier plus 1 at large selection, but with the possibility of no automatic qualifier and of the at large selections ranging between 0 and 3

Pac 12:  1 automatic qualifer plus 2 at large selections, but with the possibility of the at large selections ranging between 0 and 3

SEC:  1 automatic qualifier plus 2 at large selections, but with the possibility of no automatic qualifier and of the at large selections ranging between 0 and 4

 American:  no automatic qualifier and no at large selection, but with the possibility of 1 automatic qualifer or 1 at at large selection

Big East:  no automatic qualifier and no at large selection as the baseline, but with the possibility of 1 automatic qualifer or 1 at at large selection

 Summit:  no automatic qualifier and no at large selection, but with the possibility of 1 automatic qualifer or 1 at at large selection

West Coast:  1 automatic qualifier or 1 at large selection, but with the possibility of no automatic qualifier and no at large selection

These allocations set the tentative conference representation for the 16 seeds.  The next step is to use this year’s actual in-conference game data to decide which teams from each conference fill its seed slots.  The data to be used come from three sets of games: (a) conference regular season games that count in the conference standings, (b) conference tournament games for the conferences with tournaments, and (c) any other in-conference games.

To illustrate how filling the conference seed slots can work, I will use a simple method to rank teams within their conferences.  The teams already have their in-conference regular season ranks.  For their conference tournament ranks, I will assign the champion a rank of 1, the runner-up a rank of 2, the losing semi-finalists a rank of 3.5 (the average of the #3 and #4 positions), and other tournament participants ranks determined by the same method.  For teams not participating in the tournament, I will assign them tournament ranks the same as their regular season ranks.  I then will average the regular season and tournament ranks to get each team’s tentative rank for NCAA Tournament selection purposes.  I then will review teams’ conference games that were not counting regular season or conference tournament games and make rank changes they indicate are appropriate, if any.

Since the season still is underway, I am going to simulate where teams will be at the end of the season to show how this system would work.  For the simulation I will use the actual results of games played through March 21 and simulated results of games not yet played (including conference tournament games).  This will produce simulated conference regular season standings, conference tournament results, and other conference game results that I will use to fill the team slots allocated to each conference.  The simulated results of games, of course, may turn out to be wrong, so I am doing this only to illustrate how the process will work.  (The simulated results will be right about 2/3 of the time.)  This results in the following 16 tentative seeds (not in seed order), which I am calling the Tier 1 teams:

The yellow highlighted teams are ones that either already are or that my simulation indicates will be conference automatic qualifiers.  These tentative teams for the 16 seed positions and those I identify as automatic qualifiers may change as actual results replace my simulated results.

In addition, while the above baseline is based on history so far as the conferences are concerned, it also ought to be consistent with history in terms of regional playing pools I described in my preceding article.  The following three tables are the same as the three conference tables above, but are for the regional playing pools:

As the last table shows, on average the highlighted (South and West) regions have had 15 or 16 seeds and the other regions (Middle and Northeast) have had 1 or none.  At a minimum the highlighted regions have had 14 seeds and at a maximum the other regions have had 2.  In other words, history indicates one should expect that the Committee’s Top 16 teams will come almost entirely from the South and West playing pools with perhaps 1 and a maximum of 2 coming from the Middle and Northeast pools.

Looking at the tentative Top 16 teams list above, 12 teams are from the South region and 4 from the West.  This is consistent with the above region tables.  The tables suggest that if I were to decide to revise the tentative team list in order to seed a team from the Middle or Northeast region (which would mean from the American, Big East, or Summit conference), it likely should replace one of the teams from the South region rather than from the West.

In my next article, I will discuss the additional steps needed to finalize the seeds and make the remaining at large selections.