NCSOS

 

Now that we are down to the last few days of the season we can really dive into the numbers and see what teams are in more trouble than we thought.  When I talk trouble I don’t just mean making the tournament, I also mean those teams that are being overseeded by extremely overrated Bracketologist like Joe Lunardi.  Jerry Palm at CBS is actually really good and consistently dominate Lunardi (as do I).

The two key stats I look at when finalizing my seed list is Non-Conference Strength of Schedule and then a combination of Quad 1 and Quad 2 record.  I read a couple articles in the past from committee members where they explicated said they value who you schedule and how you did higher than all the ranking numbers.  Now, a lot of these ranking numbers have NCSOS and Quad wins baked in but if you are telling me you look at these rankings and then NCSOS that tells me you are using that twice.  I’m going to lock that in and adjust accordingly.

So, that being said the number I look at first is a NCSOS of higher than 200.  You can’t control how good a team is when you play them because you’re scheduling a year out but it’s a pretty good indicator year in and year out if you are a team who tries to schedule cupcakes every year.  Great examples are Syracuse and St. Mary’s who are consistently on the wrong side of the bubble and also consistently have a very low NCSOS

 

This year the teams that jump out at me are the following as it pertains to NCSOS:

Virginia Tech – 239^th

Rutgers – 184^th

Connecticut – 202^nd

Louisville – 216^th

St. Bonaventure – 236^th

Colorado State – 207^th

Xavier – 251^st

St. Louis – 222^nd

 

Most of these teams are “locks” as of right now but I don’t believe the last 3 are in with a loss in the first round of their conference tournaments.  Xavier and Colorado State are my last two need to look good for the committee.  Now, I know I just posted an article about Conference Tournaments not meaning much but this could be a case where the committee doesn’t have those teams in right now anyway due to their NCSOS.  It would not be surprising if the last two in right now were Utah State (NCSOS of 78) and Seton Hall (NCSOS of 28).  Their resumes are very similar otherwise with the exception of W/L record.  The bubble is still very open for 3-4 spots