February 2012 Archives

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BubbleGrid's back

I'll use this more over the last 13 days before Selection Sunday, but tonight I'll just post the BubbleGrid without comment. (See this to learn what it's all about.)

  • Hover over a value for more information
  • Shaded teams are predicted to be in the field
  • Teams with a * are the projected automatic qualifier (AQ) for their conference. Bold shaded teams have clinched the AQ berth
  • Teams are listed in order of their selection confidence by the CTD model. In other words, the last shaded non-AQ team is the last team in, and the first non-shaded team is the first team out.
1-251-501-1001-200RoadGood road winsBad home losses
TeamW-LWW+/-W+/-+/-+/-
Virginia21-712-27276-4#53 Oregon
#68 Louisiana St.
#72 North Carolina St.
#103 Virginia Tech
Connecticut17-1105-28-233-6#41 Notre Dame
#46 South Florida
St. Louis21-601-16295-5#50 Saint Joseph's
#54 Xavier
#93 La Salle
St. Mary's *23-51305168-3#47 Brigham Young#114 Loyola Marymount
Seton Hall19-1013-48044-6#61 Dayton#138 Rutgers
West Virginia17-1214-48-233-6#96 Pittsburgh#107 Kent St.
California *23-700-36185-5#51 Washington
#53 Oregon
Iowa St.21-813-14-264-6#45 Kansas St.
Iona *24-6010521011-4#90 Denver#144 Manhattan
Brigham Young22-711-45059-3#114 Loyola Marymount
Dayton18-1023-18163-6#14 Temple#105 Duquesne
#251 Rhode Island
Saint Joseph's19-1122-37-135-7#124 Richmond
#162 Charlotte
Northwestern17-1112-76-523-7#74 Illinois
Cincinnati20-92526036-5#12 Georgetown
#30 Connecticut
#96 Pittsburgh
#133 St. John's
#244 Presbyterian
Middle Tennessee *24-500-1301010-4
Xavier18-1013-36-325-6#23 Vanderbilt
Mississippi St.19-1022-27-132-6#23 Vanderbilt#108 Georgia
Texas18-1113-54-504-6
Miami FL17-1012-43-634-7#3 Duke
Illinois17-1234-56-402-7#43 Northwestern
Colorado St.16-1002-36-212-9
Virginia Commonwealth25-601-140610-3#58 Akron#143 Georgia St.
Belmont *23-701-22-2710-6#48 Middle Tennessee#224 Lipscomb
Long Beach St. *19-700-62-418-6#96 Pittsburgh
Arizona21-901-24-447-4#36 California
#71 New Mexico St.
Oral Roberts *26-500-130810-4#54 Xavier
South Florida17-1101-65-334-8#96 Pittsburgh
Drexel *25-500-242611-3#78 Cleveland St.
Washington20-800-43-545-4#69 Arizona
Northern Iowa18-1213-13-324-9#31 Iowa St.#141 Evansville
South Dakota St.22-70103158-7#51 Washington
Davidson *21-711-22-229-5
Louisiana St.17-1122-45-404-7#179 South Alabama
Ohio22-600-15377-5#62 Marshall
#63 Northern Iowa
#92 Buffalo
#119 Robert Morris
North Carolina St.18-1101-74-414-4#49 Miami FL#176 Georgia Tech
Central Florida18-812-23-313-6
Oregon20-800-52-537-4#69 Arizona#153 Oregon St.

Am I Normal?

Every year around this time, the interwebs and Twitters are full of complaints about how (gasp!) historically bad this year's bubble is. That it happens every year should tell you something.

I'm here to set the record straight: this year's bubble is not historically bad. In fact, the teams around the at-large cut line in any given year are not bad teams at all. Let me explain with a little bit of high school math.

Most power rankings (e.g., Sagarin) and statistics (including Pomeroy's adjusted efficiencies) show that teams roughly follow a normal distribution. You may know this as a bell curve, though perhaps a slightly asymmetric one.

While this has several implications, two are relevant here. First, there are fewer teams at each end of the distribution. You generally hear few disagreements about which are the very best teams or the very worst teams. More importantly, as you move toward the middle of the distribution, teams are more bunched together and therefore less distinguishable.

These teams are still good teams, mind you; they are the best 50(ish) teams out of about 350 that play in the best of three NCAA divisions. They are just harder to compare to each other because a normal distribution means the difference between the 41st and 51st best teams is much smaller than the difference between the 1st and 11th best. Expanding the at-large field by three teams has slightly worsened the effect, but it is still nothing more than an inherent statistical property.

So, no, the bubble isn't full of "historically" bad teams this year or any other year for that matter.

It's just normal.

New design is now live

I switched the blog to the new design this morning. I think I caught everything, but if you see any broken links or other problems, please send me an email or find me on Twitter.