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Operation NCAA tournament

SotaHawk87

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Jan 3, 2015
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For this squad since the roster was finalized I truly only want them to find a way how to get to the tournament. Of course it’d be awesome if they did better but being there in March is what I would be happy with (totally fine if that’s not you). Anyways basically did a grid for what it would take to ensure that happens. Iowa is currently +1 in the needed win column (could have afford a loss to Seton Hall) to “stay on track”. The TCU game despite their lackluster start to the year was house money and wild have moved to Iowa to +2. Long story short don’t panic. If you’re curious what I have, it’ll change but keeping Iowa on pace to +1 over the next 5 would be..

Georgia Tech- Won
Duke- L
Iowa State- W
Wisconsin- W
SEMO- W

Keep in mind Iowa is +1 right now so dropping one to Wisconsin or Iowa State would bring it back to a 20-11 projection.

Others Notes:
Kenpom Season Start: 23
Kenpom current: 22
Kenpom high: 14
Kenpom quality record 5-2

Iowa is in their tough non con SOS stretch. I have Duke as 1st hardest, TCU as 2nd hardest, and ISU as 3rd hardest non con games. (Seton Hall 4, Clemson 5, GT, 6, SEMO 7, EIU, 11)
 
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Don’t see us beating ISU
Good news is don’t have to to stay on schedule. Gotta be careful about Iowa State (to our benefit) Villanova is a bad basketball team and UNC struggled with every rather poor opponent to this point in the year. Well her a better picture tonight against UCONN. As I mentioned in another thread if they played today Iowa would be a 4-7 pt favorite against ISU.
 
Good news is don’t have to to stay on schedule. Gotta be careful about Iowa State (to our benefit) Villanova is a bad basketball team and UNC struggled with every rather poor opponent to this point in the year. Well her a better picture tonight against UCONN. As I mentioned in another thread if they played today Iowa would be a 4-7 pt favorite against ISU.
Iowa was favored by six over TCU.
 
Iowa was favored by six over TCU.
At the beginning of the year they were a 1 point dog. It’s not about the games they’re favored in it’s about getting to the tournament. Right now if they won every game they’re favored in at this moment they’d end 23-8 and I don’t think that’s happening. Maybe but I’d be surprised.

On a brighter note probably some money to be made if you don’t think this is a great Iowa team. They’ll be favorites against Iowa State and probably only a 2-3 pt dog to Duke.
 
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Bart Torvik currently has Iowa at 21-10 (12-8) and a 6 seed in the tourney. Honestly that wouldn't surprise me at all.

That said I do think they need to avoid a disaster in the Duke/ISU/Wisc series of games. even going 1-2 there is probably fine. But if Iowa goes 0-3 I think we'd need to revisit the tourney projections. GT sucks, so losing that one at home might change some projections as well.
 
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Bart Torvik currently has Iowa at 21-10 (12-8) and a 6 seed in the tourney. Honestly that wouldn't surprise me at all.

That said I do think they need to avoid a disaster in the Duke/ISU/Wisc series of games. even going 1-2 there is probably fine. But if Iowa goes 0-3 I think we'd need to revisit the tourney projections. GT sucks, so losing that one at home might change some projections as well.
They’d certainly need some unexpected results to get back in the convo if they drop all 3.
 
Agree Sota, everyone just needs to relax a bit. Once healthy, TCU likely is a top 15-20 team. Next game they get back Baugh and we saw first hand why Mike Miles was a pre-season All-American. I expect Iowa to currently be 1-1 against Q1 teams and 1-0 against Q2. We are already light years ahead of where we were at this time last year when we started 0-6 against Q1 with a non-conference SOS of 250.
 
getting to Ncaa is nice, but what is point if you know you are 100 percent sure you are going to lose the 1st or 2nd game? I'm pretty sure the team as is can make the Ncaa tourney. They need to improve a lot on rebounding/toughness to deal with teams like tcu that they surely will meet in ncaa tourney. Playing a tough out of conference schedule is a good thing for preparation.
 
I tend to look at tourney prospects primarily through the conference record/finish. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I beleive that with the 64 team format, the NCAA has consistently extended tourney invitations to at least 6 Big Ten teams ... except the very rare 5 teams, more likely 7 or more.

Looking for a top 6 conference finish and don't lay an egg in the B10 tourney. One or two very bad non-con losses could upset the cart with a 6/7 B10 finish but I don't see that happening.
 
I tend to look at tourney prospects primarily through the conference record/finish. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I beleive that with the 64 team format, the NCAA has consistently extended tourney invitations to at least 6 Big Ten teams ... except the very rare 5 teams, more likely 7 or more.

Looking for a top 6 conference finish and don't lay an egg in the B10 tourney. One or two very bad non-con losses could upset the cart with a 6/7 B10 finish but I don't see that happening.
With how good the Big Ten as a whole has been in non-conference, the conference SOS is going to be inflated. KenPom =/= NET, but they will be closely correlated; right now there's 12 Big Ten teams inside the top 60. That means that every road game apart from Northwestern and Minnesota is a Q1 opportunity. That in itself could mean that the Big Ten gets in 9 like they did last year.
 
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With how good the Big Ten as a whole has been in non-conference, the conference SOS is going to be inflated. KenPom =/= NET, but they will be closely correlated; right now there's 12 Big Ten teams inside the top 60. That means that every road game apart from Northwestern and Minnesota is a Q1 opportunity. That in itself could mean that the Big Ten gets in 9 like they did last year.
Good insight and further illustrates the importance of conference record vis-a-vis the tourney invite. The old B10 saying about protect your home court and win a couple on the road still resonates.
 
getting to Ncaa is nice, but what is point if you know you are 100 percent sure you are going to lose the 1st or 2nd game? I'm pretty sure the team as is can make the Ncaa tourney.
100% sure you are going to win/lose the 1st or 2nd game….that’s cute, you must absolutely crush the sportsbooks and neighborhood brackets come March.
 
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Good news is don’t have to to stay on schedule. Gotta be careful about Iowa State (to our benefit) Villanova is a bad basketball team and UNC struggled with every rather poor opponent to this point in the year. Well her a better picture tonight against UCONN. As I mentioned in another thread if they played today Iowa would be a 4-7 pt favorite against ISU.
So was North Carolina.
 
With how good the Big Ten as a whole has been in non-conference, the conference SOS is going to be inflated. KenPom =/= NET, but they will be closely correlated; right now there's 12 Big Ten teams inside the top 60. That means that every road game apart from Northwestern and Minnesota is a Q1 opportunity. That in itself could mean that the Big Ten gets in 9 like they did last year.

I looked this up about a week ago so it's certainly changed, but early metrics (which will be close to the NET Rankings when the come out) have the Big 12, Big 10, and SEC as by FAR the best conferences. There will be a ton of at larges from all of those conferences. PAC and ACC have terrible metrics, and they have some anchor teams which will drag down everybody's numbers. I could see 5 total bids between the ACC and PAC.
 
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I looked this up about a week ago so it's certainly changed, but early metrics (which will be close to the NET Rankings when the come out) have the Big 12, Big 10, and SEC as by FAR the best conferences. There will be a ton of at larges from all of those conferences. PAC and ACC have terrible metrics, and they have some anchor teams which will drag down everybody's numbers. I could see 5 total bids between the ACC and PAC.
Still correct
 
I see the season broken into 2 remaining parts:

- the next 13 games
- the final 12 games

Both stretches are daunting, but the second stretch is going to be pretty brutal. Could easily see 7-8 losses in that stretch. If they can manage even 6-6 it should be considered a success.

With that in mind, it will be this first stretch where they will need to make some hay and hopefully build up quality wins along the way. Need a min of 9 wins during this first stretch imo.
 
Based off the NET ranking released at this point Iowa would be pretty safe to dance at 19-13. With last nights W that basically puts them 2 wins “ahead of pace” for getting to 19! The logic in spread sheet if you want to take a glance.

 
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Based off the NET ranking released at this point Iowa would be pretty safe to dance at 19-13. With last nights W that basically puts them 2 wins “ahead of pace” for getting to 19! The logic in spread sheet if you want to take a glance.


Not sure if this is you keeping the spreadsheet or not, but I have found this website to be suuuuper helpful in terms of seeing exactly the metrics that the tournament committee uses to select and seed the tournament.

Looks like this:
 
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Not sure if this is you keeping the spreadsheet or not, but I have found this website to be suuuuper helpful in terms of seeing exactly the metrics that the tournament committee uses to select and seed the tournament.

Looks like this:
Yes thank you! WN is what I use for my bracketology. He’s done so much for the average Joe to be able to follow along. The excel is just something I use for shits and gigs to predict what would need to happen to make the NCAA tournament.
 
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