Midday on Thursday of Championship Week brings a boatload of news for the NBK rankings. This edition is where the NBK selection committee — myself and my dog Bruno — frees itself from the bounds of ranking its member teams by KenPom rank. Now we want to know two things: how solidly are you IN the field already, or how much upward mobility do you have.

NC State and Northwestern answered these questions loudly with “Not” and “None”, exiting their conference tournaments early Wednesday and snuffing out their hopes of a Sweet Sixteen debut in 2021.

North Texas and Colgate both won their conference tournament openers on Wednesday, Colgate in resounding fashion. The ‘gater Raiders achieved some internet buzz on when basketball twitter noticed their bizarre schedule is breaking the NET.

Among non-NBK teams to affect our rankings on Wednesday, Duke shook the snow globe most violently. The Blue Devils followed up a preliminary round stomping of Boston College on Tuesday with an impressive victory over Louisville, in one swoop moving themselves into Joey Brackets’ consideration at Next Four Out whilst pushing Louisville back out to Last Four In range. And if that weren’t enough, on Thursday morning Duke announced a positive COVID-19 test within the program leads to the immediate cancellation of the rest of their games and season. Louisville, having just played them, is now on the hook to quarantine and come up with enough negative COVID-19 tests to be included in the field, else they will go the way of the Blue Devils. Oh my!

Xavier & Syracuse — non-NBK teams– swapped places on Wednesday, hopping over NBK #6 Utah St. in the process. Xavier lost to Butler to move from Last Team In to First Four Out, and Syracuse trounced NC State to swipe the Muskateers bid on Lunardi’s bracket. No respect for USU, but we at the NBK remain bullish.

At press time Toledo is tied with Ball St at the end of regulation in their MAC quarterfinal tilt, so their status is in major jeopardy. Also in action and of interest Thursday are Creighton, Colorado, Rutgers, Utah St., Colorado St., Boise St., UCSB, Buffalo, and Eastern Washington. Survive and advance, boys, and live to pucker another day.

Notes

Data courtesy Kenpom.com , NCAA.org, and ESPN Bracketology. For “Conf Tourney Odds” Ken Pomeroy’s conference tourney forecasts are used until the team advances to the conference tournament final, in which case the heavy-bordered cell contains the KenPom odds ($) of winning the final itself.

Checking on on the Never Been Kissed — schools who have not made the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985. Let’s start with the good news as two of our NBK ranked teams had their tickets punched for the Big Bubble Dance in Indy. Winthrop blazed through the Big South in convincing fashion, winning the conference tourney and automatic bid for the second year in a row, moving up 13 spots in the KenPom ratings in the process. Joey Brackets has them as a 12-seed and they are sure to make many a prognosticator’s Upset Team to Watch this Sunday. Liberty limped through the Atlantic Sun and won a meaningless final. Big woop.

The Drake lost to the Sister Jeans on Sunday and thus begin an agonizing week of scoreboard watching and bracket begging. Lunardi has the Bulldogs (and NBKers Boise St. and Colorado St.) as the Last Four In along with Xavier. Utah St. has been downgraded a bit by J Brackets and at the moment are the first team out. They still have basketball to play in the Mountain West tourney and a 21% chance of making Sunday celebratory. SLU is likely cooked, and SMU is even further back. The grey dregs beckon both.

As for Conference Tourney odds, the NBK features a strong pack of favorites — Abilene Christian (61% odds per KenPom.com), St. Bonaventure (59% in Sunday’s A-10 final vs VCU), and Colgate (59%). Of those three, however, only the Bonnies appear to be safe should they fall short of an automatic bid. UCSB has a reasonable shot at 43% to take the Big West, and Toledo (32%) & Buffalo (27%) should tussle for the MAC bid. Then there’s the milky trio of NC State (2%), Rutgers (1%) and Northwestern (skim, or 0.08%). Name brand schools all, but their hopes of graduating from the NBK this year are sure to read like dank cloudy water to a lactose intolerant selection committee.

Notes

Data courtesy Kenpom.com , NCAA.org, and ESPN Bracketology. For “Conf Tourney Odds” Ken Pomeroy’s conference tourney forecasts are used until the team advances to the conference tournament final, in which case the heavy-bordered cell contains the KenPom odds ($) of winning the final itself.

As Championship Week (are we really calling it Champ Week) in college basketball begins, let’s check in on those schools who have never before made the second weekend of the NCAA tournament since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, not made the Sweet Sixteen, the Never Been Kissed (NBK).

Who had the worst week? Plenty of contenders for that crown of thorns. Let’s start with the Saint Louis University Billikens. The team once ranked #10 in the NET saw their NCAA chances go up in a COVIDy cloud of smoke as they lost a semifinal showdown Saturday night against St. Bonaventure. I firmly believe a SLU-VCU final in the A-10 would have led the committe to convince themselves to just take both regardless of the outcome next Sunday. We’ll never know. Instead of playing their way in or to the cusp of in, the Bills bowed to the Bonnies in a game that was never close.

Maybe Creighton had the worst week? Not so much on the court — close loss to #10 Villanova followed by a win against Butler — as off the court. Coach Greg McDermott was suspended for insensitivity and stupidity. Overwhelming Horizon tournament favorite Wright St. was eliminated, and Furman and Belmont followed them and SLU to the ignominous conference tourney exit. North Texas is not dead yet but they are sinking like a stone, with three straight losses this week, one to Marshall and a pair to UAB. Perhaps new NBK contenders will rise in these voids.

But enough doom and gloom. Whose bright side is shining brighter this week? The aforementioned Bonnies of St. Bonaventure are solidly in the NCAAs and might add an A-10 tournament title to go with their regular season belt. They are a slight favorite over VCU next Sunday.

Love the Drake in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament final against Loyola Chicago today. The Bulldogs are underdogs vs the Ramblers but should be in the field of 68 even with a loss.

Liberty is an overwhelming favorite in the Atlanic Sun final against North Alabama, and little Winthrop is feeling good billie ray against Campbell.

Data courtesy Kenpom.com , NCAA.org, and ESPN Bracketology. For “Conf Tourney Odds” Ken Pomeroy’s conference tourney forecasts are used until the team advances to the conference tournament final, in which case the heavy-bordered cell contains the KenPom odds of winning the final itself.

Happy March, Billie heads! As the weather turns slightly less terrible and the Madness approaches, we take our first look at the prospects of the Never Been Kissed — those schools who have not been to the Sweet Sixteen in the many years since the NCAA expanded the field to 64 back in 1985. Being the year we all wore masks for ten months, 2020 yielded no graduates from the NBK ranks. Houston and Virginia Tech graduated in 2019, South Carolina busted through in 2017 all the way to the Final Four, and Dayton back in 2014.

This year’s crop is led once again by big conference hopefuls Creighton, Colorado, and Rutgers. All three look to be safely in the field heading into the final two weeks, though the Bluejays will be the only team favored to make the tournament’s second weekend. The Bonnies lead the A-10 contingent and the Mountain West vies for NBK conference of the year with Utah St, Boise St, and Colorado St all in contention.

Your Saint Louis University Billikens come in seventh in these initial rankings, but are solidly out of the NCAA picture as it stands. The Bills will need a win against UMass on Monday and a clean sweep of their A-10 games this week in Richmond just to have a chance. That would put them in the A-10 tournament championship game on Selection Sunday and give the committee something to think about.

Data courtesy Kenpom.com and ESPN Bracketology, which is quite fancy this year.

Senior night at Chaifetz Arena, as the socially distanced crowd rings in March by bidding farewell to Jordan Goodwin, Hasahn French, Josh Hightower, and Javonte Perkins. Hold the phone…

Perkins is coming back for more. He and Hargrove should be a dynamic pair of scorers on the wings next year.

But still work to be done in this strange season. UMass handed SLU its last A-10 loss last season, and will look to play spoiler again as the Bills try to fight their way back to bubble contention. These Minutemen are young and box out well, and are yet another A-10 team that excels in defensive Free Throw % (#7 per Kenpom.com at 64.4%). The A-10 sports the 28th best (i.e. one of the worst) FT% overall so perhaps I should quell my surprise that all these teams are good at FT defense.

And in 6’9″ Tre Mitchell, the sixty-second men have another shot-blocking big man for French to wrestle in the low post. Wichita St transfer Noah Fernandes runs the point and Carl Pierre launches threes, not terribly effectively (31% on the year). Javohn Garcia seems to be their leader in perimeter defense, getting steals, blocking shots, and cleaning up the defensive boards. Last year’s hero Dibaji Walker is out for the rest of the season with a wrist injury.

Perk and Goodwin were particularly good the last times these teams met. French and JBJ….not so much. Maybe with Walker out of the way Linssen and French can make hay against Mitchell and Gasperini.

References

Data from Basketball Reference and Ken Pomeroy and the NCAA

Game Score metric created by John Hollinger detailed here: http://www.basketball-reference.com/about/glossary.html

Plot format by Aaron Baggett: https://baseballwithr.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/conceptualizing-the-mlb-strike-zone-using-pitchfx-data/

Inspiration from Ken Pomeroy: http://kenpom.com/

Inspiration from Rock M Nation: http://www.rockmnation.com/missouri-tigers-basketball

Team colors courtesy:

Benjamin S. Baumer and Gregory J. Matthews (2020). teamcolors: Color Palettes for Pro Sports Teams. R package version 0.0.4.