75AG said:

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It appears we need everything to go right this week. And as we know, everything never goes right during tournament week.

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Being a fan of a bubble team sucks this week. Every team you are rooting for loses, every team you want to lose wins, bid stealers pop up out of nowhere.

correction- in reply to Adam 87

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The committee doesn't think that way. They don't have "7 bids for the SEC" or any set number for any other conference.

It is how the individual teams stack up against each other PERIOD.

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That may be true, but don't think they don't look at that and it doesn't have an effect on the prism thru which they view the statistics.

if their bias les them to getting 8 big 10 teams in and 5 SEC, i guarantee they would go "uh oh! we better take another look at this"

(in other words, theyre not STARTING with that conference# template, but theyre damn sure considering it at some point.

It can for sure feel like that but the results in the past 4 days were beyond what we could've hoped for. Utah, Iowa, South Florida, Memphis, Nova, Providence, New Mexico, Mich St., Miss St. all lost. James Madison takes the auto bid. Assured no bid thieves in the WCC.

If you have 2 or more teams that appear even by whatever metrics the committee uses and one performs better than the others in their conference tourney then it damn sure could matter. This whole narrative that they don't consider the conference tourneys is nonsense.

Two years ago when the Ags performed well and made the SEC tourney finals and got snubbed was because we weren't very far up in the pecking order before the tourney . It was still a screw job imo but our nonconference performance and schedule was our undoing. Just because the conference tourney performance didn't get us over the top in that instance doesn't mean conference tourney performances aren't considered .

bobinator said:

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Amazing what a road win at Ole Miss did for us.

Also, if everyone is going to stay obsessed with Lunardi can we just have an official Lunardi thread?

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Isnt that what this is?

There's been like six of these

Naked Hiker said:

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Oak Forest Ag said:

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Lunardi is a hack who gets inside info right before the selection show. There are plenty of posts and threads regarding the specifics.

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Then Why did he have us in two years ago?

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He got bullied into that court room by the ghost of a dead lawyer.
It was the only mistake he made that year.

Adam this is not correct. The leagues are having constant discussion with the committee and discussing their teams.

This came out two years ago where the SEC was asked to give the teams they think deserved to be in.

In 2022 a couple of weeks before the end of the season. A&M was not submitted by our league. We had just lost 8 games in a row and were starting our new unprecedented winning streak. But it was too late

The Committee is always discussion with the leagues about what they are thinking. This way there are no surprises and the leagues wont complain after . In this case we were probably not submitted and Miss St was. But this year we were able to turn it around and our OOC schedule was much better. The committee told us to upgrade it and we did. They should reward us for that if we beat Ole Miss

I've literally never heard of that. You got a link on that?

bobinator said:

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If someone will go find a quote from someone saying that the conference tournaments don't matter then we'll stop telling people to stop saying that.

It just isn't true.

What IS true is that we've learned you at least need to be in the discussion when the committee starts their conversations. In 2022 we weren't. We were 3-8 in Quad 1 games with two quad 3 losses, a terrible (#262) non-con SOS, and our only two halfway good wins the whole season were Arkansas at home and Alabama on the road, ranked 20 and 30 in the NET.

That year, two of our SEC Tournament wins were our best two wins of the year.

That is not the case this year. We have 5 quad one wins and 6 more Quad 2 wins, we do have three quad 3 losses which is the only reason we're back here at all, but our non-con SOS is 21, the best of any team under consideration, and it's the best by a long way over everyone except Utah and we've already beaten teams ranked 5, 9, and 19 in the NET.

It's a completely different situation. We don't need a miracle this week. We just need to beat Ole Miss and we're probably good to go.

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Probably so, however just one correction - we have 4 Q3 losses not 3.

if the committee does leave us out, all they will need to pont to are those 4 Q3 losses.

if they put us in, all they will need to point to is our 5 Q1 wins and 6 Q2 wins, and overall 11-9 Q1/Q2 record, which inclues 3 wins over projected top 4 seeds in the tournament.

the question is, will those good wins outweight the bad losses?

every committee is different, so you just never know what will be important in any given year.

personally, I believe that good wins should be rewarded more than bad losses should be punished, because to me all losses are bad and winning against good teams is better proof of how good your team is/can be.

Does anyone know how close those Q3 losses are to being Q2? Could they turn in to Q2 if those teams win 1-2 games in their conference tourney? (I realize that's unlikely).

My bad, forgot we had a game slide to quad 3, but yes.

I think the main thing for me is that if it's close, we better get the nod based on our non-con schedule. The committee has said, repeatedly, for several years, that they will reward teams that challenge themselves in non-conference play.

We better not be the first team out and the last team in be someone like Iowa or Pittsburgh.

bobinator said:

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Wyoming though is also defensible for me. Decent NET, good record, decent wins, good schedule. They were in what I've called the 'zone of uncertainty' where I think you could defend picking anyone in that group depending on what things the committee happens to value that year. Same with Notre Dame that year. By the end of the SECT our numbers were better, but not dramatically better. I think you can defend any of those teams.

But Rutgers is a different story. They had a NET of 77 t(he lowest so far to get an at-large), a non-con SOS of 297, AND has three quad three and quad four losses (2 and 1 respectively)

They went 6-6 in Quad 1 games, but the rest of their numbers should have been enough to keep them out of the conversation completely.

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This right here is why I think things that shouldn't matter, do, in fact matter. Like the discussion on whether the conference participant count might have a psychological impact on the decision. I agree with the poster above that it might be coincident with the resume adjusting, but I strongly believe we get in if we win and Miss St loses and vice versa.

Back to the point. If it was all about the numbers and the committees didn't carry "other factors" around with them then Rutgers would have never gotten into the field. Excuses can be made for Wyoming being "defensible", but only if you pick maybe one metric out of the entire resume. Otherwise, they were not defensible on a body of work basis, in particular when compared with Texas A&M.

Also, if it's all about the numbers, it shouldn't have mattered that our best wins came in the conference tournament. Likewise it should have made no difference that we were "outside the discussion" or that we had an 8 game losing streak mid-conference.

I'm a numbers guys too, and wish it was made that objective, but reality is not that way. I think it's mostly about the numbers, but not entirely.

I also think having teams from the same conference would, logically matter from a numbers perspective when it gets this tight because those two teams have a lot of cross-over co-dependencies statistically that other, more disparate teams will not. That's why I think Miss St is the "easiest" team for us to pass out of the bubble field.

ExtremeRush said:

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Does anyone know how close those Q3 losses are to being Q2? Could they turn in to Q2 if those teams win 1-2 games in their conference tourney? (I realize that's unlikely).

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Arkansas is at 108 and LSU is at 92 and would need to make it to 75.

We obviously dont want Ole Miss to be beating us. Vanderbilt would need to go from 200+ to like 135.

Umm, LSU beating Miss State and Tennessee could be helpful to us I suppose, but I wouldnt call it likely.

Well, two years ago they said it didn't. Who knows?

JJxvi said:

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ExtremeRush said:

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Does anyone know how close those Q3 losses are to being Q2? Could they turn in to Q2 if those teams win 1-2 games in their conference tourney? (I realize that's unlikely).

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Arkansas is at 108 and LSU is at 92 and would need to make it to 75.

We obviously dont want Ole Miss to be beating us. Vanderbilt would need to go from 200+ to like 135.

Umm, LSU beating Miss State and Tennessee could be helpful to us I suppose, but I wouldnt call it likely.

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Better chance that Florida moves back up to Q1 I'd think

TXAGBQ76 said:

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Well, two years ago they said it didn't. Who knows?

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We've covered this enough I think. You're likely not going to be able to become an at large bid stealer based on a deep conference tourney run. I do think they lock into the bubble teams with a chance before the conference tournaments start which if anything is what they did prove to us 2 years ago which is a shame because they glossed over a team that should have done enough.

Oak Forest Ag said:

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Lunardi is a hack who gets inside info right before the selection show. There are plenty of posts and threads regarding the specifics.

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God forbid we listen to people with inside info

I don't disagree, but my point is still true. You can't say they will eliminate a team who makes a deep run in their tourney. I'm betting we were not the first.

j said:

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Also, if it's all about the numbers, it shouldn't have mattered that our best wins came in the conference tournament. Likewise it should have made no difference that we were "outside the discussion" or that we had an 8 game losing streak mid-conference.

I'm a numbers guys too, and wish it was made that objective, but reality is not that way. I think it's mostly about the numbers, but not entirely.

I also think having teams from the same conference would, logically matter from a numbers perspective when it gets this tight because those two teams have a lot of cross-over co-dependencies statistically that other, more disparate teams will not. That's why I think Miss St is the "easiest" team for us to pass out of the bubble field.

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There's a difference though between laziness and outright bias though.

In a perfect world the committee wouldn't even meet until all the data is in. If a game on Selection Sunday theoretically counts the same as a game in November, then why do they meet on Thursday? Why do they need to meet at all? The committee, which should be much bigger, should just submit ballots on Sunday and then a couple people familiar with the bracketing principles should use those rankings to make the brackets. Whole thing takes a couple of hours.

But, they do. They even start voting on teams early in the weekend. It's why we've seen late conference tournament games not matter much on the seed lines like that 2016 example where we were seeded ahead of Kentucky.

Now, that said, this is an improvement from way back when your late season form was a selection criteria. Teams would go from on the bubble to high seeds just solely based on their conference tournament play. That's how you ended up with 5 seeds like Syracuse in 2006, which came into the Big East Tournament 19-11 and 7-9 in league play.

We were a weird case in 2022. You just don't see teams come in with soft resumes and then suddenly change all their data in the last couple days of the season that often. This selection process is not built to deal with that kind of team.

TXAGBQ76 said:

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I don't disagree, but my point is still true. You can't say they will eliminate a team who makes a deep run in their tourney. I'm betting we were not the first.

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Well, being squarely on the bubble this year means it absolutely matters to us.

Quote:

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Back to the point. If it was all about the numbers and the committees didn't carry "other factors" around with them then Rutgers would have never gotten into the field. Excuses can be made for Wyoming being "defensible", but only if you pick maybe one metric out of the entire resume. Otherwise, they were not defensible on a body of work basis, in particular when compared with Texas A&M.

Also, if it's all about the numbers, it shouldn't have mattered that our best wins came in the conference tournament. Likewise it should have made no difference that we were "outside the discussion" or that we had an 8 game losing streak mid-conference.

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the problem with our resume that year is that our best work came in the SEC Tournament but the committee had already been meeting prior to tha, and up to that point we'd hadn't done enoough to be considered for an at large spot so our SECT work was never considered.

bobinator said:

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j said:

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Also, if it's all about the numbers, it shouldn't have mattered that our best wins came in the conference tournament. Likewise it should have made no difference that we were "outside the discussion" or that we had an 8 game losing streak mid-conference.

I'm a numbers guys too, and wish it was made that objective, but reality is not that way. I think it's mostly about the numbers, but not entirely.

I also think having teams from the same conference would, logically matter from a numbers perspective when it gets this tight because those two teams have a lot of cross-over co-dependencies statistically that other, more disparate teams will not. That's why I think Miss St is the "easiest" team for us to pass out of the bubble field.

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There's a difference though between laziness and outright bias though.

In a perfect world the committee wouldn't even meet until all the data is in. If a game on Selection Sunday theoretically counts the same as a game in November, then why do they meet on Thursday? Why do they need to meet at all? The committee, which should be much bigger, should just submit ballots on Sunday and then a couple people familiar with the bracketing principles should use those rankings to make the brackets. Whole thing takes a couple of hours.

But, they do. They even start voting on teams early in the weekend. It's why we've seen late conference tournament games not matter much on the seed lines like that 2016 example where we were seeded ahead of Kentucky.

Now, that said, this is an improvement from way back when your late season form was a selection criteria. Teams would go from on the bubble to high seeds just solely based on their conference tournament play. That's how you ended up with 5 seeds like Syracuse in 2006, which came into the Big East Tournament 19-11 and 7-9 in league play.

We were a weird case in 2022. You just don't see teams come in with soft resumes and then suddenly change all their data in the last couple days of the season that often. This selection process is not built to deal with that kind of team.

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this is it in a nutshell.

and we have to depend folks outside the conference to lose

TopoTacos said:

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fightintxaggie10 said:

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Joe L says the projections are always if the committee chose today. I think if we beat ole Miss and don't get trounced by UK it's possible that's enough

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Exactly. Lunardi has said that his goal is to emulate to the best of his knowledge based on track record, how the committee is probably assessing the field. Is there some internal bias? Maybe, but people forget that he moved us "IN" in the final projection before the 2022 results were announced.

He's also far from the end-all/be-all, but he's the highest profile "bracketologist" and has the ESPN platform… and he's more reliable by miles compared to Jerry Palm at CBS.

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I'm always surprised CBS continues to roll Palm out there. He is literally one of the worst at what he does when you compare him to others on the Bracket Matrix.

Topher17 said:

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TopoTacos said:

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fightintxaggie10 said:

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Joe L says the projections are always if the committee chose today. I think if we beat ole Miss and don't get trounced by UK it's possible that's enough

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Exactly. Lunardi has said that his goal is to emulate to the best of his knowledge based on track record, how the committee is probably assessing the field. Is there some internal bias? Maybe, but people forget that he moved us "IN" in the final projection before the 2022 results were announced.

He's also far from the end-all/be-all, but he's the highest profile "bracketologist" and has the ESPN platform… and he's more reliable by miles compared to Jerry Palm at CBS.

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I'm always surprised CBS continues to roll Palm out there. He is literally one of the worst at what he does when you compare him to others on the Bracket Matrix.

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yeah, it's almost like they roll him out there just to be different from the concensus.

It's unreal, several people on this board could do better. He didn't even have us as one of his bubble teams over the weekend and now we're up to his third team out. Absurd.

We just need to beat Ol Miss.

Again.

Everything that the Aggies do after that is for seeding or avoiding Dayton in my opinion.

I don't think we're going to get in. A&M NEVER gets the benefit of the doubt when it comes to selection committees in ANY sport, but we really don't have anyone to blame but ourselves. You can't go on a horrendous five game losing streak (to several vastly inferior opponents) at the end of the conference schedule and still expect to be considered. Like Buzz' eight game losing streak a couple of years ago, this five game losing streak is going to be our death "nail" (as the say in the Valley).

Fanatic15...Drs2B! said:

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We just need to beat Ol Miss.

Again.

Everything that the Aggies do after that is for seeding or avoiding Dayton in my opinion.

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just need to beat ole miss...feels that weay in every sport.

bobinator said:

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Amazing what a road win at Ole Miss did for us.

Also, if everyone is going to stay obsessed with Lunardi can we just have an official Lunardi thread?

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More like winning three in a row and State losing 4 in a row.

JJxvi said:

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ExtremeRush said:

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Does anyone know how close those Q3 losses are to being Q2? Could they turn in to Q2 if those teams win 1-2 games in their conference tourney? (I realize that's unlikely).

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Arkansas is at 108 and LSU is at 92 and would need to make it to 75.

We obviously dont want Ole Miss to be beating us. Vanderbilt would need to go from 200+ to like 135.

Umm, LSU beating Miss State and Tennessee could be helpful to us I suppose, but I wouldnt call it likely.

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Best case scenario would've been for LSU to get their NET up to 75 - as that would not only eliminate a home Quad 3 loss but give us an extra Quad 1 road win.

But, starting with a NET around 90 before the SECT I think it would literally take them winning the entire SEC Tournament to get their NET to 75 or better - and, by that time, it would be too late to impact our resume.

Still, will be cheering for them to beat the crap outta Mississippi State in their first game!

More concerning would be chances of getting ANOTHER (fifth) Quad 3 loss if Memphis, current NET 69, loses their first game in the AAC Tournament - possibly dropping their NET to worse than 75. So, at a risk of boosting the resume of a competitor for one of the final at large spots in the NCAAT, prefer for Memphis to win their first game on Thursday and then lose to UAB on Friday.

t - cam said:

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FriscoKid said:

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The committee has made it very clear that conference tournaments don't count. You can be 1st team out and make it to the finals and you are still out of the dance. The committee is lazy and already has the field set until teams get auto bids and start bumping the last teams in.

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They count, people need to stop saying this. They count and have always counted.

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They sure as hell didn't count for A&M getting in in 2022, or for our seeding last year…

Hungry Ojos said:

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I don't think we're going to get in. A&M NEVER gets the benefit of the doubt when it comes to selection committees in ANY sport, but we really don't have anyone to blame but ourselves. You can't go on a horrendous five game losing streak (to several vastly inferior opponents) at the end of the conference schedule and still expect to be considered. Like Buzz' eight game losing streak a couple of years ago, this five game losing streak is going to be our death "nail" (as the say in the Valley).

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Truth. All we had to do this year was beat an atrocious Vanderbilt team and all this would be academic.

Prexys Moon said:

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t - cam said:

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FriscoKid said:

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The committee has made it very clear that conference tournaments don't count. You can be 1st team out and make it to the finals and you are still out of the dance. The committee is lazy and already has the field set until teams get auto bids and start bumping the last teams in.

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They count, people need to stop saying this. They count and have always counted.

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They sure as hell didn't count for A&M getting in in 2022, or for our seeding last year…

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Our non conference record and schedule cost us seed lines last year. That was it.