ESPN’s Joe Lunardi releases updates to his projected NCAA Tournament bracket every few days at this time of year, identifying his last four teams in, first four out and next four out.
Last week, a new team appeared on his bubble watch: the UC San Diego Tritons.
It is the latest affirmation for a program in its first year as a full-fledged Division I member, eligible to play in its conference tournament, let alone the Big Dance. Five years ago, the Tritons were plugging along in the Division II California Collegiate Athletic Association; now they’re alongside schools like Texas, Indiana and North Carolina fighting for the final at-large invitations into the 68-team field.
The Tritons have moved into the top 50 in two major metrics — they’re 45th in both Kenpom and the NCAA’s NET heading into Saturday’s 4 p.m. game against UC Davis at LionTree Arena. They’re 21-4 and, if form holds, will be 28-4 entering the Big West Tournament in Henderson, Nev.
In another metric, Bart Torvik’s T-rank, the Tritons have been the nation’s 28th-best team over the past three weeks.
Their most straightforward route is claiming an automatic berth by winning the conference tournament, which in the Big West gives byes to the semifinals for the top two seeds. The Tritons are 11-2, tied for first with UC Irvine with a two-game cushion over third place.
The reason for optimism: They’d have to win just two games, and last week they beat the two most likely tournament opponents — UC Riverside and UC Irvine — by a combined 38 points.
But say they lose? Could they become the first Big West team since 2005 and second since 1993 to get an at-large invite?
“We’re taking it one game at a time,” senior Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones said recently, “but yeah, I think there’s a possibility if we can do what we’re supposed to do.”
The metrics say maybe. History, and a closer examination of their resume, are less certain.
T-rank’s algorithm computes a team’s chances to reach the NCAA Tournament and sets it at 58.9% for the Tritons. That’s 54.4% to win the conference tournament, though, and just 4.0% via an at-large berth.
UCSD is ahead of San Diego State in both the NET and Kenpom, but all the major bracketologists have the Aztecs in their projected fields and not the Tritons. That’s because the selection committee looks at more than straight metrics, and the Aztecs are superior in areas like quality wins, a dearth of bad losses, strength of schedule and the relative strength of their league.
The NET metric separates games into four quadrants based on their location and your opponents’ ranking. UCSD is 2-2 in Quad 1 and 2 games (against top teams) but has two Quad 3 losses, and 19 of their 21 wins are Quad 3 or below.
Compare that to fellow bubble team Xavier, which has played 17 Quad 1 or 2 games (and won seven) and has only eight wins from Quad 3 or below.
ESPN’s Lunardi put it like this in a recent discussion of tournament dynamics:
“The last thing you want as a team on the cut line is a nonconference SOS (strength of schedule) that makes the selection committee hold its collective breath. It happens every year. When the final few teams are competing for the very last at-large spots, the committee, nearly without fail, has dinged those with truly ugly non-league schedules. Regardless of whether it’s trying to send a message, the committee’s annual list of victims is telling.”
The message, presumably, is not rewarding programs that artificially inflate their metrics by blowing out bad teams, which often can have the same effect on computer numbers as beating good ones.
Last year, Wake Forest had a Kenpom of 28 but a bunch of blowout wins with a nonconference strength of schedule that ranked 240th, and didn’t get in. Nor did Pitt, which was 33rd in Kenpom but 340th in NCSOS. Nor did Oklahoma, which was 46th in Kenpom but 320th in NCSOS.
All those schools belong to power conferences, which afford a far easier path to an at-large berth because they offer far more opportunities to collect Quad 1 and 2 wins.
The cautionary tale for UCSD, and a more apples-to-apples comparison, is Indiana State. The Sycamores were 28-6 with a NET of 28 on Selection Sunday last March but lost in the Missouri Valley tournament final and thus were in need of an at-large berth.
History seemed to be on their side: No team inside the NET top 30 had ever missed the tournament.
But the Sycamores did, doomed by a weak nonconference schedule (305th) and a weak league.
UCSD’s nonconference strength of schedule ranks 213th this season. SDSU is ninth, after playing four of its nine nonconference games against teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 in addition to a 63-58 win against UCSD.
The Tritons could climb higher in the metrics if they continue blowing out Big West foes. But there’s nothing they can do now about their nonconference strength of schedule, or the more compelling resumes of power conference teams on the bubble.
“We’re a little more process driven,” coach Eric Olen said. “We do pay attention to that. It’s not like we don’t know what’s going on. But at the same time, we really try to narrow our focus on the things that we can control and feel like if we do a good job of that, then all those other things are a byproduct of that.
“That’s really how we’ve got to this point. Because we’ve played good basketball all year, those opportunities are the result of good basketball, so we just try to focus on that.”
