Last year's first projection included 83 teams; 31 were automatic bids, 24 were looking good & 28 "Needed Wins." There were essentially 28 teams that were in the field for deciding the last 13 bids according to my first projection. Let's take a closer look at teams I was wrong on - first up, let's look at the automatic bids from non-AQ conferences that I missed on - these are obviously the toughest to project (Conference: Team I projected, Team that won auto-bid):
America East: Stony Brook/Vermont
Atlantic Ten: Temple/St. Bonaventure
Big Sky: Weber State/Montana
Horizon: Cleveland State/Detroit
Northeast: Wagner/Long Island
Patriot: Bucknell/Lehigh
Southland: Texas-Arlington/Lamar
Summit: Oral Roberts/South Dakota State
Sun Belt: Middle Tennessee State/Western Kentucky
WAC: Nevada/New Mexico State
Ten non-AQ conferences I missed the auto-bid - tough to get upset about these as that is obviously the toughest part of this exercise, and rarely do any of these teams have a significant impact on the tournament itself. As far as the rest of the auto-bid line, the only team I projected to make the tournament that missed was Arizona.
Moving on to the "Looking Good" category - I listed 24 teams that I felt were on target to receive a bid - of those 24 here are the teams that missed:
A10: LaSalle
SEC: Mississippi State
Only 2 of the 24 listed wound up missing the tournament - that is pretty solid considering this was my projection from early February, around half way through the conference portion of the schedule.
Last worthwhile analysis for this lookback is what team's received at-large bids that were not on my analysis in any category, but especially my last & final category of 2012 called "Need Wins" - these are the teams that performed over & above expectations the final six weeks of the season - teams that were not even on my "expanded" radar on February 2, 2012 that wound up getting so hot they played themselves into the dance as an at-large team:
Big 12: Texas
Big East: USF
Like the "Looking Good" category where only two teams I felt had a strong chance of making the dance didn't, they were replaced by Texas and USF. So only two teams were not included on my original list (setting aside non-AQ conferences where the auto-bid was won by a school that I did not project) that wound up making the dance.
To summarize, looking at my first 2013 NCAA Tournament Projection article I just posted today. Right now that grouping sits at 20 teams, 4 less than last year at this time - and using last year as a baseline it would seem safe to assume at least 18 of those teams will earn a bid come Selection Sunday, March 17th. And with the expanded field of teams listed this year in the "Life Support" category it seems highly unlikely any team will earn a spot in the tournament that is not included in today's article.
If you feel your school was shafted and deserves a spot in the article, or deserves to be mentioned in a category higher than what it currently is please feel free to email me and let me know about it! I routinely give out free nights of selections based on commentary received from my readers - I do not have to agree with you, I am just looking for well thought out responses - put together a logical & legible email and I will provide a free night of client level selections - this Wednesday has a full card, would be the perfect evening to give The SportsBoss a trial on the house!
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