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Let’s get this out of the way: Rutgers was a bubble team. Their resume was flawed, as all bubble teams’ are. They shouldn’t have blown a 10 point lead in a minute to the worst team in the conference. We all understand that. The hip talking point once the bracket was unveiled became: Rutgers only has itself to blame.
Here’s NJ.com’s Steve Politi:
CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander used that exact same phrase on this morning’s episode of The Eye On College Basketball Podcast. So did half of Twitter. It’s a convenient way to sidestep the actual question.
It’s Game 7 of the World Series. Bottom of the 9th, bases loaded, two outs, Phillies are down by a run. Bryce Harper steps to the plate. He’s 0-3 on the day, leaving runners stranded on base in each of his at-bats. He works the count to 3-2 and the payoff pitch passes five inches off the outside corner and the umpire goes full Frank Drebin and rings him up.
Could Harper have done more earlier in the game to prevent it from coming to this? Yes. Did Harper and the Phillies also get screwed? Also yes! This isn’t a binary. Both things can be true. And that’s where we’re at with Rutgers. They could have done more. They got screwed. Here’s how.
Committee chair Chris Reynolds made the rounds after the brackets were unveiled, first on the CBS Selection Show, then on ESPN, and then, most enlighteningly, in a radio interview with Steve Torre and Chris Russo. Brian Fonseca helpfully recaps it here.
Nevada plays 18 games against the Mountain West. The MWC had a nice year but eight of those games came against Air Force, Colorado State, San Jose State, Fresno State, and Wyoming. Only six of their games came against NCAA tournament teams. Four of those were against 10 seeds Boise State and Utah State. Rutgers, on the other hand, plays 20 games against the Big Ten. This year thirteen of those games were against NCAA tournament teams. Two of them were against 10 seed Penn State, all others were versus higher seeded teams.
Crediting Nevada, or dinging Rutgers, for their non-conference schedule makes little sense when you realize their incentives are completely different. From an overall strength of schedule standpoint, Nevada ranked #55 according to KenPom. Rutgers ranked #51. (“But the committee uses the NET and not KenPom!” I hear you yelling. Well, according to the NET Rutgers had the #41 SOS and Nevada’s was #71.)
But, fine. The committee “was trying to find something they could grab onto.” Like Nevada had, with their big wins over, uh… Sam Houston State, Akron, Grand Canyon, and Tulane?
That? That’s the high-powered non-conference schedule that Rutgers needs to have? I count one game against an at-large team, Kansas State. That would match Rutgers, who fell at Miami. And remember that Nevada’s non-conference slate is 13 games while Rutgers’ is 11.
And what do we make of NC State earning a bye out of Dayton on the 11 seed line with a non-conference strength of schedule that ranked 307th? NC State doesn’t get penalized simply because they lost to #9 Kansas instead of #40 Miami? Or Mississippi State, who only played Marquette and TCU in of-note non-conference games? Couple of things here: One, the SEC also only plays 18 league games. Two, Marquette was not expected to be any good and TCU was an assigned opponent in the Big 12-SEC Challenge. Mississippi State very clearly did not schedule aggressively, so rewarding them for their schedule is really rewarding variance. Rutgers opponent Temple was rated #70 in the preseason by Bart Torvik. Mississippi State opponent Marquette was rated #69.
It’s unclear to me why Nevada gets credit for playing a harder schedule than Rutgers in November and December, but Rutgers gets no credit for playing a harder schedule in January and February. The obvious thing to do is look at overall strength of schedule:
Yup. If you average the KenPom and NET strength of schedule ratings, Rutgers played a harder schedule than all six 11 seeds. Individually they were second in both ratings. But a bastardized form of strength of schedule was used as a reason to keep Rutgers out of the field rather than put them in.
Now let’s get to the really bad part. The second part of what Reynolds cited as the reason for Rutgers’ exclusion, the injury to Mawot Mag. What is he saying is that they went all in on the eye test, which is something they’ve said for years that they’re trying to get away from:
They got rid of “how a team finishes” as a metric on the team sheet ages ago. There’s not supposed to be recency bias. There wasn’t any recency bias when it came to sticking Texas A&M on the 7 seed line. Their average seed according to Bracket Matrix, a composite listing of 190 different bracket projections, was 5.37. How come the eye test matters for Rutgers and not Texas A&M?
For that matter, let’s rewind to February 4. Mag got hurt during the first half of Rutgers’ game against Michigan State at Madison Square Garden. You know, your classic home game for Rutgers. He went out with the score 13-12. Rutgers went on to win that game 61-55. How come the clock on how Rutgers looked without Mag starts on February 7? And how did the other bubble teams do since February 4? Bart Torvik’s site lets us check that out:
I wouldn’t say any of these teams burst through the finish line tape with a flourish. Certainly you shouldn’t cite “performance since Mag’s injury” to keep Rutgers out of the field. The Scarlet Knights performed nearly as well as Nevada, NC State, and Providence and better than Pittsburgh but because they had the misfortune of an injury coinciding with this stretch they get left out. Maybe you want to credit Mississippi State for having the best performance at the end of the year, but why should that count any more than when they went 1-8 from December 20 through January 25?
If performance at the end of the season is not a consideration, then it’s not a consideration. Why is there a carve-out for an injury? Creighton’s Ryan Kalkbrenner missed three games in December. The Blue Jays went 0-3. If Kalkbrenner tore his ACL in the Big East tournament, was the committee going to push Creighton to the NIT? They didn’t pass the eye test when he was hurt, right?
The committee makes all this sound and fury about “body of work" and metrics but ultimately it means nothing. It is a field picked by idiots. They decide who feels like a tournament team and who doesn’t and then they cherry pick the needed data to support it. If they decided NC State was the odd team out they’d make the rounds talking about how the Wolfpack only had one Q1 win. Pitt would get left out because they were below .500 in the first two quadrants and had both a Q3 and a Q4 loss. Arizona State would get hit for being two games under .500 in the first two quadrants with a Q4 loss. They could say Nevada is out because they didn’t have a road win over a tournament team.
This year, they decided Rutgers didn’t feel like a tournament team. I’d have a lot more respect for the committee if they just came out and said “Rutgers is out because of vibes” than if they tried to bullshit their way through an explanation, because if they believed in what they were saying Rutgers would be in the field. The committee exists to evaluate resumes and select teams based on those. Nobody needs or wants a committee that selects and excludes teams based on team quality instead of resume quality.
One More Thing: What is a “bad loss?”
Reynolds clearly thought the non-conference strength of schedule and the post-Mag play were the biggest reasons. In an interview with Norlander, the host asked specifically if the four Q3 losses were what kept Rutgers out and Reynolds immediately pivoted to the other talking points.
But let’s talk about the losses quickly, and why saying “Q3 = bad loss” and leaving it there is a gross oversimplification that leads to bad outcomes. First, there is no doubt that Rutgers’ loss at Minnesota is a bad loss. That’s not up for debate. Set that one aside.
The other three losses were a neutral site loss to Temple, a home loss to Seton Hall, and a home loss to Nebraska. First of all, Seton Hall finished barely outside the top 75 in NET at #77. If numbers 75 and 76 performed slightly worse, Seton Hall would suddenly be a Q2 loss and Rutgers would only have three Q3 losses. But nothing about the loss would be materially different. Aside from Rutgers, that collection of teams also beat Houston, Villanova, Creighton, Iowa (twice), Penn State, Maryland, UConn, Providence, and Memphis. Not bad, right? Even though they’re rated similarly, is there no difference between losing to teams with high-major athletes and losing to a team like James Madison or Cal State Fullerton?
If injuries are a consideration, how about the fact Rutgers was missing Paul Mulcahy and Caleb McConnell for the Temple game? Do they get any kind of leeway for that, or is it that we can only knock teams down for being currently without a player? And hey, if that’s the case, why didn’t UCLA get bumped down from the 2 to the 3 line with the news that Jaylen Clark is out for the year?
Rutgers lost by one point to a team just barely in Q3. That’s a bad loss. Pittsburgh losing at home by 25 to West Virginia? That’s Q1, that’s actually a good loss. If all you knew about two teams is that one lost home by a point to Seton Hall and another lost on a neutral floor by 31 to Michigan, which would you think is likely better? Ah, but the Seton Hall loss is a bad Q3 loss and the Michigan loss is a don’t-worry-about-it Q2 loss.
Arizona State lost at home to Colorado. Thank god Colorado is 69th in the NET and not 77th like Seton Hall, otherwise I might think that’s a bad loss. Same goes for losing 97-60 at San Francisco. Personally I feel that a 37 point loss to a 7-9 WCC school is pretty bad, but, nope, it’s Q2. No worries. Nevada lost to Loyola Marymount, Wyoming, San Jose State, and UNLV twice. But of those five only two are quote-unquote bad losses. Florida went 16-16, Seton Hall went 16-15. Both were on the bubble until about mid-February. Luckily Mississippi State’s home loss to Florida isn’t a bad loss like Rutgers’ home loss to Seton Hall. Providence is #blessed that St. John’s wasn’t 0.05% worse and finished 98th instead of 101st in the NET, otherwise their road loss would be a bad Q3 loss.
Part of the point of the NET ratings was to account for this. Beating Rider by one point (Providence) is not the same as beating Rider by 30 points (Rutgers). Can a Q3 loss be better than a Q2 loss? I would say yes. Again, do you want the team that lost by 31 to Michigan or by 1 to Seton Hall? Sorting losses into rigid quadrants removes all nuance. I don’t think the NET is perfect or should be used as a primary selection tool, but part of the reason it’s there is to spit out a rating that accounts for such things. Rutgers ranks higher in the NET than NC State, Mississippi State, Providence, Arizona State, and Pittsburgh. But they had too many “bad losses.”
You know what’s a bad loss? This is a bad loss:
If we’re considering soft factors like how Rutgers played without Mag, how about crediting them for that?
By far, the most comprehensive analysis of the absurdity of the selection process that I've read, seen, and listened to (combined) and I've absorbed several...Thank you for your meticulous detail, comparisons, and contrasts of the data/metrics. Any chance you can submit your nomination to the Selection Committee.
Ira
Rutgers Class of '70