Ten Thoughts for Monday Morning
1) Missouri's seed was surprisingly low when the tournament field was revealed on Sunday evening. There are two ways to look at this: Either Missouri got screwed by the Selection Committee or Missouri screwed itself by losing six of its final nine games, including three of them to teams that aren't going to make the NCAA Tournament. Both are somewhat true.
Of course, Missouri's seed would have been better had it beaten Georgia the first time or Ole Miss either time or Arkansas either time or LSU. Duh. At the same time, Missouri did get a seed that was lower than anyone (except some self-loathing Missouri fans) believed it was going to get at 5 p.m. yesterday. In the final Bracket Matrix published this morning, Missouri's average seed in 180 bracket projections was a 6.8. The actual seed of nine is a differential of -2.2. The only other teams in the field with a negative differential of more than a seed were Wisconsin (1.74), LSU (-1.64), Colgate (-1.06) and Oklahoma State (-1.01). Of the 68 teams in the field, 63 of them were projected within one seed of their actual seed (only San Diego State, which got a positive bump of 1.16, was valued by the committee by more than a full seed line versus the projections).So you can take the attitude that Missouri put itself in a position to be at the mercy of the committee by losing games it shouldn't have lost. And some of that's true. But not to the extent to which it happened.
Had Mizzou been an 8 seed, it STILL would have been the third must underseeded team in the entire field versus projections. But that would have been at least semi-sensible. Missouri as a 9 doesn't even make logical sense. I can already hear you saying "But what difference does it make if you're an 8 or a 9?" Technically none, other than the uniform you wear and the bench you occupy. It's a perception thing. But it also could change the matchups for the entire tournament. If Missouri is the second eight seed rather than the best nine seed, it's only a three-spot difference on the S curve. But it also means a first round game against Georgia Tech and a second round game against Illinois. That's a better draw. It may not change what happens, but there's a more visible path to a couple wins there at least.
In the end, it's not a huge deal because to make any sort of a run in the NCAA Tournament, you're going to have to beat good teams anyway. And once you get past the top 16 overall seeds, you can make the argument of "don't put yourself at the mercy of the committee, it's your fault" a little bit. But my initial reaction that Missouri got hosed by the committee didn't change after looking through some of the numbers.
2) Speaking of some of the numbers, let's talk about Quad 1 games. Missouri played 13 of them in 25 games. That's 52% of the schedule. Here is the list of tournament teams to play at least 13 Quad 1 opponents during the season:
Illinois 17 12-5
Iowa 14 8-6
Ohio State 16 9-7
Kansas 15 7-8
Texas Tech 14 4-10
Texas 14 8-6
Purdue 13 6-7
West Virginia 14 7-7
LSU 13 5-8
Oklahoma State 16 10-6
Wisconsin 15 5-10
Maryland 14 4-10
Oklahoma 14 5-9
Rutgers 13 4-9
Michigan State 15 5-10
The only team of those ranked below Missouri (47) in the NET was Michigan State (70). Now, let's rank those teams by Q1 winning percentage.
Illinois .706
Oklahoma State .625
Iowa .571
Ohio State .563
Missouri .538
West Virginia .500
Kansas .467
Purdue .462
LSU .385
Oklahoma .357
Wisconsin .333
Michigan State .333
Rutgers .308
Maryland .286
Texas Tech .286
Exactly four teams played as many or more Quad 1 games as Missouri and had a better winning percentage. Three of them played in the Big Ten.
3) Let's expand this to Quad 1 and 2 games. Basically, those are the games considered "quality" opponents. Missouri was 9-9, playing 18 quality games in 25 chances. Here is the list of teams to do that:
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