Hoops HD

We are less than 2 weeks until Selection Sunday, which means that the 10-member NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee is working hard to place 68 of the best teams in the nation into a tidy little bracket. The Committee revealed its top-16 teams in a sneak preview last month: while it was just a snapshot, 3 of the #1 seeds from last year’s preview DID end up becoming #1 seeds last Selection Sunday (Villanova/Virginia/Xavier). It served as a peek behind the curtain to see what the Committee was thinking and what criteria they value during their analysis of every team’s body of work. Earlier today HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Selection Committee member Mike O’Brien about the new NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) and the importance of scheduling.

How many hours/day will you be working on selection stuff next week? The committee will convene in New York City on Tuesday. There is no specific # of hours involved but the selection process will take up the entire week.  I will tell you that the Committee and NCAA staff truly work together throughout the many months leading up to the tournament. It is an incredibly committed group.

Which primary conferences are you assigned to this year, and how much weight do you give to input from the representatives of those conferences? My primary conferences are the Ivy League/Mountain West/Patriot League. I count on the reps from those conferences to provide us with any data that we might not ordinarily see (injuries/suspensions/etc.). The conferences have really done a nice job going above and beyond to assist us.

I know that you are not allowed to vote for teams from your own conference, but as someone whose school has faced Buffalo twice since New Year’s Day, what makes the Bulls such a great team? They are very experienced, having been in the NCAA tourney last year. They are athletic and are great in transition. They play nice half-court defense and are having a terrific season. Additionally, being in the top-25 for several weeks has been a positive for the MAC: our league is as good as it has ever been (#8 out of 32 in the nation) and having a top-25 team has given us our league some well-deserved publicity.

Your Rockets are wrapping up their 8th straight season with a winning record: how proud are you of everything that Coach Tod Kowalczyk has accomplished? I am really proud of what Tod has done in creating a program: not only the competition piece but academically as well. We have 66 MAC wins in the past 5 years, which is #2 in the league. When you look at what he inherited, Tod has done some wonderful things both for the basketball program as well as the university.

What are the major categories that have the biggest impact on a team’s seed (big road win, bad home loss, other), and why are they more important than other categories? You look at all of it. Scheduling is a part of the process: road wins are hard to get (especially in your league) and on the flip side if you have a bad home loss that gets taken into account as well. You cannot pinpoint 1 specific category because there are so many different data points involved.

If a team wants to make the NCAA tourney, are they better off scheduling decent teams who they think they can beat, or great teams who they can only hope to upset, or a nice mix of both, or other? We talk about the “intent to schedule”: you might schedule a team that you expect to have a nice year but it does not always turn out that way. We look at who you played in terms of wins/losses, but also your attempt to schedule good opponents.

Last season the Committee implemented a 4-tier system that emphasizes the location of wins/losses: is there a specific quadrant that you are drawn to the most (lots of Quad 1 wins, an absence of Quad 4 losses, other)? We have a lot of data so we look at all of the quadrants and the various details on the team(s) that are being looked at.

Committee members are able to see many other rankings on the official team sheets (such as BPI/KPI/KenPom) in addition to the traditional ones: how have you made use of these advanced metrics, and do you have a favorite 1? I cannot say that I have a favorite 1. I look at all of them on occasion to see how they compare to 1 another as well as how they compare to the NET. It is interesting to see where specific teams are located within different metrics.

Last August the NCAA announced that the RPI’s role in the selection process would be replaced by the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET), which includes metrics such as scoring margin (capped at 10 PPG) and net offensive/defensive efficiency: why should a team like Gonzaga not be rewarded for outscoring its opponents by 25+ PPG? We look at wins/losses and where the games are played. The NET has been a tool that has really assisted our process and the consensus is that it has proven to be better than what we have used in the past.

What role do injuries (such as Justin Robinson)/suspensions (such as Chris Clarke) have on the seeding of a team like Virginia Tech (if any)? We certainly look at those types of things: we want to see if a team was playing at full-strength during their wins/losses.

In February the Committee unveiled its top-16 seeds: what was the reaction like to this year’s unveiling, and what was the most interesting part of this year’s snapshot? I think that it was positive. It reminds people that March Madness is right around the corner and lends some more excitement. The seeding can change so quickly (and always does) but the process was good for the Committee and very detailed.