Cool Hand Lucroy

Aside from the offensive boards we gave up, some key first half FT misses stung. Janicki missed a pair in the second half. Just fine fine margins in March. Could go round and round all day. We played a B game, they had an A one. That's probably the hottest team in the country save for Colorado State and Florida.

Wow. What a crazy finish. Hated the last sequence. Rather have a step-back three. At least you get it clean with a chance to win. The end of the first half and the offensive glass killed them. That's March. They couldn't defend, BYU hit more shots, and the late run failed. Not bothered, really. BYU was better. Chippy game comes with the stakes. The F2 didn't seem dirty to me. McGee got burned on one of those too early in the year. All year, I felt like this team was really good, but something was missing. Call it magic, call it confidence, I don't know. Tonje and Blackwell are stars. They needed a third guy to really take the reins, and they just didn't have it.

Yup. Crowl did bad.

Pretty happy to only be down 11, but no excuse for Crowl to shoot a jump hook instead of holding for the last shot. Worst case scenario you're down 8. We lose by 3, that's a huge deal. BYU was clearly the better team that half. Better shot making and more fluidity. We obviously can't win shooting like this, but the good news is this is going to be played in the 80s or 90s. Lots of possessions left. I would not feel safe with an 11-point halftime lead.

Okay, but can they be here to go to school? Because NIL is not a salary (the NCAA has been pretty clear on this point). It's simply the benefit of being good at sports. These guys are not employees. They're students, right? I get the law is designed to clearly separate "study" from "employment" and NIL's financial volume seems to put it into the latter category. But I would also imagine somebody could make a claim in court that federal requirements around "work" and "active income" don't apply to NIL and have a decent shot at a favorable ruling. Not disagreeing here, really. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong and others have a more specific understanding of the case law. It just looks to me like you can maintain an F-1 visa if your income is passive. A lot of NIL deals are structured that way, or at least close to it, so it seems this is an issue we'll see in the courts at some point. Lots of ambiguity. I'm also skeptical that whichever gutted federal department is assigned student visa oversight is ever going to be competent enough to effectively punish international athletes, and there seems to me zero chance this administration has any political interest in doing so, even if they were capable of actually making competent policy on these layered and complicated issues. Seems like a risk I'd be willing to take if I'm a university, or even a high-major hooper.

Yeah, it's a fun game because BYU is basically us. They play offense at a similar level, at close to the same pace (a little faster), and they play a lot of guys, most of whom can shoot. They are deeper. We guard much better. In theory, it should be a good matchup for us. We're about at their level in terms of offensive efficiency and guard way better. 1.5 as a line seems too low to me, I'd take UW to cover while acknowledging anything can happen. You've got to be a pretty big believer in altitude to make it basically a toss-up. I'd guess KenPom has us favored by 3-4.

I think the top 4 seed lines were unusually strong this year, and the 13-16 lines unusually weak. Perhaps having to do with transfer portal just making the Power 5 leagues a lot deeper. Looking at the set matchups for Sat/Sun, you'd think there'd be at least one or two true surprises. Not a lot of fluky wins in the final 32 so far. Xavier-Illinois might be the game of the round. Something to stay up for anyway.

I hope this proves true, but it's still very possible we look up and have 4 of the final 8 (or even Final Four) teams from the SEC. All the clearly good teams are winning, and Vandy looks in good shape as an underdog (a win for them would set up an all-SEC round of 32 matchup with Bama), and Ole Miss is currently hammering UNC. When you have 14 teams in the field, you have a lot of room to lose.

I think it's hilarious that the only SEC team to win a game so far is coached by the guy a lot of folks declared officially done for like two months ago. Love to see Drake finally getting a win in the big bracket. That program and that league deserve it, wherever McCollum ends up. UC San Diego looks entirely unprepared for Wolf and Goldin. Yikes. Long way to go, but adjustments will be needed if that's going to become a game.

I was right there with you. Clemson was sleepwalking for the first 25 minutes there. They made it...kind of interesting? Looked like McNeese was just perfectly ready to run that thing down. Have to say, I've also been impressed with BYU's defense. VCU is not great offensively, but they have guys who can hurt you and usually BYU struggles with teams on the more physical side. I still think BYU is a good matchup for us, but they've also been playing hot lately and will have the geography advantage. Should be a very good second round game.

This is where the plus/minus of our bracketing slot comes in. I thought we looked a little bit sluggish, just getting our feet under us most of the half. Against a better 14, we might be down or tied. But Montana is too little. We can get whatever we want inside, and get open looks on kick outs. If we lose, it'll be because we fall asleep on defense and fail to hit shots (or Montana gets absurdly hot). Just don't think they can hang for another 20 minutes.

I'm more optimistic on Ole Miss than lots of folks, I think, mainly because of Beard's track record in the NCAAT. I also think last night was way more about SDSU than UNC. North Carolina has not beaten a single team as good as Ole Miss this year. They beat UCLA on a neutral. That's as close as they get. I'd take Ole Miss over UCLA on a neutral.

Well, one of these teams clearly doesn't belong. I guess we were all right. SDSU's inability to be any kind of threat offensively is a killer here. UNC shooting the lights out doesn't help. SDSU was going to have to win this one in the 60s in all likelihood. Good bye to that.

Sounds like 5 mil a year. I would say coaching at Indiana is a hard way to earn that much money, but I get the appeal. Great opening NCAA game. Hope SDSU-UNC delivers more of the goods. SDSU gets after you, but, man, is their offense ugly. At least those low-tempo Badger teams of the Bennett era were efficient. They just didn't play a lot of possessions. This Aztecs squad has to win with defense. I'd like to see them do it.

Count me worried about this pitching staff against a tough opening stretch.

Good hire for IU. I think that's an impossible job, so I hope DeVries got paid.

Pomeroy posted on Bluesky an interesting idea. Basically, with one exception (Xavier instead of West Virginia), Wins Above Bubble predicted the selected teams. Pomeroy just argued that the committee should just let WAB decide who qualifies for the tournament. It becomes a computerized calculation, and then the committee can focus on seeding and bracketing fairly. I get that that will get a lot of blowback. And I'm on record as thinking UNC's inclusion was pretty bad, which Pomeroy finds generally okay because of its grounding in WAB. I'm not sold yet, but I'm phenomenally curious about it. It works for hockey, right? The teams are selected entirely based on a mathematical formula (that's duplicated in the Pairwise rankings)? Obviously, you'd need to make sure WAB, or whatever metric you use is sophisticated enough. 356 teams is a lot. But it can't be as hard to solve as chess, right? Or Go? My one thought about why it might work: the distinction between the 37th or 38th at-large (in) and the 39th one is almost always really arbitrary and clumsy. If you just make that process transparent and quantitative, you free up the committee to do the harder work of properly seeding and bracketing. That deserves the bulk of the time because it's the hardest process, and it has the most impact on the actual tournament results.

Love these thoughtful posts. Like @Oxy said, how you weight the predictive versus resume-based metrics is a major challenge. You can justify all kinds of ways of doing it, and every committee member probably has their own unique weighting. It's impossible to have consistent logic given the way the committee selects and seeds the tournament. I wish we'd just acknowledge that, rather than having the committee chair go on TV and spout what is essentially a lot of nonsense and bad-faith arguments. It's an imperfect process. You just hope to do it as fairly as possible. I have some issues with seeding in several places, but that always happens. I'll defend the "UNC doesn't belong" position quite hard, though. That feels like an avoidable error. I mean, if 8-0 in Quad 2 is what gets you into the tourney, that's crazy. Indiana was undefeated in Q2 with FOUR TIMES as many Q1 wins. Heck, Iowa went 6-0 in Q2 with more Q1 wins than UNC. To be fair, I would make the same critique of Xavier. I guess they gave the Musketeers a lot of leeway for the Fremantle injury. UNC has no such excuse. It's always hard to determine those last four spots. Usually, it's six of one, half dozen of another. Here, though, I think this is clearly the less defensible options, and it's needlessly complicated by the committee chair being the UNC AD. WVU and Indiana have serious gripes. On a more positive note, both BYU and VCU are good teams. VCU is better than a typical eleven, but we're very similar to BYU, only we play better defense. And we defend at about the level of VCU, only we play better offense. Sure, you'd prefer to have worse teams in there. I think there are worse 6s and 11s. But matchup wise, these are pretty decent draws. And we'll be favored against either team, probably by two possessions. Narrow margins in March, but this is what you want.

I have to admit to being wrong. Selection committee chair said on CBSSN that there WAS a contingency bracket based on the B1G title game. No idea where it had the Badgers, and that genuinely shocks me, but there it is. I was wrong. On the game: We got the shots we wanted but didn't make them. Period, end of story. If I had to pick one thing, tied at 53-53 with 1:34 left, Michigan got two free throws after three possessions and gave the ball back to Wisconsin with 46 secs left (might have been 49?). I thought we had chances there, but just couldn't come away with the ball. A few other rebounds off missed free throws helped Michigan too. Not much else to say. Sometimes, that's basketball. On the Badgers NCAA tourney spot: I hate playing Thursday afternoon at altitude when this team looked gassed today. Oof. And BYU goes ten deep and also plays its home games at altitude (albeit maybe 800 ft. lower than Denver). That's pretty brutal. I also think VCU is closer to an 8 than an 11 (top 30 KenPom), so our pod has three LEGIT S16 contenders. Good news is Montana is rated as the worst 14 by far. More than that, they'd be the worst 15 seed per Pomeroy. That's a misseeded team. Clearly benefits Wisconsin. Losing to them would be horrendous. We can lose to anyone shooting 20 percent from the field, but Montana will rightfully be a massive dog. Bigger picture, no one in this region scares me, especially if Duke isn't healthy. Alabama is three-point dependent and has been inconsistent, plus they are a good matchup for us. They'll let us run and get looks. That would come down to who shoots better. Everyone else in the top half is about what you'd expect, and I'm thrilled to avoid a team like Tennessee or even Saint John's. So, some good, some bad. Would I switch with Iowa State given the chance? I don't know. Lipscomb is BY FAR the best 14, so the odds of a first round upset would go up, but I like the placement in Milwaukee and Friday game much better. Plus, I'd rather face Ole Miss or NC than BYU. But I'd want no part of SDSU. Probably a wash in the end. Overall bracket thoughts: The committee really leaned into the advanced metrics this year. That's the only way you can justify UNC in the field. They went 1-12 in Q1 and have a Q3 loss. Come on, man. Meanwhile, you're leaving out a West Virginia team with 6 Q1 wins and a nearly identical Wins Above Bubble rank. No idea how you justify that other than committee logic. Similar story with the Big Ten seedings. Purdue's 4, Michigan's 5, and Illinois' 6 are all roughly in line with their predictive numbers. So is Maryland's 4, though I think that's a miss. Watching Purdue lately, I'm licking my chops if I'm in that pod, but maybe that's a team that benefits getting outside the B1G. I think the committee booted UNC and otherwise made pretty consistent choices. Xavier getting in surprises me, given how little regard the Big East had. I'd have WV and Indiana ahead of both them and NC. But at that point in the bracket, I guess you're just talking about kinds of mediocrity. To close on the Badgers, the NCAAT's generally tighter whistle and more free-flowing style SHOULD help. I also have a lot of faith in our scout, so getting out of the B1G will hopefully pay dividends. Best time of the sports year, man. Let's go. EDIT: to add that the VCU and Gonzaga seeds are terrible. How the committee continues to not understand small conferences is baffling. Why you apply predictives so hard to schools like UNC or Illinois (who really doesn't have a six-seed profile, I don't think) but can't to Gonzaga or VCU is kind of stunning.

Could be wrong, but everything I know about the selection committee suggests that today's result will ZERO bearing on where the Badgers are bracketed. Just not enough time to build a contingency bracket that only changes where one 3-seed is playing. Now, there is probably a contingency bracket pending the UAB-Memphis game. That result will impact where the Badgers are (potentially anyway) more than their own.

Two quick thoughts on end-of-game scenarios: 1) I've never understood why more teams don't try to throw up high, long passes/shots when up 1 or 2 late and under ten seconds left, kind of like a coffin-corner punt. That's going to take up like 3-4 seconds, you could try to tap it back up, and even if the other team grabs it, they'd still have to go length of floor in remaining time. ESPECIALLY with like 5 seconds left, you could take up the whole clock. We've figured out the backtap on the offensive glass; it's the same principle. I get being worried about loose ball fouls, and it seems simple to make free throws, but I still think it's worth some thought. 2) Even more, I don't understand why teams up three late don't pull out their down three late defense. Like, full-court press and trap. I get the risk of a scramble situation, but you're also fine with a foul there. And you can cause a lot of time to run off. Teams SHOULD do this more. I bring these up only because Gard always seems unsure and hesitant up three late. I'm a full-on foul person, so it always makes me nervous when the Badgers find themselves in that situation. I am deeply scarred from the Florida game when they made a free throw to go up 2 and then got beat on a buzzer three. Just miss the free throw! Tap it around! Okay. Now, let's win the Big Ten.

The technical on Blackwell in the first half was weird, and there were some small whistles late while bigger stuff got let go, but I thought the officiating ended up being pretty good overall. At the very least, it was even. What a win for the Badgers. Their best of the year, and a great time for it. Like I said, I don't think they can get up to a 2 no matter what (and the committee cares zero about the B1G title game given it ends like 10 minutes before the bracket is released), but hard to see them slipping to a 4 now. More importantly, they get to play for a banner. Always fun. And hopefully a chance to redeem a mediocre performance at this time last year. It'll be Michigan, and they scare me less than Maryland, though only by a little. I think we match up okay with Goldin and Wolf and have better guards. Might have to get some minutes from Ilver, or go small with Amos and throw some athleticism at them. I'll say this: Tonje is a on a heater, and if Michigan sells out on him, Blackwell will hurt them. Whatever the case, team is playing very well after a really disappointing regular season finale. Maybe the PSU game really taught the lesson I thought the Oregon game would. That win today was the toughest we've looked all year.

Makes Gonzaga and Saint Mary's (especially Saint Mary's) all the more impressive. Randy Bennett should be a Hall of Famer. I know he's only got the one Sweet 16, but winning in that place for this long is a crazy accomplishment. Between them and Gonzaga, you have two schools that just decided to be great at men's basketball and made it happen. Major respect for that. Wish more schools would forget about football and follow that model. It's better for the whole college IMO.

Coaching notes: Fran gone so quickly surprises me a little, but guessing pretty much everyone was ready to move on from that situation. It was time. Feel kind of bad for Drake. They go Medved, Devries, McCollum, and lose all three to bigger jobs (in all likelihood). That's gotta sting for the Valley, still a really darn good basketball conference that just can't quite find the breakthrough NCAA tourney wins a la Gonzaga or the A-10 schools. Badger notes: Wow. What a shooting performance. Got a lot of open looks and knocked them down. A dominating Q1 win like that probably gets them to the 3 line, I would think. I doubt a two is possible, and it's hard to see an MSU loss knocking them back to a 4. Maybe they get moved down due to bracketing principles or for geographic purposes, but I'll say 3 and be pretty confident about it. Will be a fun afternoon tomorrow. Badgers got to rest some guys, MSU had to grind, maybe that helps a little at the margins. Today definitely showed what this team can do when they're clicking. They just demolish even good teams.

Good points, all. Bennett is interesting. I'm surprised Hoiberg hasn't worked out that well at Nebraska--that seemed like a slam dunk hire to me at the time. Minnesota has been a "sleeping giant" forever, it seems, to the point that maybe they just aren't a giant at all. I'm sure there are a bunch of factors, but being one of the few, true big-city schools in the league (even after adding the two LA schools) must be a challenge. The depth of care for Gopher men's basketball just doesn't run all that deep (four years in the TC taught me that), and maybe no coach can overcome that. McCollum will be a hot commodity. Maybe Medved too, who has Midwest connections with Drake and is a Minneapolis native. Word I hear from some Iowa friends (and from living relatively nearby) is that Fran's exit is...complicated. Everyone seems to agree it's time for a change, but with Caitlin Clark dating a McCaffery, it's a little awkward. Back to the main attraction, I'm so pumped for tomorrow. Weekday afternoon hoops. A big game. It'll really feel like March. Glad Klesmit and Winter got to ease back in a little.