How much weight can a single game have? This is the question we ask ourselves in today’s edition of Bauertology.
Whenever I, or really any bracketologist, post a new projection, one of the most common complaints received is that “so-and-so shouldn’t be above my team because my team beat them.” This gripe is a fairly shallow understanding of how the bracketology process works, but it’s ultimately understandable; lots of fans that are tuning into the new bracket probably only watch their team’s games, alongside a handful to the biggest games of the week. So, of course that kind of discrepancy would trigger the mind’s alarm bells to go off.
But removing the weight of single-game head-to-head results is an important hurdle to surpass for understanding the bracketology process. In the grand scope of things, that is a single game out of over 5,000 played across an entire season. The result of that game matters much more in the context of how it impacts the teams’ résumés overall, and much less in the context of being a standalone result.
Yes, Maryland just beat Nebraska, but the Cornhuskers are in and the Terrapins are out today, because that one single game does not define the entire season for either team. Nebraska has a Quad 1 road win, a somewhat respectable non-conference strength of schedule, and solid metrics across the board, whereas Maryland maybe fares slightly better metrically but has no worthwhile results to point to, being 0-4 in Q1, 0-4 in true road games, and possessing an NCSOS among the 35 worst in Division I. Here, we see how a single result (Nebraska’s Q1 road win over Creighton) can have much more of a broad impact on the overall résumé than the narrow impact of Maryland beating Nebraska, an expected result that doesn’t have the same kind of influence on either one’s team sheet.
Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. And that’s not just me projecting; the selection committee has said in the past that the result of head-to-head matchups between teams typically holds little significance.
There is an exception to this, though. Sometimes, if two teams are right next to each other on the seed list and it’s a close call, they will look at the head-to-head results between the two and take the one who came out on top. It’s rare, but it does happen.
So, what do you do when Team A is right next to Team B on the seed list, and Team A beat Team B by 30 earlier this season? You put Team A ahead, right? Oh, if only it were that simple.
I expect some Florida fans aren’t going to be too happy to see their Gators exactly one spot behind Tennessee, considering the 73-43 drubbing of the Vols in Gainesville that is still fresh in our memory, given that it occurred just two weeks ago. This discontent may be especially amplified given the bracket scenario these two teams are given, as Tennessee is handed the much more favorable sites of Raleigh and Newark, while Florida would have to pull up the stakes and travel to Cleveland and San Francisco instead.
But you have to hear me out—when I said that the selection committee will sometimes invoke the head-to-head when two teams are right next to each other, I also mentioned two very important words: “close call.” It has to be close. And in this UT-UF scenario, I don’t think it is. Tennessee ranks higher than Florida in four of the six team-sheet metrics, has five Quad 1 wins to Florida’s four, has three Quad 1A wins (all true road contests) to Florida’s one (in Gainesville), and slots about 100 ranks higher in non-conference schedule difficulty. By just about every estimation except that Jan. 7 meeting at the O’Dome, the Volunteers have the superior team sheet. And it’s a wide enough gap where I think the committee would reward the Vols for their overall work, rather than punish them for one off night out of an entire season. Again, this may not be a very popular decision! But I think it’s the right one.
(And, hey, nobody is complaining about Duke being exactly one spot behind Auburn, despite the Blue Devils beating the Tigers in Durham on Dec. 4, because everyone already knows that Auburn has a way stronger résumé. Learn from that example!)
I hope that this explanation is able to give you a little more insight into why head-to-head outcomes are only a minor consideration for bracketology.
In short, please don’t yell at me, Florida fans.
Instead, start your work week on a positive note by checking out the rest of the Bauertology bracket projection for Monday, Jan. 20 and learning where the field of 68 currently sits. Like always, leave your questions, comments, and concerns, if you have ’em!
First off, that’s a very good argument but we still need to have a little chat about that Gator’s/Tenn ordering if you’d like to stop by the nearest vacant parking garage one night.
But, my serious question, what’s up with the locations for the 2 lines? I swear I saw Cleveland as being the location for 2 of the seed lines and now that seems switched? I swear a similar thing happened last year when I discovered your brackets and had to point people here because it was the only one with the correct seeding placements. Is there some condition were certain locations switch around depending on the protected seed teams location or something? Is it something to do with when the play in second game happens?
The way that the first- and second-round sites (also called subregionals, or pods) work is that there are eight cities (this year, they’re Lexington, Raleigh, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Providence, Wichita, Denver, and Seattle) that each get two pods, and the pods that the sites are assigned to are based on true seed order of the top 16 overall teams, determined by location distance.
The selection committee goes down the line from 1 to 16, so Auburn, the #1 overall team, gets their site assigned first. Lexington is the closest available pod to Auburn, so that’s where they go. Then we go down the line (#2 Duke to Raleigh, #3 Alabama to Lexington, #4 Iowa State to Milwaukee, etc.).
The reason Florida is often being predicted to go to Cleveland is because the only closer sites to Gainesville—Lexington and Raleigh—are already taken (both Lexingtons are gone thanks to Auburn and Alabama, and both Raleighs are gone thanks to Duke and Tennessee).
This is why you’ll so often see the 4 seeds sent out west far away from home, since they’re the last of the protected seeds to get assigned a subregional.