Games Of Note/Bubble Watch 2024

[Cazzie22]

10 minutes ago, Bugeaters1 said:

 

5-2 may be more than we are capable.  Hope that I am wrong.  Where is the road victory and Penn St does not appear to be good match up for us?

[hskr4life]

Can’t do my daily bubble watch for tomorrow as I’m out of town at a birthday party for our niece.

 

Its an easy cheering day though… we absolutely need the boys in scarlet and cream to beat the maize and blue.

 

Nothing else really matters.

[Bugeaters1]

Can’t do my daily bubble watch for tomorrow as I’m out of town at a birthday party for our niece.
 
Its an easy cheering day though… we absolutely need the boys in scarlet and cream to beat the maize and blue.
 
Nothing else really matters.

Who has a birthday party on a Husker basketball game day?

Sent from my SM-S911U using Tapatalk

[HuskerActuary]

7 hours ago, hskr4life said:

Can’t do my daily bubble watch for tomorrow as I’m out of town at a birthday party for our niece.

 

Its an easy cheering day though… we absolutely need the boys in scarlet and cream to beat the maize and blue.

 

Nothing else really matters.

Tomorrow is loaded with tournament-impacting games. Other than our game:

 

It hurts to say this, but maybe the most important game of the day is for Creighton to beat Xavier because they probably jump us if they were to beat Creighton. Plus, we played Creighton. 11:30am

 

Another very important game is for Gonzaga to lose to Kentucky, which is the more likely outcome. 3:00pm

 

Arizona plays at Colorado. If Colorado wins, they are favored to make the tournament. If they lose, they are favored to miss it. Huge game. 9:00pm

 

Another rooting interest is for Tennessee to beat Texas A&M, who is in the tourney right now but not by much. 7:00pm

 

Really need Marquette to take care of business hosting St. John's. 5:00pm

 

Oregon hosts Washington State and is favored to win. We need that to happen as Wazzu is an 11 seed on BM. 4:00pm

 

Providence plays Butler. Two bubble teams. Not sure who to root for - whoever loses, we want to keep losing thereafter. 1:00pm

 

There are tons more with moderate impacts but those look like the big ones to me. Apologies if I made any mistakes, I did this flipping between browser tabs on my phone before the zzzz's kick in

Edited February 10 by HuskerActuary
added tipoff times

[HuskerActuary]

One more to add. We want Kansas State to lose at BYU by less than five points, if possible. A win vaults them into bubble territory. A big loss will hurt their NET. They are currently #78 and we want them to be in the top 75. They are 12 point underdogs on BartTorvik with a 12% chance of winning. Game is at 9:00pm

[unl]

9 minutes ago, HuskerActuary said:

One more to add. We want Kansas State to lose at BYU by less than five points, if possible. A win vaults them into bubble territory. A big loss will hurt their NET. They are currently #78 and we want them to be in the top 75. They are 12 point underdogs on BartTorvik with a 12% chance of winning. Game is at 9:00pm

Nebraska and K State resumes are close imo. 5-2 gets it done (probably) for Nebraska which involves 4-0 at home and finding one on the road. But these road games aren’t northwestern, Wisconsin, or even Minnesota. It can be done. Jmo 

[brfrad]

Ohio State double OT win.  Hopefully keeps them as a quad 1.  Gonzaga winning at Kentucky hurts.  If it comes down to Gonzaga and us, we have no chance.  Now, rooting for Kansas State to keep it close.

[hskr4life]

6 minutes ago, brfrad said:

Ohio State double OT win.  Hopefully keeps them as a quad 1.  Gonzaga winning at Kentucky hurts.  If it comes down to Gonzaga and us, we have no chance.  Now, rooting for Kansas State to keep it close.

Lot of time left for teams super close to stumble (including us).  I’m not super worried about bubble teams just yet.  It’s fun to see them lose, but they too have so many opportunities left.  Nice thing is, there’s so many bubble teams right now that we usually end each day with at least 1 losing!  Lol!

[OmahaHusker]

10 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

Lot of time left for teams super close to stumble (including us).  I’m not super worried about bubble teams just yet.  It’s fun to see them lose, but they too have so many opportunities left.  Nice thing is, there’s so many bubble teams right now that we usually end each day with at least 1 losing!  Lol!

The worst week is conference tourney/bid stealer week. That’s when the worrying really hits a peak. 

[hskr4life]

30 minutes ago, OmahaHusker said:

The worst week is conference tourney/bid stealer week. That’s when the worrying really hits a peak. 

Fingers crossed we do what we need to do before then so we can sit back and watch others worry.

[HuskerFever]

Just now, hskr4life said:

Fingers crossed we do what we need to do before then so we can sit back and watch others worry.

 

Just wish we could be like blue bloods some years when they have a record like 15-15 and they're asking "which seed?"

[Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty]

14 hours ago, HuskerActuary said:

One more to add. We want Kansas State to lose at BYU by less than five points, if possible. A win vaults them into bubble territory. A big loss will hurt their NET. They are currently #78 and we want them to be in the top 75. They are 12 point underdogs on BartTorvik with a 12% chance of winning. Game is at 9:00pm

We want K-State to win as much as possible. The boost it gives to our resume is well worth the tradeoff of them getting into the bubble picture.

 

If we end up without another road win, it would be huge if K-State could somehow find their way into the 50s in NET.

Edited February 11 by Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty

[HuskerActuary]

9 minutes ago, Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty said:

We want K-State to win as much as possible. The boost it gives to our resume is well worth the tradeoff of them getting into the bubble picture.

 

If we end up without another road win, it would be huge if K-State could somehow find their way into the 50s in NET.

Really? I don't agree with that if it means they actually jump us in the bubble rankings. There are only a certain number of at large spots up for grabs. 

[Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty]

BYU is such a prime example of how bad all the predictive metrics are. Here’s a snapshot of their resume with our resume in parentheses.

 

Q1: 3-5 (3-5)

Q2: 2-1 (3-3)

Q3: 2-0 (4-0)

Q4: 9-0 (7-0)

Road: 2-4 (1-7)

NET SOS: 45 (42)

 

Results metrics:

KPI: 38 (35)

SOR: 26 (37)

 

Getting away from the numbers, if you subjectively compare their best wins to ours, ours are better. And their better road record is thanks to playing a Q3 road game, a luxury we don’t have.

 

So… very similar resumes. I think ours is better, but I wouldn’t complain if BYU was ahead of us by a seed line.

 

But nope… thanks to their insane predictive metrics (NET 8, KenPom 11, BPI 15) they are a 5 seed in most brackets!

 

So why are their predictive metrics so good? The answer is simple, and the answer is stupid. They inflated their efficiency ratings by winning a handful of Q4 games by 40-50 points. That’s right. They’re a 5 seed and we’re a bubble team because they blew out the worst D-1 teams by more than we did. Absurd.

[Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty]

2 minutes ago, HuskerActuary said:

Really? I don't agree with that if it means they actually jump us in the bubble rankings. There are only a certain number of at large spots up for grabs. 

The biggest knock against us right now is our miserable road performance. If our lone win is vs. #55 rather than #85, that likely pushes us ahead of multiple teams in the pecking order. A fine tradeoff if that means K-State jumps us.

[tcp]

you can tell we've been in a lengthy dry spell! lots of tourney drama  and still a good chunk of season left. this is a fan base stoked to talk ncaa this late in the season.

[AuroranHusker]

18 minutes ago, tcp said:

you can tell we've been in a lengthy dry spell! lots of tourney drama  and still a good chunk of season left. this is a fan base stoked to talk ncaa this late in the season.

 

HECK YEAH!

 

[AuroranHusker]

K-St. lost by only SIX at BYU, 72-66. That's a good result, a close loss on the road. It should be somewhat helpful to getting NU another Q1 win, eventually, if K-St. keeps helping us.

[brfrad]

6 hours ago, Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty said:

 

 

So why are their predictive metrics so good? The answer is simple, and the answer is stupid. They inflated their efficiency ratings by winning a handful of Q4 games by 40-50 points. That’s right. They’re a 5 seed and we’re a bubble team because they blew out the worst D-1 teams by more than we did. Absurd.

It also doesn't help that we've lost by an average of 15 points in quad 1 losses, and 12 points in quad 2 losses.

 

BYU has lost by an average of 8 points in quad 1 games, and by 11 in their only quad 2 loss.

[HuskerActuary]

I'll let hskr4life do his full update later, but I took a quick look.

 

Seton Hall plays at Villanova today. Not sure who we want to win given Seton Hall is barely in and Villanova is out by a handful of teams. A Villanova would put them both closer to the cut line which could be good or bad or bad for us. Maybe an expert can weigh in.

 

Otherwise, it's straightforward to root for Penn St over Northwestern today (currently a 9 seed on Bracket Matrix). Noon CT tip.

 

And just for the fun of it, although less likely to be impactful, you can root for North Texas over SMU (1:00pm) and Wichita State over Florida Atlantic (11:00am) as well.

[unl]

This is a helpful guide. 

[hskr4life]

KState jumps to #76 in the NET FWIW.

[hskr4life]

Can’t do a full update as we’re on the road heading back from the party.  Here’s some rooting interests and why…

 

Wichita St over FAU.  FAU not close to bubble right now, but a few bad losses could put them there and Memphis is close to bubble.

 

Villanova over Seton Hall.  Personal opinion here, but Nova has more work to do than Hall.  With so much season left, id rather have more bubble teams than locks.

 

PSU over NW.  They are solidly a Q2 win/ Q3 loss right now, so a loss puts them in more bubbly territory.

 

Tulane over Memphis.  Any Memphis loss is huge as that would knock them down a peg on the at large pool.

 

Iowa over Minny.  Personal opinion, but I’d rather finish ahead of Minny in the standings.  Don’t want that used against us as a talking point.

[Vinny]

I understand NW could easily slide to bubble territory, but don’t we want B1G teams that we play home and away to just keep winning? That way it helps our metrics doubly with each win? Same for Minnesota, but they’re not on the bubble (yet?), so we definitely want them winning?

 

I also kind of have the feeling that NW falling out of the tourney could be really bad for us. They’re only one bubble team, but they change the perception of the whole B1G if they fall out.
 

Then people will wondering if the B1G is a four bid league this year. Less wins against tourney teams for everyone in the league if they fall out, all the metrics have us and NW so close that if one of us falls out, it feels more like the other should be out too.  

 

PSU can lose all they want. I want our NW win to keep being a good win, and our NW loss to keep being a good loss.

 

The bubble is weird. This is probably my longest post ever on this site and I could just keep going in circles.

[Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty]

3 hours ago, brfrad said:

It also doesn't help that we've lost by an average of 15 points in quad 1 losses, and 12 points in quad 2 losses.

 

BYU has lost by an average of 8 points in quad 1 games, and by 11 in their only quad 2 loss.

Agree, that is another reason. I just wholeheartedly disagree with that being a factor in a ranking, at least to the extent that two teams with extremely similar wins and losses are ranked 50 spots apart.

 

What happens in the final minutes of a game that’s already essentially over should have no bearing on how a team is assessed. But these predictive metrics that care so much about efficiency ratings assign meaning to meaningless basketball.

 

Heck, we could see how hesitant Fred was last night to put in the scrubs. He only did it after Howard opted to do it, because he knew it was important for our metrics to make sure a 20 point lead didn’t dwindle to 12. Absurdity.