Bracketology 2024/2025

[AuroranHusker]

6 minutes ago, Handy Johnson said:

Optics are Everything & Perception becomes Reality. 

 

Just keep stacking dubs.

 

[hskr4life]

 

The committee has historically favored teams who can win on the road. Huskers 4-5 in true road games, but have looked dominant many times!

[millerhusker]

52 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

 

The committee has historically favored teams who can win on the road. Huskers 4-5 in true road games, but have looked dominant many times!

Last year we did have 12+ point leads on the road against Maryland, Rutgers and Minnesota but couldn’t hold on. Handled Indiana and Michigan by 15 each, and K-State by 16. And blowout wins at neutral sites against Indiana and Oregon State. 

[hskr4life]

I know… I know. We’re Nebrasketball and historically we haven’t had nice things. But check out this tweet.

 

 

Sure there’s a note in there about us. BUT I was more interested in the note about UCLA. “UCLA now T-4th nationally with 4 Q1A wins.”

 

Ladies and Gents, we’ve got 3 Q1A wins already and a win over Maryland (if they’d stay top 15) would give us 4. But, even adding a 5th Q1 win over Maryland or Ohio State puts us in the upper echelon of teams with Q1 wins.

We, unlike other years, have put together quite a strong resume. As long as we don’t stub our toe down the stretch, we’ll have no problem standing out.

 

[kldm64]

9 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

I know… I know. We’re Nebrasketball and historically we haven’t had nice things. But check out this tweet.

 

 

Sure there’s a note in there about us. BUT I was more interested in the note about UCLA. “UCLA now T-4th nationally with 4 Q1A wins.”

 

Ladies and Gents, we’ve got 3 Q1A wins already and a win over Maryland (if they’d stay top 15) would give us 4. But, even adding a 5th Q1 win over Maryland or Ohio State puts us in the upper echelon of teams with Q1 wins.

We, unlike other years, have put together quite a strong resume. As long as we don’t stub our toe down the stretch, we’ll have no problem standing out.

 

 

This also set up for a Nebraska vs Creighton rematch as a 7 vs 10 seed in the first round.

 

[Silverbacked1]

4 hours ago, kldm64 said:

 

This also set up for a Nebraska vs Creighton rematch as a 7 vs 10 seed in the first round.

 

F@@K NOOOOOOOOO

[roscoe]

6 hours ago, kldm64 said:

 

This also set up for a Nebraska vs Creighton rematch as a 7 vs 10 seed in the first round.

 

cu is actually the match-up I like most if things fell that way.

Not sure I want the 2 time defending champs but it would be fun way to get 1st NCAA win and also to end their reign.

Can only imagine Chucky going off against us.

Can't play Maryland because of being conference foe.

 

[Handy Johnson]

Beating Creighton AGAIN in the Sweet Sixteen sounds like music to my ears…! 

[cozrulz]

win the next two and you start thinking 5 or higher.

[hskr4life]

1 hour ago, cozrulz said:

win the next two and you start thinking 5 or higher.

Ran a sim on T-Rank and winning out the regular season put us around the 7 seed line. I think a little higher than that, but there’s some strong resumes we’d have to pass to get up to the 5 seed line or lower.

[GhostOfJoeMcCray]

34 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

Ran a sim on T-Rank and winning out the regular season put us around the 7 seed line. I think a little higher than that, but there’s some strong resumes we’d have to pass to get up to the 5 seed line or lower.

not that there's a very realistic chance of that happening, but hypothetically that would potentially put us at 10-6 in Q1. 

 

Here were the teams last year who had 10 or more Q1 wins:

UConn (13-3) 1 seed

Purdue (12-4) 1 seed

Houston (16-4) 1 seed

Iowa State (10-6) 2 seed

Baylor (10-9) 3 seed

 

So of course if Nebraska pulled that off, we'd be a 7 seed. 

[hskr4life]

27 minutes ago, GhostOfJoeMcCray said:

not that there's a very realistic chance of that happening, but hypothetically that would potentially put us at 10-6 in Q1. 

 

Here were the teams last year who had 10 or more Q1 wins:

UConn (13-3) 1 seed

Purdue (12-4) 1 seed

Houston (16-4) 1 seed

Iowa State (10-6) 2 seed

Baylor (10-9) 3 seed

 

So of course if Nebraska pulled that off, we'd be a 7 seed. 

It had us with 9 Q1 wins, so I’m wondering if someone dropped out on the simulation. Idk who that would be. It would have us beating OSU twice… So that could drop them under 30 NET and our home win would become a Q2.

[roscoe]

Let's beat tOSU tomorrow. 

[hskr4life]

4 minutes ago, roscoe said:

Let's beat tOSU tomorrow. 

 

Ho/Hum, another Q1 opportunity!

[cozrulz]

5 hours ago, hskr4life said:

Ran a sim on T-Rank and winning out the regular season put us around the 7 seed line. I think a little higher than that, but there’s some strong resumes we’d have to pass to get up to the 5 seed line or lower.

 

Only one thing to do then...

[HuskerFever]

On 2/2/2025 at 10:12 PM, hskr4life said:

There's going to be a team or two left out of the B1G tournament with some really good wins.

 

They call those team ones that have "Quality losses." 

[AuroranHusker]

 

[OurDecay]

2 hours ago, AuroranHusker said:

 

 

[millerhusker]

Can't say I really understand our NET ranking. It hasn't risen a whole lot since the start of our win streak. Almost seems like we move up more after a close loss than after a win. Rutgers loses to Maryland and moves up 3 spots. Nebraska beats Ohio State and moves up 2. 

 

Comparing to other teams, Nebraska's resume appears to be top 40 easily. Less than 20 teams in the country have as many quad 1 wins plus road wins. There are 8 teams ahead of Nebraska in the NET that have quad 3/4 losses and none of those teams have as many quad 1 wins as Nebraska. That just doesn't make sense to me. Is it the three blowout losses that are holding back the ranking?  Guess we need to just keep winning. Still five more quad 1 opportunities. 

[hskr4life]

48 minutes ago, millerhusker said:

Can't say I really understand our NET ranking. It hasn't risen a whole lot since the start of our win streak. Almost seems like we move up more after a close loss than after a win. Rutgers loses to Maryland and moves up 3 spots. Nebraska beats Ohio State and moves up 2. 

 

Comparing to other teams, Nebraska's resume appears to be top 40 easily. Less than 20 teams in the country have as many quad 1 wins plus road wins. There are 8 teams ahead of Nebraska in the NET that have quad 3/4 losses and none of those teams have as many quad 1 wins as Nebraska. That just doesn't make sense to me. Is it the three blowout losses that are holding back the ranking?  Guess we need to just keep winning. Still five more quad 1 opportunities. 

Efficiency does play a key role in the NET, but it’s also harder to make big gains (and losses) the later in the year you go because of the amount of data.

 

However— (and you’ll hear the committee say this a lot in interviews over the coming weeks) the NET is just another sorting tool the committee uses and isn’t the be all end all. It’s tough for me to remember that as well sometimes. So really it’s good that there isn’t a ton of movement in some ways because we need our big wins to stay big and our Rutgers and USC losses to stay Q2.

 

Our overall resume is more important than our individual NET and we’ve got some good metrics there. Updated as of this morning….

 

Resume: Used more heavily on what teams get in if I recall correctly.

KPI - 33

SOR- 40

WAB- 38

Average- 37

 

Results: Used more in seeding of teams if I recall correctly.

KenPom- 39

BPI- 43

TRank- 40

Average- 40.6

[hskr4life]

 

By my quick count, we have a .500 record (5-5) against this graphic!

[SkersHoops]

43 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

 

By my quick count, we have a .500 record (5-5) against this graphic!

Only 3 of which were at home.....

[Norm Peterson]

It's hard not to think about the few games that got away during the losing streak. There was the OT loss at Iowa when we were up 15. And 2 one-possession losses at Maryland and vs. Rutgers along with a two-possession loss to USC at home. Give us just a split of those woulda coulda shoulda hads and we'd be sitting at 18-6 (8-5) and tied with Maryland for 6th in conference. But, heck, right now, we're tied with tOSU for 8th, so not bad all things considered.

 

We have 4 home games. I'd consider all of them winnable if we had a fully healthy roster. Berke might not have been a big-time scorer, but he had been our #1 rebounder, so that hurts. I don't know how to handicap the rest of the races if he's on the sidelines or at all slowed.

 

However, if we get him back, I'd say we'd have a good chance to win out at home (with a statement game against Iowa)  and maybe sneak a road win at either Northwestern or Penn State. If we do that, then we'd have won 5 of our last 7 games and would finish at 21-10 (11-9) and you'd have to think, with the resume that would create, we'd for sure be in. That would probably be good enough for a tie for 6th or 7th in conference and a favorable first-round matchup in the conference tournament.

 

Get to 22 wins, and you guys who do this stuff would have to tell me what that does for our seeding.

[hskr4life]

44 minutes ago, Norm Peterson said:

It's hard not to think about the few games that got away during the losing streak. There was the OT loss at Iowa when we were up 15. And 2 one-possession losses at Maryland and vs. Rutgers along with a two-possession loss to USC at home. Give us just a split of those woulda coulda shoulda hads and we'd be sitting at 18-6 (8-5) and tied with Maryland for 6th in conference. But, heck, right now, we're tied with tOSU for 8th, so not bad all things considered.

 

We have 4 home games. I'd consider all of them winnable if we had a fully healthy roster. Berke might not have been a big-time scorer, but he had been our #1 rebounder, so that hurts. I don't know how to handicap the rest of the races if he's on the sidelines or at all slowed.

 

However, if we get him back, I'd say we'd have a good chance to win out at home (with a statement game against Iowa)  and maybe sneak a road win at either Northwestern or Penn State. If we do that, then we'd have won 5 of our last 7 games and would finish at 21-10 (11-9) and you'd have to think, with the resume that would create, we'd for sure be in. That would probably be good enough for a tie for 6th or 7th in conference and a favorable first-round matchup in the conference tournament.

 

Get to 22 wins, and you guys who do this stuff would have to tell me what that does for our seeding.

19 Wins = Bubble/In/Maybe Dayton

20 Wins= Lock probably 9/10 seed

21 Wins = Lock probably 7-9 seed

22 Wins = Lock probably 7 seed. Maybeee 6 but that’s pushing it.

[GhostOfJoeMcCray]

For the bracketology nerds out there, this is a good article talking about how the committee will be using WAB and the Torvik rankings as new metrics this year, in addition to the previously used ones. 

https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2024-11-01/ncaa-division-i-mens-basketball-committee-discusses-team-evaluation-process#:~:text=The adoption of the Torvik,expect to have against the

 

If you look at every one of our metrics right now we sit at: 

 

KPI: 30 (8 seed)

SOR: 40 (10 seed)

WAB: 38 (10 seed)

RES AVG: 36 (9 seed)

BPI: 44 (11 seed)

KP: 39 (10 seed)

TRK: 41 (11 seed)

PRE AVG: 41.3 (11 seed)

 

The committee weighs the resume averages a little stronger than the predictive averages too based on last year's data, so I think we're right on the 9-10 line right now.