Cookie Miller Wasn't Dirty

I've uploaded an Excel spreadsheet with a list of most the bubble teams and their current "Team Sheet" information that the committee looks at, as well as remaining schedules and my own personal comments on their remaining schedules. My data is sourced from WarrenNolan.com. I have the teams ranked in order of Lunardi's most recent Bracketology. I'll try to continue updating this throughout the next month. Note: I highlighted recent wins that will improve a team's standing green. I highlighted losses that will hurt a team's standing blue. If I felt like the win or loss is more or less not impactful, I didn't highlight it. Nebrasketball Bubble.xlsx

Agree with what you say about Minnesota. We deserve more credit for that win. But I think it's still pretty clear that the Big Ten is down. Looking at the bottom five teams in our conference (Wisc, Iowa, Minn, Rutgers, Illinois), here's how many teams from each of the major conferences that I think are on or below their level: Big XII: 0 Big East: 1 (DePaul) SEC: 2 (Ole Miss, Vandy) ACC: 3 (GT, WF, Pitt) Pac-12: 4 (Stan, OSU, Cal, WSU) Maybe not so coincidentally, that's the exact order of the Conference RPI rankings. Maybe the Big Ten isn't "awfully" down, but from top to bottom, it's certainly competing with the Pac-12 as the worst major conference. And the worst major conference typically gets 3-5 bids, which is the current outlook of the Big Ten. It goes to show that the bottom third of a conference plays a role in the rankings, as it should. IMO, both Nebraska and the conference as a whole are being treated fairly. We're just up in arms because we're not used to seeing 20 win seasons, so the thought of a 23 win season falling short is incomprehensible. Let's be honest... 8 of our 11 Big Ten wins are against that bottom five group. If we were looking objectively at this same resume for another team, we'd all be complaining that they haven't had any impressive wins... and it's true. We've beaten one tournament team on our home court. That's it. I agree that we're a tournament-quality team, but the resume does not support it.

His job is incredibly easy. ESPN touts him every year by saying, “He got 65 out of the 68 teams right!” Sounds great and all, but there’s really only about 4-5 toss ups each year and it’s a complete guessing game out of a pool of maybe 8 teams for who will fill those spots. Missing 3 of them is not that impressive.

Good god James Palmer.

I think the article would get a little cluttered if they included every team that could make a run to get in. My guess is they considered a 3-1 finish with that schedule to be a little unrealistic. I don't think it's an indication that PSU has no chance. It's just that they aren't really close to the bubble as of now. Their RPI is 86th. Just did a little research to see if they left off similar teams from other conferences, and they did: - Marquette (RPI 65) - could get in with 4-1 finish - Oregon (RPI 79) - could get in with a 4-2 finish - Boston College (RPI 85) - could get in with 5-1 finish - Oklahoma State (RPI 89) - could get in with 5-1 finish Hate to say it, but the Big Ten just isn't that good this year. The bottom 5 teams are all worse than every team in the Big XII. The middle of the pack (PSU, Indiana, NW, Maryland) is not impressive. The top 3 can match up with just about any conference, and I think the Nebraska-Michigan combo is an okay 4-5 punch, but everything below that line is not good.

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/page/bubblewatch021318/lock-north-carolina-tar-heels-ohio-state-buckeyes As expected, we're listed as "Work Left to Do". The only other Big Ten teams are MSU, Purdue, OSU, and Michigan. Michigan is listed as "Should Be In" and the other three are "Locks". I thought the write-up was pretty much as I expected. They like how we're playing, but are concerned about quality wins.

The difference lies in the fact that we've played a lot of 300+ RPI teams. That makes a big difference in the math, and I'm guessing it's the main culprit for what makes RPI more flawed than other metrics. Like I've seen others say, playing the RPI 320th team isn't much different than playing the 240th team in reality, but for RPI it makes a huge difference. Nonetheless, I'm not that worried about St. Bonaventure. The committee has proven in the past that teams like them who have good RPIs supplemented with a lot of bad losses and a lack of quality wins don't end up getting a bid.

The committee has stated that they don't care about conference records and that they never make a selection based on the idea that a conference deserves another selection. They let conference numbers play out naturally by choosing the teams with the most deserving resumes. They actually look more highly upon quality Non-Con wins because it proves that you can beat teams that you aren't familiar with... because you will be playing such teams in the tournament. Even though the 2012 Pac-12 isn't a perfect comparison because they were obviously worse than this year's B1G, it's a great example to prove that even a major conference champion isn't going to get a boost from their conference placement, so why would a 4th place team? And if you want a more reasonable comparison, the last two conferences to finish 6th in Conference RPI ended up with four (2017 Pac-12) and three (2016 SEC) bids. So no, finishing 4th in conference does not guarantee us anything. I agree with @HuskerActuary. If we finish 23-9 with an RPI in the high 40s (presumably) and zero Quad 1 wins, we'd be about 50/50. We would have ended the season hot, but a loss to Michigan would mitigate that impact. The committee could easily say we beat a lot of average to below-average teams during our win streak, but when it came time to play a tournament team, we lost.

Right up there with Ed Cunningham calling Eric Martin dirty.

Hell, take it a step further. It’s the same as a road win over Villanova.

The Quadrants aren’t perfect, but I think the key point is to compare everyone’s best wins. Fact is we’re lacking them, other bubble teams aren’t. And that should be a major part of the decisions IMO. There was a reddit thread where lots of college basketball fans were impressed with Nebraska. They defended the resume by saying most of our big win opportunities came early when we clearly weren’t playing as well, so it’s not our fault that we’re playing bad teams in February. Hopefully the committee feels the same.

Katz has had some mad respect for us over the last few weeks. Seems to be the first national pundit to see what we're made of. Hopefully it becomes contagious.

Absolutely insane that Providence stayed in the exact same spot as before, and Washington actually moved UP!!! Since the last update, Providence got blown out at home by lowly DePaul and Washington lost TWO games to Oregon and lowly Oregon State.... I think it's hard for Lunardi and other bracketologists to nudge us into the field right now due to our lack of big wins. You look at the Team Sheets of all the bubble teams around us and most have 3-5 Tier 1 wins... and they aren't just limited to road wins against the RPI 75 teams... a lot of them are really impressive wins. I do agree that most brackets should have us in if we beat Maryland, though. More good news is that most of the bubble teams around us have a handful of games they should lose when you look at their schedules. And a lot of them play each other as well. I still think that 23 win mark is the key for us. Would still be really nice if Michigan could have a strong finish to get into that T1 status.

Well what makes it more puzzling is that they gave Purdue a one seed. To me they should probably both be twos.

http://warrennolan.com/basketball/2018/team-sheet?team=Michigan http://warrennolan.com/basketball/2018/team-sheet?team=Nebraska Aside from one day when we beat them, what would you say is more impressive about our resume? You can't just harp on one head-to-head game (in Lincoln, nonetheless). Otherwise just about every team in the NCAA could stake a claim to a bid. Don't get me wrong, I think we're the better team. But the resume is ultimately what matters because it's the easiest way for human minds to compare teams. All of their metrics are far better than ours, they have road wins against MSU and Texas, and another non-con win against UCLA.

Really interesting considering they'll be ranked #1 in the country tomorrow.

I like our odds of beating them at home, which would ultimately make our resume better than theirs. With the way we're playing, I'm not afraid of anyone left on our schedule (especially at PBA). Not saying we can't lose those games, but at this point I think strengthening our wins is the most important factor. And like @royalfan said, getting some eyes on our No Sit Sunday matchup with them will be important. Need to make that game a big win for us, so go Penn State for me. We should be rooting for teams based on the assumption that we're going to win our last four.

Another thanks to @HuskerFever and yourself for doing this. I know we continue to go back and forth on these Michigan arguments, but I can't resist. Even if the committee doesn't care about the tiers, which I think they must care about them to some degree or else they wouldn't have invented them, don't you think it's important that our best win is strengthened? When the committee looks at our resume and sees our best win was at home against a now-unranked Michigan, don't you think that looks really bad? Our lack of big wins is the #1 argument against us right now. That win needs to look as good as it can, especially considering the possibility that our TWO best wins could be against Michigan... which actually leads to another point... chances are we will be playing Michigan for a second time, and chances are we won't be playing Wisconsin for a third time. So Wisconsin winning today would benefit our RPI ever so slightly today, but by the end of the B1G tournament it will likely be neutralized. As for the double bye, we'd have to lose twice in order to relinquish that to Michigan. If we lose two of our last four, we're toast for an at-large bid anyways.

This is great news because it’s by far our best metric ranking. We’re 36th.

It’s definitely a factor. They might not look specifically at your record in your last ten, but they definitely watch games this month to get a feel for what kind of team you’ve become. This will be the biggest factor playing in our favor. This team has the capability of making a run in the tourney. The idea of them being relegated to the NIT makes me nauseous.

Big time last minute comeback by UVA. Going to OT.

I actually love watching their defense. If you watch the game from a defensive perspective it makes it fun.

GBR. Passing the eye test yet again.

I love watching Creighton lose but damn they just got screwed.

West Va just choked hard down the stretch against Okie Lite.