Selection Sunday Thoughts


Wisconsin or Pitt for the #4 seed?
I probably should have seen this coming a bit more than I actually did, but about one-third of all responses boiled down to essentially this question.

Last year, with a weak ACC and only one loss, Pitt was the #11 seed. But that should only be a minor indicator rather than direct evidence, because 2019 Pitt is a lot better than 2018 Pitt, both in terms of skill and resume.

2018 Pitt beat Cal Poly (home), Washington (home), Pepperdine (home), and VCU (home). Cal Poly was nearly a host. Washington was extremely young and still working things out – especially in week 3 – and went on to the program’s worst year in a long time (but put things together late and made the Sweet 16 anyway). Pepperdine and VCU were both tourney teams. Pitt’s only loss came in a pretty tight 3-1 loss at a mediocre Duke team that went 16-12 and did not sniff the NCAA tournament.

2019 Pitt beat Penn State (road), Utah (neutral), Cal Poly (neutral), Cincinnati (home), South Carolina (home), Pepperdine (road), and Green Bay (home). Penn State will host. Utah is on the hosting bubble. Cincinnati is a top-25 win. South Carolina should be in, and both Pepperdine and Green Bay are right on the bubble. Not only more meaningful wins, but some of them came away from home, which was a big knock on 2018 Pitt. Not that it means a lot now, but they also beat a then-top 10 Oregon team that had yet to suffer all of the injuries they would go through that derailed their season. Their only loss came at home to the same Penn State they swept two days earlier on the road, 16-14 in the fifth set.

So, we can pretty much dismiss last year as a reference point. The best way to look at it is this: both Wisconsin and Pitt split a pair of matches with Penn State. Yes, Pitt was significantly more dominant in the win and a bit more competitive in the loss, but I doubt that will be the deciding factor. More notably, let’s look at the resumes if you take out all matches vs Penn State.

Wisconsin: 21-5. A combined 4-0 vs Nebraska and Minnesota, which is massive, plus a win vs Purdue (home) for five T25 wins. Four of the losses are very excusable: Baylor (home), Marquette (home) and Washington (home and road). The fact that these came quite a while ago is a positive for the Badgers, but having seen three of them (one in person), it cannot be overstated how bad Wisconsin looked in those matches. Even if people like to call it “preseason” (which irks me to no end, btw), it is very much part of your resume, even if the results are weighed a bit less. The last loss is Ohio State, which finished under .500. None of the other teams contending for a top-4 seed have a loss anywhere near that bad (next worst would be Stanford’s loss at #27 UCLA, which came without Kathryn Plummer).

Pittsburgh: 28-0. Depending on where Louisville lands in the official RPI, Pitt either has two T25 wins or four, which could make a difference – the other two are Utah (neutral) and Cincinnati (home). Other than that, there’s not a lot here, although Pitt surprisingly has about the same number of T50 wins as Wisconsin does – the exact number will depend on the landing spot of teams like Illinois and Pepperdine. For as bad as people like to make it out to be, Pitt’s strength of schedule (42) is actually not that bad – heck, according to RPI, it’s better than Penn State and about as good as Minnesota! Is it realistically tougher than Penn State’s? No, because RPI weighs all games equally, which means it’s just as important to avoid bad opponents as it is to play good ones, which should not be of equal weight. But it’s helpful in debunking the myth that Pitt’s schedule is terrible.

I wouldn’t be that surprised to see Wisconsin get the #4 seed. And I think either way, there’s enough ammo for fans of either team to have a legitimate case that they were wronged. But Pitt should be the #4 seed.

Hosting predictions

  1. Baylor
  2. Texas
  3. Stanford
  4. Pitt
  5. Wisconsin
  6. Nebraska
  7. Kentucky
  8. Florida
  9. Washington
  10. Minnesota
  11. Penn State
  12. Hawaii
  13. Texas A&M
  14. Marquette
  15. Utah
  16. Western Kentucky

Notable teams not hosting: Rice, BYU, Creighton, Missouri, Purdue, Colorado State

Overall bubble

25 of the 32 at-large spots I believe are claimed. If any of these teams misses the tourney, we riot.

  1. Baylor
  2. Nebraska
  3. Florida
  4. Washington
  5. Minnesota
  6. Penn State
  7. Texas A&M
  8. Marquette
  9. Utah
  10. Rice
  11. BYU
  12. Creighton
  13. Missouri
  14. Purdue
  15. Cincinnati
  16. Louisville
  17. UCLA
  18. USC
  19. Georgia
  20. Notre Dame
  21. Oklahoma
  22. UCSB
  23. Florida State
  24. Michigan
  25. Cal Poly

That leaves just seven spots for the following 15 teams:
  • Arizona State
  • California
  • Coastal Carolina
  • Georgia Tech
  • Green Bay
  • Illinois
  • Iowa State
  • Milwaukee
  • Northern Iowa
  • Pepperdine
  • South Carolina
  • South Dakota
  • VCU
  • Washington State
  • Wright State

Bubble picks:

Next four in: Cal Poly, Northern Iowa, South Dakota, Iowa State

Last four in: Washington State, South Carolina, Wright State, California

First four out: Illinois, VCU, Green Bay, Georgia Tech

Next four out: Pepperdine, Arizona State, Coastal Carolina, Milwaukee

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