NCAA South collector thread (Virginia #1 seed, Cincy #2)

[dtl5g]

I could maybe sorta think about getting on board with this if we defined "hot". Gonzaga is a 4 seed, 10-0 in their last 10, with an average margin of victory of 16 points. Wichita State is a 4 seed, 8-2 in their last 10. Both were not matched up with UVA, so by definition "not hot"? Kentucky is considered "hot", even though they got blown out on the road by Florida 4 games ago?

And before we go down the road of "Gonzaga/WSU are not in P5 conferences", Arizona's last 6 wins were over KP 40, 48, 110, 241, 84, 94. WSU has a win over #4 KP in that same stretch.

Wichita State's and Gonzaga's schedules are nowhere near the difficult of Arizona's and Kentucky's. So yeah, you sort of have to go down the road of "Gonzaga/WSU are not in P5 conferences".

Gonzaga has won 14 straight since January 20, and the only top 100 ken pom of that entire bunch were BYU 3 times and beating St. Mary's once. Neither of those are even tournament teams. Gonzaga is benefitting from beating Ohio State, Texas, and Creighton in the OOC schedule. Those are their only 3 wins of the year against tournament teams and none of them were true road games (and Ohio State and Texas were not very good in the OOC season).

Wichita State did have a very nice win against Cincinnati, but their schedule was also much easier than Kentucky's or Arizona's. And Arizona had a better record than Wichita State against a much harder schedule.

Just don't think that Wichita State/Gonzaga are comparable to Arizona, sorry. In any event, I would agree that those two teams are the rest of the best 4/5 seeds. And Auburn, Clemson, Ohio State, and West Virginia are pretty much garbage compared to Kentucky/Arizona at this point. I realize that WVU beat us, but they got a very friendly whistle at their place, we were cold, and they were hot, they have gone on a slide since then, and I would absolutely love to play that team again. Zona/UK, I think we can beat them if we play well, but they are the clear 2 best teams of all the 8 teams on the 4/5 lines.

And Vegas agrees with me, for the most part (they have Gonzaga and UK tied). Here are the odds for all the 4/5 seeds to win it all:

Arizona - 12-1
Kentucky - 28-1
Gonzaga - 28-1
WVU - 40-1
Wich. St. - 45-1
Auburn - 65-1
Ohio State 80-1
Clemson 200-1


You guys can talk about their November wins/losses and advanced metrics all you want, but you're ignoring the obvious staring you in the face. We were supposed to get the easiest 4th seed and perhaps the hardest 5th seed. Not the two best teams out of that 8 team group who were both preseason top 5 teams with multiple lottery picks including the obvious #1 overall pick in the NBA draft this spring who has been absolutely on fire.

And if the committee isn't trying to judge based on how GOOD THE TEAMS ACTUALLY ARE NOW (i.e., how the teams have been playing recently and taking into account injuries and returns from suspensions/injuries), then the entire thing may as well be picked by a computer. If that were the case, at least I could be very confident that even if the brackets didn't always end up "fair" it was just because of luck and not because there were a bunch of lobbyists behind the scenes for certain teams rigging it in an attempt to benefit certain teams and hurt others.