February 7, 2014

After trailing most of the second half, Arizona finally snagged the lead for good with 93 seconds left in last night's game against Oregon to avoid dropping their second in a row.  There certainly has been a theme this year of undefeated teams dropping multiple games in a row once the hammer falls on their perfect season...Ohio State, Iowa State, Wisconsin, Oregon... Arizona's victory helps them re-secure the #1 overall spot, thanks to a far superior SOS compared to the other 0- and 1- loss teams.  Zona's SOS is #9, Cuse #72, Wichita St #83, and San Diego St #90.  And, as I noted yesterday, Nova is the only 2-loss team with a sub-30 SOS.  For the record, Michigan St (#12) and Creighton (#27) are the only 3-loss teams with sub-30 SOS.  My point is, although there is an unprecedented number of teams this year with outstanding win-loss records (15 with three or fewer losses), only a handful of them (3-5) have very strong SOS numbers to boot.

Thanks to very slight improvements in SOS numbers, the Gophers climbed back into the field as the last team in.  To give an bit of an illustration of my method, and to get an idea of how closely bunched certain teams are, I've included my ratings for each team in the field and bubble.  These ratings are calculated using a regression formula based on the last three years' tournament selections (weighted by recency), and are normalized so that the top seed = 1.000.  I didn't list the ratings outside of the at-large field, because they don't really follow the same method.

Seed	Team	Rating		Seed	Team	Rating
1	Arizona	1.000		9	Oklahoma State	6.318
1	Syracuse	1.114		9	Iowa	6.432
1	Wichita State	1.427		9	SMU	6.524
1	Villanova	2.224		9	Arizona State	6.763
2	Florida	2.342		10	Toledo	6.871
2	Kansas	2.697		10	Missouri	7.183
2	San Diego State	2.727		10	North Carolina	7.404
2	Cincinnati	3.120		10	Stanford	7.420
3	Michigan State	3.225		11	Oregon	7.473
3	Creighton	3.548		11	Kansas State	7.487
3	Saint Louis	3.605		11	Providence	7.537
3	Iowa State	3.905		11	Xavier	7.612
4	Massachusetts	4.229		12	Indiana State	7.815
4	Gonzaga	4.281		12	Saint Mary's	7.935
4	Duke	4.426		12	Saint Joseph's	7.972
4	Wisconsin	4.517		12	Richmond	8.043
5	Pittsburgh	4.813		12	North Dakota State	8.050
5	Texas	4.869		12	Minnesota	8.087
5	Kentucky	4.917		FFO	Clemson	8.098
5	Michigan	4.993		FFO	Ole Miss	8.159
6	Ohio State	5.008		FFO	California	8.185
6	VCU	5.042		FFO	Florida State	8.186
6	New Mexico	5.091		NFO	BYU	8.490
6	Virginia	5.231		13	Belmont	8.524
7	Southern Miss	5.296		NFO	LSU	8.535
7	UCLA	5.310		NFO	Tennessee	8.554
7	Louisville	5.323		NFO	Dayton	8.688
7	George Washington	5.422
8	Oklahoma	5.932
8	Connecticut	5.953
8	Colorado	6.089
8	Memphis	6.175

13 seeds: Belmont, New Mexico State, Harvard, Stephen F Austin

14 seeds: Green Bay, Delaware, Mercer, Canisius

15 seeds: Georgia State, UC Santa Barbara, North Carolina Central, Boston University

16 seeds: Stony Brook, Bryant, Weber State, Davidson, Alabama State, Radford