Interesting analysis from KenPom re: Illinois State

[NUCat320]

Nothing groundbreaking, but a piece from Slate demonstrating how tough the road to an at-large is for a team like Illinois State. The culprit: "bad losses" as a metric without evaluating location, degree of badness, and frequency of potential "bad loss" games.

You could argue that it also makes the indirect case for scheduling the bottom 50.

http://slate.me/2mEYgPi

Also, who cares. The Cats are dancing!!

 

[pawildcat]

It's tough for the mid-majors. And then you have Duke Vitale whining about how a 14-loss Syracuse team that barely won a game away from the Carrier Dome was left out this year. And I thought Michigan State, Izzo or no Izzo, was a very questionable choice. They were up-and-down most of the year and had some bad losses.

 

[NJCat]

It's tough for the mid-majors. And then you have Duke Vitale whining about how a 14-loss Syracuse team that barely won a game away from the Carrier Dome was left out this year. And I thought Michigan State, Izzo or no Izzo, was a very questionable choice. They were up-and-down most of the year and had some bad losses.

Disagree about MSU. They played an incredibly difficult OOC schedule early, lst Bridges to injury for a few games, but came on strong. They passed the eye test for me.

 

[Jonny2TheP]

Disagree about MSU. They played an incredibly difficult OOC schedule early, lst Bridges to injury for a few games, but came on strong. They passed the eye test for me.

To play devil's advocate, eye test is not something the committee is referencing (so they say). If it was all about eye test, the field would be a lot different. It's the balance between good wins, bad losses, and strength of schedule. When you have several variables that are coming into play and there isn't a true formula that's followed, there are always going to be inconsistencies and decisions that leave people scratching their head. I think that's an intentional part of the design.