Examining the numbers and NCAA tournament selection committee’s reasoning for Michigan State basketball being an 11-seed in a First Four play-in game.
The phrasing of the question piqued Tom Izzo’s ire. “Are you happy with the way the Big Ten was represented?” a radio personality asked Michigan State basketball ’s coach on a Sunday night teleconference. “Nobody it seemed got screwed at all.” «Really?” Izzo quickly quipped. “If that’s what you think, then that’s what I’ll say is good…. You got your opinion, I got mine.” MAKE YOUR PICKS: 2021 NCAA tournament printable bracket Needless to say, Izzo isn’t overjoyed with being in a First Four game for the first time and receiving his program’s lowest seed in 33 NCAA tournament appearances. And he probably won’t like the explanation from the committee chairman, either. Selection Sunday often brings about circular logic and justification of the seeding process from whoever is in charge of the panel which picks the 68-team field. It was Mitch Barnhart’s turn in the crosshairs this year. And the Kentucky athletic director got peppered with a number of questions Sunday night on a teleconference about how MSU went from the Final Four in 2019 to the First Four this season. [ Here’s how and when to watch Michigan, Michigan State in NCAA tournament] And a number of tangential yet pertinent answers about why Syracuse and Utah State were slotted above MSU painted a murky picture as to why the Spartans open Thursday against fellow 11-seed UCLA. The final 68-team rankings put the Aggies at No.41 and the Orange at No.42 as the final two at-large byes, with MSU at No.43. The Spartans became the best of the final four at-large berths. “Their metrics were not great,” Barnhart said. Let’s examine some of those key numbers for MSU (15-12), Syracuse (16-9) and Utah State (20-8). And though Izzo said he never gets debriefed by the committee as to why MSU gets seeded where it has in his 23 straight NCAA appearances, one thing the Hall of Fame coach was clear about — “the NET rankings are a joke,” he said. So let’s start there. The NET, or NCAA Evaluation Tool, is “a result-based feature that rewards teams for beating quality opponents, particularly away from home, as well as an adjusted net efficiency rating.” Barnhart pointed to the Spartans’ road record (3-8) and their 12 losses overall. He then began to cite the NET Rankings for Utah State (38th) and Syracuse (40th) for placing them above the Spartans (70th) on the seed line. EARLY SCOUTING REPORT: Michigan State vs. UCLA in NCAA tournament He said the Aggies “had the best NET among the teams that we had our under-consideration board on Saturday night” and pointed to their two wins over San Diego State, a 6-seed, and another team that missed the field in Colorado State. “They’ve obviously had a remarkable year,” Barnhart said of Utah State. “They’re a talented group of basketball players. We think they were worthy of an at-large bid.” On Syracuse, Barnhart said: “We started comparing their résumés with the final group of teams being considered for the at-large spots. They had a number of wins against the teams that were in the tournament. Their net and their predictive results-based metrics were very favorable against those peers and the people that they were being grouped with at the time and being evaluated with at the time.
