A Look Back at the Bubble

Hopefully, NC State fans will view the bubble discussions for the NCAA tournament selection this year with mild curiosity instead of intense emotional interest. However, I thought it might be interesting to see what kind of trends could be detected from selections made in the recent past.

According to any number of articles that are written every year, the NCAA selection committee uses RPI, Big Wins, Bad Losses, and record over the last 10 games to determine the at-large bids. All of these factors turn into a huge mess that gives the talking heads ammo that they use to fill up air time talking about the schools that were wrongly excluded from the Big Dance.

– Note: I have sympathy for the teams and their fans that that can demonstrate that they got a raw deal from the selection committee. However, I have no sympathy or respect for talking heads or fans who prater on with no facts to support their conclusions.

After looking at several controversies in the recent past, I concluded that the best way to define the NCAA bubble was to start the bubble at the highest RPI of a BCS school to be left out of the tourney. Now this is somewhat arbitrary, but is certainly reasonable for fans of major schools in major conferences…(who don’t care that Mid-Major U may have finished at #35, but didn’t receive a bid). The results are compiled in the following table:

Year	Highest Ranked BCS		Lowest RPI to Receive
	School Left Out		an At-Large Bid
1999	40	Oregon	74	New Mexico
2000	39	Vandy	52	Pepperdine
2001	40	Miss St	49	Ok St
2002	43	Villanova	64	Wyoming
2003	42	Seton Hall	53	NC State
2004	38	LSU	70	Air Force
2005	57	Maryland	65	NC State

– In 2005, there were no major schools between # 42 (Iowa) and #57 (Maryland). Miami (OH) at #43 and was the highest ranked team that did not receive an at-large bid.

Preliminary Conclusions

– Teams with RPI ranking of 1-35 will receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tourney if they do not win their conference championship.
– Teams with RPI rankings of 36-75 have a chance at an at-large bid and can be shown to typically make up the much-discussed NCAA Bubble.
– No team with an RPI ranking of 76+ has received an at-large bid.

The number of teams that move from the bubble into the NCAA tournament will vary based on the number of mid-major conference champions that also have a good RPI ranking. So let’s look at the number of teams selected from RPI #36 through RPI #75 to see if we can come up with some rough thumb-rules to use when discussing how many teams will survive the bubble.

Year	No of At-Large Bids with RPI Ranking
	#36+	#56+
1999	10	1
2000	10	0
2001	7	0
2002	11	1
2003	8	0
2004	9	2
2005	10	2

So we can summarize by saying that on average, about 9 of the 40 bubble teams (by our definition) will receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tourney. However, it is important to note that the large majority of the teams that survived the bubble actually came from #36 – #55.

Implications for ACC Teams
It used to be widely assumed that a .500 ACC record assured that school of a NCAA tourney bid. However, this trend was busted in 2000 when UVa finished 9-7 in the conference and did not receive a bid. Last year, VT finished 8-8 with good wins against Duke, UMd, and NC State…but did not receive a bid either. (I plan to say more about these two instances in a future entry.)

Final Conclusions
-Teams from the six “big� conferences can worry about seeding and not an invitation with an RPI ranking of 35 or better heading into Selection Sunday.
-Teams ranked #36 – #55 have less than a 50-50 chance of getting an at-large bid.
-Teams from #56 – #75 need “friends in high placesâ€? or some late-season heroics to garner an at-large bid.
-Teams ranked below #75 need to start lobbying for a home game in the NIT.

NOTE: I am not suggesting that the RPI calculation is superior to the Sagarin ranking for evaluating which teams deserve an at-large bid. However, the Sagarin archives only include the final calculation after the NCAA tourney is concluded. Thus the available Sagarin numbers do not provide good data on the bubble and the NCAAT selection process.

EDIT
Here’s another way to break down the bubble teams:

Year	Number of At-Large Bids with RPI Ranking
	#36-#45	#46-#55	#56+
1999	5	4	1
2000	5	5	0
2001	5	2	0
2002	6	4	1
2003	5	3	0
2004	5	2	2
2005	7	1	2