Blind Resume: Which Bubble Teams Are Most Deserving of 2022 NCAA Tournament Bid?

How do Trayce Jackson-Davis and Indiana stack up against others on the bubble?Rebecca S. Gratz/Associated Press

Championship Week in men’s college basketball means the time has finally come for America’s favorite game of deceptively partial information: Blind NCAA tournament resumes.

In theory, the NCAA tournament selection committee tries to strip away the names of the teams and just compare the resumes without any sort of bias. But that is, of course, impossible and impractical, because if you’ve watched as much college basketball as these committee members have, all it takes is a quick glance at the list of opponents faced, and they know whose resume it is.

But we actually can strip away the names and talk almost exclusively in metrics in order to compare two teams side by side in anonymity.

On these blind resumes, you’ll find the following acronyms/abbreviations:

NET—NCAA Evaluation Tool. This is the primary sorting metric by which quadrant records are determined. Generally speaking, a team’s NET isn’t as important as the NET of its opponents, but it still matters.

RES—Resume metrics. This is the average of Kevin Pauga Index and Strength of Record, which are the results-based metrics. The lower the number, the better.

QUAL—Quality metrics. This is the average of KenPom, Sagarin and BPI, which are the predictive metrics. Margin of victory is a huge factor here, and, again, the lower the number, the better.

SOS / NCSOS—Strength of Schedule / Nonconference Strength of Schedule. For the most part, not important as a standalone data point, as schedule strength is all kind of baked into the numbers. But a team with a top-10 schedule might get some benefit of the doubt, while a team that’s 300th or worse in NCSOS might get penalized for that lack of effort.

Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4—The Quadrants. Back in the day, we used to just talk about records against top 50, top 100, etc., but they changed up the team sheets a few years ago to more adequately account for where the games were played. Q1 consists of home games against the NET top 30, neutral-site games against the NET top 50 and road games against the NET top 75. Q2 is home vs. 31-75, neutral vs. 51-100 and road vs. 76-135. Q3 is home vs. 76-160, neutral vs. 101-200 and road vs. 136-240. And Q4 is everything else. But don’t worry about those actual numbers. Just know that Q1 wins are good and Q4 losses are bad.

With that glossary note out of the way, let’s dive in.

Blind Resume Comparison No. 1

Massachusetts head coach Matt McCall had to face both teams in our first comparison.Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

Team A: 23-5, NET: 43, RES: 45.0, QUAL: 63.7, NCSOS: 57, 0-1 vs. Q1A, 1-1 vs. Q1, 10-0 vs. Q4, 9-1 road record

Team B: 18-12, NET: 76, RES: 54.5, QUAL: 67.3, NCSOS: 294, 4-4 vs. Q1A, 6-5 vs. Q1, 5-1 vs. Q4, 4-9 road record

Normally, the point of blind resumes is to compare two teams that look similar on the surface but are considered to be far apart from each other in the projected seeding. After comparing the two, maybe the reader will agree that one of the teams is considerably over-/under-seeded.

But I wanted to instead start with a classic debate between a mid-major that didn’t screw up too much and a high-major that is getting a whole lot of credit for showing up in a big way for 20 percent of its games played. Because these are the exact conversations the selection committee will be having all week.

Though there is a substantial gap in the NET between Team A and Team B, the differences in the resume and quality metrics are negligible. Rather, the four main differences are overall record, Quadrant 1 record, road record and nonconference strength of schedule.

On the latter two of those four, shame on Team B.

A nonconference strength of schedule approaching 300 is a fine way to cost yourself at least a seed line, if not a spot in the field altogether. Team B played 10 nonconference games, six of them at home against teams outside of the NET top 290. Worst of all, it lost one of those six games. And it went just 1-3 in the other four games, with the lone win coming against Quadrant 3.

Comparatively, Team A played in one of the bigger early-season tournaments, getting three neutral-site games against top 100 foes. It also scheduled games against Wichita State and Buffalo, who are typically pretty solid.

The road record part of the equation isn’t quite as concerning. You expect a split like that when comparing a mid-major to a high-major. But a .900 winning percentage on the road is certainly a feather in Team A’s cap, while Team B’s .308 is a bit of a red flag.

But the quality wins metric is where Team B makes up all sorts of ground on Team A.

While this doesn’t appear on the team sheets, something I always try to look at is that Team A went 0-2 against the projected field, while Team B went 7-5.

Seems like a slam dunk for Team B, doesn’t it? Don’t forget overall record, though, because those records against the field mean Team A went 23-3 against other teams and Team B went 11-7.

If you haven’t already figured it out, Team A is North Texas, and Team B is Rutgers. And these divergent resumes may be battling for the last spot in the projected field.

With any luck, the Mean Green will take case of business in the Conference USA tournament to get in with the automatic bid. But if they were to lose to UAB in the championship game, it would make for an interesting discussion. It’s a shame they suffered their worst loss of the season (at UTEP) in their final game, because that might have pushed them out of the at-large mix for good.

Blind Resume Comparison No. 2

Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim went a combined 0-3 against Teams C and DIcon Sportswire/Getty Images

Team C: 21-8, NET: 51, RES: 33.0, QUAL: 56.0, 2-3 vs. Q1, 6-7 vs. Q1/Q2, 15-1 vs. Q3/Q4

Team D: 22-9, NET: 59, RES: 36.0, QUAL: 60.3, 4-1 vs. Q1, 9-6 vs. Q1/Q2, 13-3 vs. Q3/Q4

These are two of the resume metrics darlings.

Those metrics (Kevin Pauga Index and Strength of Record) are much closer to the old RPI system, in that they only care about who you faced and where you faced them and do not factor in margin of victory. Generally speaking, if you see a team ranked much better in resume metrics than quality metrics, it either means it wins a lot of close games, it gets blown out in losses or a little bit of both.

And generally speaking, a top-40 resume metrics ranking is money in the bank. Between 2019 and 2021, the only top-40 resume team to get left out of the tournament was Louisville last year. The Cardinals finished at 36.0, albeit with a 13-7 overall record and just a 1-6 record against Quadrant 1.

Both of these teams are much better off than that.

Has either one done enough to get in, though?

The eye is immediately drawn to the Quadrant 1 records, where Team D has a considerable edge. And if you drill down even further, Team D went 3-0 against the top half of Quadrant 1, while Team C went 0-2 in those opportunities. Granted, there’s not a huge difference between Team D’s road wins over NET Nos. 37 and 39 and Team C’s road wins over NET Nos. 45 and 52, the latter of which land in the bottom half of Q1. But Team D certainly has the trump card in the form of a road win over NET No. 9.

However, just like Rutgers in the previous comparison, Team D has seven losses to teams not projected for the NCAA tournament. The good news is that all seven of those games at least came against teams currently in the NET top 100, so nothing individually sticks out like a sore thumb. Still, having seven losses (four of them at home) against NIT- or CBI-bound opponents isn’t great.

Team C also has four such losses, though, and just a 1-4 record against the projected field.

Ready for the reveal?

Team C is VCU, and that one win against the projected field was against Davidson, which is barely on the good side of the bubble in its own right. Shoutout to Bluejay Banter’s Tim Krueger for bringing this to my attention in the past week: VCU is just 2-6 against the NET top 75, plus an unsavory home loss to Wagner. The resume metrics love the Rams, but I cannot figure out why.

Team D is Miami, whose aforementioned trump card was the win at Duke.

Even though the metrics and overall records are quite similar, it sure looks like Miami is in much better shape than VCU. We’ll see if that remains the case after the ACC and Atlantic 10 tournaments, but I suspect the Rams are going to need the automatic bid in order to sneak into the field.   

Blind Resume Comparison No. 3

Vanderbilt and Jerry Stackhouse didn’t face either of these teams this year, but both might be interested in how the committee treated Vanderbilt five years ago.Mark Zaleski/Associated Press

Team F: 17-14, NET: 42, RES: 56.0, QUAL: 37.7, SOS: 7, NCSOS: 146, 3-11 vs. Q1, 9-13 vs. Q1/Q2

Team G: 18-12, NET: 44, RES: 62.5, QUAL: 38.7, SOS: 50, NCSOS: 315, 3-7 vs. Q1, 6-11 vs. Q1/Q2

Might as well jump straight from the resume metrics darlings to the quality metrics darlings.

The track record for tournament inclusion is nowhere near as good for this group. In 2019 alone, NC State (28.0 quality metrics), Clemson (29.0), Texas (32.7), Nebraska (37.0) and Indiana (40.0) were all left out of the dance. Duke (30.7) was the only such team in 2021, but, come on, if the Blue Devils can’t get in when the predictive metrics call them the 30th-best team in the country, what hope do these teams have in the 37-39 range?

In fact, both of these are out of the consensus projected field, though not by much. As of Monday night, Team G was the second team out on the Bracket Matrix, while Team F was the fourth team out. So figuring out a proper order for these two teams could prove crucial.

The sheer volume of losses is the obvious problem here. They have a combined total of one defeat to a team outside of the NET top 100, but 26 total losses is, well, a lot. Team F and Team G each have three Quadrant 1 wins, but look at how many chances they got. Team G went 3-of-10, while Team F went 3-of-14.

And for each team, one of those top wins (at NET No. 71 for Team F; NET No. 50 on a neutral court for Team G) just barely qualifies as Quadrant 1. They could be a data refresh away from dropping to 2-of-9 and 2-of-13.

Though not specifically listed above, Quadrant 2 is where Team F makes up some serious ground, going 6-2 against those opponents, while Team G went 3-4. And it bears mentioning that if you split Q2 into a top half and a bottom half, the top-half records are 5-2 for Team F and 1-4 for Team G. That puts their respective records against the top 1.5 quadrants at 8-13 (38.1 percent) and 4-11 (26.7 percent).

Factor in the substantial differences in both overall and nonconference strength of schedule, and it’s pretty clear that the 14 in the loss column is the only reason why most bracketologists have Team F (Oklahoma) behind Team G (Indiana).

To that end, we must point out that Vanderbilt got into the 2017 NCAA tournament as a No. 9 seed with a 19-15 record. Those Commodores had three wins over Florida (which earned a No. 4 seed), a home win over Iowa State (No. 5 seed), a home win over South Carolina (No. 7 seed) and a road win over Arkansas (No. 8 seed).

Oklahoma only has half that many wins over projected tournament teams, but it does have an absolutely massive opportunity against Baylor on Thursday. Win that one and the Sooners will probably get in. Lose it and they’re almost certainly out.

Indiana also has just three wins against the projected field, but one of those came against bubble-y Notre Dame, and the Hoosiers put together a laughably weak nonconference schedule. If you take out the Q4 home nonconference games, they’re just 11-12 overall. So they definitely need to beat Michigan on Thursday and likely need to beat Illinois on Friday in order to crash the dance.

Blind Resume Comparison No. 4

Creighton’s Greg McDermott went a combined 1-2 against Teams H and JRebecca S. Gratz/Associated Press

Team H: 22-10, NET: 55, RES: 58.5, QUAL: 60.3, SOS: 66, 1-4 vs. Q1A, 4-6 vs. Q1, 7-9 vs. Q1/Q2, 13-1 vs. Q3/Q4

Team J: 18-12, NET: 36, RES: 47.5, QUAL: 43.7, SOS: 31, 0-6 vs. Q1A, 5-9 vs. Q1, 9-11 vs. Q1/Q2, 7-1 vs. Q3/Q4

Chances are you’re going to come away from this final comparison thinking that Team J is in drastically better shape than Team H. However, one of these teams is third-to-last in on the Bracket Matrix, and the other is the third team out.

As far as the metrics are concerned, it’s Team J by a landslide. It has an 11-spot edge in the resume metrics, and there’s nearly a 20-spot gap in both NET and quality metrics. Team J also faced a more difficult schedule, although it’s not like Team H loaded up on cupcakes.

In the quality wins department, at least Team H was able to catch one big fish, winning at NET No. 25. Team J repeatedly squandered those opportunities, though I will point out that three of those six games came right down to the wire, including one triple-overtime classic.

Team J at least somewhat made up for that 0-6 record by going 5-3 against the bottom half of Q1 and winning five games against projected tournament teams. Team H went 3-2 against the bottom half of Q1 and has a total of three wins over projected tournament teams.

Nothing much worth reporting in Q2 unless you’re interested in this common opponent tidbit: Team J went 2-0 against NET No. 66 Creighton, while Team H lost to the Bluejays by 12 on a neutral court. (And there’s your gap in wins against projected tournament teams.)

The kicker is the Q3/Q4 loss.

Team J (Xavier) lost at home to NET No. 101 DePaul. Not a big deal, especially if you’ve watched the Blue Demons play lately. They might mess around and win the Big East tournament. But Team H (BYU) lost at NET No. 297 Pacific. That is a major blemish.

As a rule of thumb, who you beat has always been more important than who beats you. And the Cougars do have three nice wins over Saint Mary’s, San Diego State and San Francisco. But that is a terrible defeat for a team that also lost to Utah Valley, Vanderbilt and Santa Clara. It put the Cougars in a spot where they likely needed to beat San Francisco in the WCC quarters in order to have a realistic shot at a bid, but they lost that game by a dozen.

The point of this comparison isn’t to rag on BYU, though. Rather, I wanted to show that Xavier is still in relatively good shape despite looking nothing like a tournament team as of late. The Musketeers did win their home finale against Georgetown, but they needed that to snap a five-game losing skid. They lost nine of their final 13 regular-season games to plummet onto the bubble, but their overall resume is strong enough that they should get in as long as they beat Butler on Wednesday.

That would change, though, if DePaul actually does win the Big East tournament or if teams like Oklahoma, Indiana and VCU play their way into the field. But given the current picture, defeating the Bulldogs and at least showing up for the following round against Providence ought to do the trick for the Musketeers.

Kerry Miller covers men’s college basketball and college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.