ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi breaks down Wichita State basketball’s NCAA chances
Last Thursday’s win over No. 6 Houston was an exhilarating one for the Wichita State men’s basketball team.
The Shockers hadn’t beaten a team ranked that high at home in 54 years and they vaulted Houston for first place in the American Athletic Conference in the process.
It was the peak so far of what has turned into a remarkable season under the leadership of interim head coach Isaac Brown, who has guided WSU to a 13-4 record despite a tumultuous offseason and early-season COVID-19 problems.
But in the opinion of ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi, it would be a mistake for WSU fans to believe the Houston win secures the Shockers’ place in the 2021 NCAA Tournament field.
“That win would have put them in if they were right outside the door,” Lunardi told The Eagle. “But they weren’t right outside of the door. They were at the end of the driveway out by the curb. They were near the house, but they weren’t close to being inside. Now they’re on the porch.”
After not appearing in ESPN’s first eight teams out of the field, Lunardi and his colleague John Gasaway, who tracks the bubble teams, both view WSU as one of the teams knocking on the door for an at-large bid.
Since the Shockers are currently in first place in the AAC, they are included as the conference’s automatic qualifier in Lunardi’s latest March Madness projections as a No. 13 seed. But when Lunardi examines WSU as a potential at-large team, he still believes the Shockers are currently on the wrong side of the bubble.
“There’s still work to be done,” Lunardi said. “I would say they are still several teams away from being in as an at-large, just for the simple way the league broke this year. There just weren’t a lot of great opportunities for NCAA-level wins. Now Wichita has put themselves ahead of Memphis and SMU because they have the win that no one else has. But their overall numbers are still kind of so-so.
“I’m pretty sure if the committee was meeting right now and they weren’t an automatic qualifier that they wouldn’t quite make it. They are certainly in the conversation now, though.”
While the victory over Houston (No. 6 NET) gave WSU the high-end, marquee Quadrant 1 win it desperately needed, it doesn’t totally make up for other lacking parts of WSU’s at-large résumé.
The biggest strike against WSU is its record against quality teams. The win over Houston was the first win this season for the Shockers against a team projected to make the NCAA Tournament after losses at home to Missouri and Oklahoma State early in the season. Against the top-100 teams in the NET, WSU has a 2-4 record.
“You have to beat teams that are in the field fundamentally to be in the field,” Lunardi said. “Now they’ve done that once at home by a whisker. They had to beat Houston just to get their head above water. And that’s good, but I wouldn’t want to bet a mortgage payment that it’s enough yet.”
Of course, Lunardi is just one opinion — but he seems to be in the majority. According to bracketmatrix.com, which tracks 100 different bracketologists, WSU is only included in 47 brackets and the vast majority as the automatic qualifier. The Shockers are listed as a No. 11 seed or better in nine of the 47 brackets.
That problem for WSU was no fault of its own. In a fluky season where teams had abbreviated nonconference schedules, the American did not fare well and have failed to generate the kind of meaningful opportunities for a team like WSU trying to play its way into the tournament field.
Outside of the two Houston games, there were only two more chances for WSU to snag Quad 1 wins — at SMU (No. 58 NET) and at Memphis (No. 62 NET). And with SMU’s issues with COVID-19, the Shockers may not even get that opportunity. No other AAC teams are currently ranked in the top 100 of the NET, leaving WSU to rack up a handful of back-end Quad 2 and Quad 3 wins in its journey to atop the conference.
That’s why WSU (No. 68) has struggled so much to move up in the NET rankings and improve its standing in analytic sites like KenPom, where the Shockers are ranked No. 73.
“It’s been mostly bad luck for Wichita and right now it’s working against them,” Lunardi said. “I’m just not seeing an easy path for a second team from the American. Now there’s an advantage of separating yourself as the clear next-best team from the league. Before (the Houston win), you might like SMU, I might like Wichita and someone else might like Memphis. You could have made a case for any of them, but now I think Wichita has a leg up.”
Lunardi does believe there is a bonus added if WSU is able to hold on and win the regular-season AAC championship. But if COVID-19 issues — SMU has yet to return to practice — derail the upcoming games against the Mustangs on Thursday and Sunday, then it would rob WSU of two chances for quality wins that it desperately needs to pad its team sheet.
Even if WSU held on to win the regular-season title in the seventh-best conference in the country, its lack of top-100 games and wins could be held against the Shockers. And that might leave them with just one way into the NCAA Tournament field: winning the AAC Tournament in Fort Worth, Texas.
“That would definitely be a nice chip that would get them in the conversation if they were able to be the regular-season champion outright,” Lunardi said. “That’s a big deal. But then you’re on the board and you’re being compared to a team like (13-10) Maryland, who is a middle-of-the-pack Big Ten team. And you say, ‘Well, Wichita beat Houston at home.’ Well, I can come back and say, “Well, Maryland has won at Illinois, Wisconsin and Rutgers.’ Now the conversation doesn’t look as good.”
Sheer lack of opportunity is what separates WSU, a team in first place in its conference, from bubble teams in the Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 that are in the middle of the pack in their conference.
For example, Lunardi’s last team in the field is currently a 14-9 Stanford team ranked No. 57 in the NET that is fifth in the Pac-12 standings. Stanford has double the amount of Quad 1 wins (4-2) as WSU, but it’s also played more than double the amount of Quad 1 games (9-4). The same is true when you combine Quad 1 and 2 games: Stanford edges WSU, 6-4, but it’s because the Cardinal have had 15 opportunities to pick up those six wins compared to WSU’s eight chances.
Regardless of how many more chances it has had, the fact is that Stanford has played — and beaten — several more NCAA Tournament-caliber teams than WSU.
“If you’re looking at bubble teams that are pretty comparable numerically,” Lunardi said, “then who are you going to take between a team that has four wins against the field and a team that has one win?”
This story was originally published February 22, 2021 at 8:41 AM.
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