Has Wichita State basketball done enough for an NCAA bid? What bracketologists think
This week was going about as well as it possibly could for the Wichita State men’s basketball team’s chances at qualifying for the NCAA Tournament.
Bubble teams were losing left and right and the Shockers squeaked by South Florida on Friday to advance to the semifinals of the American Athletic Conference Tournament. By all accounts, WSU was safely in the March Madness field.
Then Saturday came.
Wichita State began the day by putting itself in a precarious situation by losing 60-59 to Cincinnati, the 119th-ranked team in the NET rankings, to suffer its first Quad 3 loss of the season and give the Bearcats a chance to steal a bid (more on that later). Then more bad news came later in the day when bid thieves like Georgetown (Big East) and Oregon State (Pac-12) won their conference tournaments.
Now the Shockers leave their fate up to the NCAA Tournament selection committee to determine if a 16-5 record that features some good — an outright AAC regular season championship, including a top-10 win over Houston — and some bad — a pedestrian No. 64 NET ranking and only one win against the projected field — is worthy of playing in March Madness. The selection show begins at 5 p.m. Sunday on CBS.
“You have to have faith, got to trust,” WSU star sophomore Tyson Etienne said after the Cincinnati loss. “It’s out of our hands. We built our resume. The committee is going to make their decision, and whatever decision they make is the decision they make. I believe we have earned a spot in the tournament, but we don’t make the final decision. I trust that good energy will come back to us. We put it out all year, and I believe we deserve it and I believe it will come back to us.”
WSU could have ensured its selection with a win on Saturday, but the loss to Cincinnati has turned a sure thing into a question mark. Many bracketologists have dropped the Shockers down to Thursday’s First Four play-in games, while others, most notably ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, has dropped WSU completely out of the field after Oregon State stole a bid late Saturday.
Rocco Miller, a bracketologist who runs his own website, The Bracketeer, explained why the loss to Cincinnati was a game-changer for WSU’s résumé.
“Now you have something bad to point to that we didn’t have before,” said Miller, who currently has WSU as his last team in the field following the Oregon State win. “There are enough reasons to exclude them now, but I do think there are a few good reasons to include them, especially that regular season championship. That’s the most important thing. You can’t find that in any other bubble team.”
When asked about their NCAA Tournament chances, the Shockers believe winning the American outright this season should be good enough for them to qualify.
“I would think that the team that wins this conference would get in the NCAA Tournament,” WSU coach Isaac Brown said.
“I feel like if you win this conference, how could you not get in the tournament,” WSU junior Morris Udeze said. “If it’s just a one-bid conference, I honestly just don’t get it. I honestly don’t get it. We’ll just leave it up to the committee and pray that we get in.”
According to Miller, WSU has one of the most polarizing résumés in the country. The Shockers look like a cinch when looking at résumé-based metrics like the KPI (No. 29) and strength of record (No. 32), but their success this season has not translated well to predictive measures like ESPN’s BPI (No. 98), KenPom (No. 70) and Sagarin (No. 60).
Because WSU is expected to be right near the cut line, Miller suspects the selection committee will examine the Shockers through a microscope. They are likely going to be compared to teams like Drake, Utah State and Syracuse for the last remaining at-large spots in the field.
Compared to those three teams, WSU has the best win (vs. Houston), an outright conference championship and the best résumé-based metrics. But the Shockers only have a combined two wins in Quad 1 and Quad 2-A games, lagging behind Syracuse (5), Utah State (4) and Drake (3).
“The biggest chip WSU has is that they won their regular-season championship and that matters,” Miller said. “When you’re a bubble team and they’re looking at teams like Utah State, Drake and Syracuse, none of those teams won their league outright. So that stands out for Wichita.”
Saturday’s loss to Cincinnati could become even more devastating because the Bearcats very well could steal WSU’s spot in the tournament. Miller thinks WSU’s chances of making the NCAA Tournament field plummet to around 35% if Cincinnati upsets Houston in Sunday’s 2:15 p.m. championship game. If Houston wins, Miller thinks WSU’s chances rest somewhere in the 65% range.
If the Shockers are included in the NCAA Tournament field, Miller says it will almost assuredly be as one of the final four at-large teams in the field, meaning WSU will play in a First Four game in Indianapolis on Thursday.
“I would be pleasantly surprised if I’m a Shockers fan and they get anything above that,” Miller said. “I think that loss to Cincinnati is going to be a pretty big red flag and move them into the First Four. That’s going to put them on thin ice if Cincinnati wins (Sunday).
“The committee is building their contingency brackets and if I had to guess, they’re building a bracket where if Houston wins, then it’s going to include the Shockers in the First Four. And then they’re building another bracket that has Cincinnati in the field and that bracket very easily could not include the Shockers.”
As for the team, WSU will remain in Fort Worth on Sunday until it learns its fate for the postseason.
If selected, the Shockers would fly from Fort Worth straight to Indianapolis to begin their coronavirus testing and quarantine ahead of the tournament. WSU would arrange for travel for junior guard Trevin Wade and freshman forward Jaden Seymour, who missed this weekend’s conference tournament because of COVID-19 protocols, to re-join the team in Indianapolis.
If WSU is not selected, it would very likely be one of the first four teams out of the field and still have a chance to be a replacement team in the NCAA field in case a team is ravaged by positive COVID-19 cases and cannot field a team. NCAA Tournament teams selected have until 5 p.m. Central time Tuesday to notify the NCAA it will be unable to compete, which would allow a replacement team to take its place (and seed) in the field.
If WSU is not selected and an NCAA Tournament team does not drop out before Tuesday’s deadline, then the Shockers would likely be a No. 1 seed in the 16-team NIT field that would be held in the Dallas-Fort Worth area beginning on Wednesday. The NIT Selection Show, which could involve AAC teams like Memphis and SMU, begins 7:30 p.m. Sunday broadcast on ESPNU.
This story was originally published March 14, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
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