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MVC tourney seeding probabilities

6

64NIT

Member
From January 9, the most recent. Check Hackman's Twitter feed for updates:
https://twitter.com/mjhackman/status...080832/photo/1

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I think we have 4 pretty clear bottom 4 teams in Evansville, UIC, Valpo and ISU Red. The other 8 teams will be in a dog fight to finish in the top 4 and avoid the play in games at Arch Madness. Winning the Valley could take a 15-5/14-6 record? 12-8/11-9 maybe for 4th? For BU to finish in the top 4 it would behoove them to start winning their road games. And that's assuming, and that's not a guarantee, that we take care of our business at home. It's getting good.
 
It's amazing what our loss to Belmont did to change the scenarios for BU. That's why each game is as important as any other. As it stands BU is projected to have at least a 70% chance to finish in the top 4. It was at 86%. The projections don't seem to like UNI as they are projected at 23% for a top 4 finish.
 
February 2 update:

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https://twitter.com/mjhackman/status/1621222390012289030

Here is the breakdown of potential seed odds by conference record. The odds of a 12-win bye continue to shrink as the top 8 remain bunched (now down to 10%). A 13-win team could still be seeded anywhere between 1 and 7 at the Arch.
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https://twitter.com/mjhackman/status/1621222393480880132

And here is an team-by-team breakdown of first round bye odds at each win level - you can see at the 13-win mark things start to get interesting. Also, note the total team bye odds at the bottom of the graph.
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https://twitter.com/mjhackman/status/1621222396337307650
 
Very interesting numbers. So BU has to get 5 wins to guarantee a first round by, but has a 75% chance of being in 4th place if they win 4 more games. Makes sense. Most likely wins for BU to get still are @ ISU, Murray St, MoState, & @ Valpo, imo. If they can get those 4 they have a 75% chance of finishing 4th and getting a by. Hopefully BU can win at home vs Drake on senior day, as that would be against another 1st place team at this point. Getting that one would be awesome, but either UNI or SIU on the road would also work it seems.
 
Indiana State could be the wildcard in all of this. I think they will have only 2 tough games of their remaining 6 as they play at UNI and at Belmont. The game at Belmont could be huge as this is the only time they play so the winner of this game would own the tiebreaker. They split with both Drake and SIU and we own the tiebreaker on them.
 
bigjimmy said:
Indiana State could be the wildcard in all of this. I think they will have only 2 tough games of their remaining 6 as they play at UNI and at Belmont. The game at Belmont could be huge as this is the only time they play so the winner of this game would own the tiebreaker. They split with both Drake and SIU and we own the tiebreaker on them.
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Going to be really interesting as there are 5 teams with a high chance of finishing in the top 4 (ISUB hanging around). BU has the highest expected wins of any team in this analysis. But one of the 5 are going to be left out...I definitely see the tiebreakers making a big impact come the end of the month.
 
Remaining 6 games for the top 5 teams, with their record (MVC, home, road)-

Bradley (10-4, 12-1, 5-4)_____Drake (10-4, 11-1, 4-5)_______SIU (10-4, 11-1, 6-5)_______Belmont (10-4, 9-2, 6-5)____Indiana St. (9-5, 9-3, 5-5)
bu.png
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siu.png
bel.png
insu.png


Each team has 3 home games and 3 road games remaining.
Assuming each team wins their remaining home games, it could come down to how well they do with their 3 remaining road games.
Bradley and SIU have only 1 road game against teams with a winning record. Indiana State has 2. Drake and Belmont have 3.

Overall, of their 6 remaining games, SIU and Indiana State have 3 games against teams with winning records, Bradley and Belmont have 4, Drake has 5.
 
One other way to measure the difficulty of the remaining schedule for the top 5 leaders is the average NET number for their remaining 6 opponents-
Team____Average NET
Drake____157.7
Bradley___177.3
Belmont__.190.7
SIU______198.2
INSU.........213.0

By NET, Drake has the toughest schedule remaining. Indiana State and SIU have the easiest. Bradley and Belmont are in the middle.
This does not take into account whether the games are home or away.

According to KenPom.com, Bradley, SIU, Drake, and Indiana State are predicted to win 5 of their last 6 games.
That would result in a 3-way tie for first place between Bradley, SIU, and Drake. If that happens, Bradley might have the advantage for the #1 seed for the MVC Tournament, based on their better NET rank.
 
Da Coach said:
One other way to measure the difficulty of the remaining schedule for the top 5 leaders is the average NET number for their remaining 6 opponents-
Team____Average NET
Drake____157.7
Bradley___177.3
Belmont__.190.7
SIU______198.2
INSU.........213.0

By NET, Drake has the toughest schedule remaining. Indiana State and SIU have the easiest. Bradley and Belmont are in the middle.
This does not take into account whether the games are home or away.

According to KenPom.com, Bradley, SIU, Drake, and Indiana State are predicted to win 5 of their last 6 games.
That would result in a 3-way tie for first place between Bradley, SIU, and Drake. If that happens, Bradley would get the #1 seed for the MVC Tournament, based on their better NET rank.
Click to expand...


I know Belmont is in the middle, but I could definitely see them winning 5 more games, which I think would give them the title outright. At least that is where I would put my money right now. I think BU can win 5 as well, but Belmont would have the tiebreaker in that case.
 
OhRotanes said:
Updated seeding probabilities. https://twitter.com/mjhackman/status/1622658883931054081

I'm a little surprised we jumped from 2 to 1 in projections after all the top 4 teams won this weekend.

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Click to expand...

SIU and Belmont won at home. Drake won at Valpo in double OT and Bradley won at UNI which is a stronger opponent than Valpo. This might be why Bradley moved to #1. This is how I figured it and, obviously, could be wrong. There could be another reason why Bradley moved to #1.
 
I mentioned this in an earlier thread... The MVC Tournament seeding tiebreaker system that will be used is flawed this year, in my opinion.
2023 MVC Tournament Tiebreaker- https://mvc-sports.com/documents/202...eaker_2023.pdf

Note that the 1st tiebreaker is head-to-head competition. If more than 2 teams tied, the tiebreaker uses a round-robin type calculation of the record against all the teams that are tied.
The next tiebreaker involves a calculation of the win-loss record by the tied teams against the highest other team in the standings, and if that doesn't break the tie, continues with the calculation on down the standings until the tie is broken.
Finally, if all that doesn't break the tie, then it goes to the NET rank for each tied team.

The flaw with this is obvious. With the 20 game, unbalanced schedule, not all teams played home and home against each opponent. There will be ties between teams who only played each other once. When that happens, it does not seem fair to break the tie on a single game played at one team's home court. That would be no different than holding a postseason tie-breaker game on one team's home court. Nobody would consider that to be fair.

For example, SIU only played Belmont once, in Carbondale. SIU won that game at home, and will not have to play Belmont in Nashville. If they tie in the final standings (which they currently are), SIU would win the tiebreaker without ever having to play at Belmont. This flaw would also affect 3-way and other multiple ties. Teams that tie with other teams that they never had to play on the road, will have an advantage in winning the tiebreaker.
I'll predict that when this happens, either this season or in a future season, there will be a coach, or coaches who publicly point out this flaw, especially if it means they fall out of the top 4 and have to play an extra game on a Thursday, or get a much more difficult matchup in the tournament. Maybe it will eventually get changed.
 
Da Coach said:
I mentioned this in an earlier thread... The MVC Tournament seeding tiebreaker system that will be used is flawed this year, in my opinion.
2023 MVC Tournament Tiebreaker- https://mvc-sports.com/documents/202...eaker_2023.pdf

Note that the 1st tiebreaker is head-to-head competition. If more than 2 teams tied, the tiebreaker uses a round-robin type calculation of the record against all the teams that are tied.
The next tiebreaker involves a calculation of the win-loss record by the tied teams against the highest other team in the standings, and if that doesn't break the tie, continues with the calculation on down the standings until the tie is broken.
Finally, if all that doesn't break the tie, then it goes to the NET rank for each tied team.

The flaw with this is obvious. With the 20 game, unbalanced schedule, not all teams played home and home against each opponent. There will be ties between teams who only played each other once. When that happens, it does not seem fair to break the tie on a single game played at one team's home court. That would be no different than holding a postseason tie-breaker game on one team's home court. Nobody would consider that to be fair.

For example, SIU only played Belmont once, in Carbondale. SIU won that game at home, and will not have to play Belmont in Nashville. If they tie in the final standings (which they currently are), SIU would win the tiebreaker without ever having to play at Belmont. This flaw would also affect 3-way and other multiple ties. Teams that tie with other teams that they never had to play on the road, will have an advantage in winning the tiebreaker.
I'll predict that when this happens, either this season or in a future season, there will be a coach, or coaches who publicly point out this flaw, especially if it means they fall out of the top 4 and have to play an extra game on a Thursday, or get a much more difficult matchup in the tournament. Maybe it will eventually get changed.
Click to expand...

Coach, other large BB conferences have unbalanced schedules as well. Do their tiebreaker system match this or is it constructed differently? If it is different I wonder why the MVC would take this approach, otherwise if the tiebreaker system is the same as other conferences with unbalanced schedules, there may not be a better solution to the situation.
 
Stryker said:
Coach, other large BB conferences have unbalanced schedules as well. Do their tiebreaker system match this or is it constructed differently? If it is different I wonder why the MVC would take this approach, otherwise if the tiebreaker system is the same as other conferences with unbalanced schedules, there may not be a better solution to the situation.
Click to expand...

I don't know what other conferences do. But there are several other options that don't penalize teams unfairly for something that is not under their control.

Why not just drop the head to head or round robin tiebreaker methods if the teams involved in any ties have not played each other twice, and then default in those cases straight to the NET rank? If using the NET as a later tiebreaker is acceptable, why not use it in cases like this?

Recall that a few years ago, MVC Commissioner Doug Elgin modified the tiebreaker, and made it dependent on teams' non-conference RPI. It resulted in teams scheduling better in their non-conference season, and it resulted in improved overall MVC RPI. But, after a couple years he dropped it, and non-conference scheduling (and the MVC RPI) has gotten worse again.

Or reconfigure the MVC into two 6 or preferably 7-team divisions. Then schedule each team to play their division rivals twice, and each team from the other division once. Then seed each division separately and structure the MVC Tournament with two divisional playoffs, and the 2 division champions playing each other for the championship and the autobid.

Or, if the MVC stays at 12 teams, one other option is to go to a 22 game conference schedule, and every team will play each opponent twice.
 
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