In the past couple weeks, once again high ranked teams fell apart on the court, unable to bolster their resumes for top spots in the upcoming NCAA Championship Tournament:

#4 Kansas fell to #14 Iowa State on January 24th. #5 Texas A&M lost to unranked Arkansas on January 26th. #3 Iowa lost to #8 Maryland in College Park on January 28th. #9 West Virginia lost to unranked Florida by 17 on January 30th. #2 North Carolina lost to Louisville (who is now disqualified due to disciplinary actions). #8 Texas A&M fell to Vanderbilt on February 4th. #1 Oklahoma lost to unranked Kansas State as #2 North Carolina lost to unranked Notre Dame (as well as a third loss by #8 Texas A&M) on February 6th.

Over the 14 day period, Top 10 ranked teams lost 9 games for an overall record of 27-10. This is a marked improvement over the previous 13-10 record for the two prior weeks. However, this trend just encapsulates the season: There are no dominant teams; only teams that can be dominating in short spurts.

As the season has progressed, our beta regression model has taken some hits. Starting with an r-squared (coefficient of determination) value of nearly 0.75, we have dropped down to 0.57 after these last two weeks. Due to this massive fluctuation in team performance, similar rankings methods have taken a serious hit; such as the Colley matrix rankings method. The Colley method relies on the continuity corrected Bernoulli model, which clocked in at an underwhelming 0.5 fit.

March Madness Current Entrants:

Using the current games played, the locations of the games, and the disparity of scores, we are able to build out a current state of the 2016 March Madness Tournament.

Rules: In order to make the tournament, a team must win their conference tournament, win the Ivy League regular season, or become an “at-large” bid that is selected based on merit by an NCAA committee.

In this post, we give an updated rankings for all 351 NCAA Division I teams. But first, we identify the current teams on pace (projected by our models) for becoming conference champions and “at-large” bids.

It should be noted that our rankings will include the suspended Southern Methodist University, whereas the AP Top 25 Coaches’ Poll does not include the Mustangs. Also, in recent light of team discipline, Louisville has also been disqualified from the post-season.

Fitting our models, we find that there is a 0.5731 r-squared, indicating an “O.K. but no-where predictive” fit to the games played. Using the rankings as determination for conference winners, we have the following teams with automatic bids:

1. America East: Stony Brook (20-4, 11-0)
2. American: Connecticut (17-6, 7-3)
3. Atlantic 10: Dayton (19-3, 9-1)
4. Atlantic Coast: Virginia (19-4, 8-3)
5. Atlantic Sun: North Florida (18-8, 7-2)
6. Big 12: Oklahoma (20-3, 8-3)
7. Big East: Villanova (20-3, 10-1)
8. Big Sky: Weber State (16-7, 8-2)
9. Big South: UNC Asheville (17-8, 10-3)
10. Big Ten: Iowa (19-4, 10-1)
11. Big West: Hawaii (18-3, 7-1)
12. Colonial Athletic: William and Mary (17-6, 9-3)
13. Conference USA: UAB (20-4, 10-1)
14. Horizon League: Valparaiso (20-4, 10-1)
15. Ivy League: Yale (15-5, 6-0)
16. Metro Atlantic: Monmouth (19-5, 11-2)
17. Mid-American: Akron (19-4, 8-2)
18. Mid-Eastern: Hampton (14-9, 9-2)
19. Missouri Valley: Wichita State (17-6, 11-1)
20. Mountain West: San Diego State (18-6, 11-0)
21. Northeast: Wagner (15-8, 8-4)
22. Ohio Valley: Belmont (17-8, 9-2)
23. Pac-12: Oregon (20-4, 9-2)
24. Patriot League: Navy (16-9, 7-5)
25. Southeastern: Texas A&M (18-5, 7-3)
26. Southern: Chattanooga (22-3, 11-1)
27. Southland: Texas A&M Corpus Christi (18-5, 9-2)
28. Southwestern Athletic: Southern (16-8, 8-3)
29. Summit League: South Dakota State (19-5, 8-2)
30. Sun Belt: Arkansas Little Rock (21-2, 11-1)
31. West Coast: St. Mary’s (19-3, 10-2)
32. Western Athletic: Grand Canyon (20-4, 7-2)

The remaining 36 “at-large” teams are then the top 36 teams in our rankings. These 36 teams are given as:

1. Xavier (21-2, 9-2)
2. Kansas (19-4, 7-3)
3. West Virginia (19-4, 8-2)
4. Maryland (21-3, 10-2)
5. Michigan State (17-4, 4-4)
6. North Carolina (19-4, 8-2)
7. Iowa State (17-6, 6-4)
8. Miami (FL) (15-3, 4-2)
9. Purdue (19-5, 7-4)
10. Baylor (17-6, 6-4)
11. Texas (16-8, 7-4)
12. USC (18-5, 7-3)
13. South Carolina (20-3, 7-3)
14. Arizona (19-5, 7-4)
15. Seton Hall (17-6, 7-4)
16. Utah (17-7, 6-5)
17. Michigan (17-7, 7-4)
18. Pittsburgh (17-5, 6-4)
19. Duke (18-6, 7-4)
20. Providence (18-6, 7-4)
21. Notre Dame (17-7, 8-4)
22. Colorado (17-7, 6-5)
23. Kentucky (17-6, 7-3)
24. Kansas State (14-9, 3-7)
25. Florida State (16-7, 6-5)
26. St. Joseph’s (19-4, 8-2)
27. Indiana (19-5, 8-2)
28. Florida (15-8, 6-4)
29. Butler (16-7, 5-6)
30. Syracuse (16-8, 6-5)
31. George Washington (18-5, 7-3)
32. California (15-8, 5-5)
33. Cincinnati (17-6, 7-4)
34. Oregon State (14-8, 5-6)
35. Texas Tech (13-9, 3-7)
36. Washington (15-8, 7-4)

The next set of teams are our current bubble teams. These are teams that are close to making the NCAA Tournament but are on the outside looking in.

1. Vanderbilt (13-10, 5-5)
2. Clemson (14-10, 7-5)
3. VCU (17-6, 9-1)
4. Gonzaga (19-5, 11-2)
5. Georgia (13-8, 6-4)
6. Stanford (11-10, 4-6)
7. Wisconsin (14-9, 6-4)
8. UCLA (13-10, 4-6)
9. LSU (15-8, 8-2)
10. Creighton (15-9, 6-5)

On the Bubble List, you will find three glaring teams: VCU, Gonzaga, and LSU. These three teams should be safe in the tournament if the season plays out nearly as expected.

Gonzaga’s three non-conference losses are to Texas A&M, Arizona, and UCLA. Texas A&M is in a free-fall, reducing the strength of Gonzaga’s loss. Similarly, Arizona and UCLA are not performing well (or as expected) within the weaker (compared to Big Ten, ACC, Big 12) Pac-12. Plus with no signature win, the Bulldogs are obviously on that bubble despite a strong record.

VCU is in a similar boat as the Bulldogs. A loss to “#5” Duke is completely downplayed as Duke is struggling to be in the Top 25. Complete their losses with four more unranked opponents and a loss to borderline Top 25 Cincy; and zero signature wins, the Rams are not quite championship tournament material.

This brings us to the helter-skelter LSU Tigers. With losses to Marquette, NC State, and Wake Forrest at home; and losses to Charleston and Houston on the road… the Tigers should never be in consideration for a tournament spot. However, they are in the lead for the Southeastern Conference at this very moment despite no signature wins and a loss to Texas A&M.

The current state of the NCAA Tournament is given as follows:

NCAA March Madness seedings based on our rankings as of January 24th, 2016.

We note that we are not predicting the field of 68, but rather giving seedings based on play up to today. Our goal is to populate the March Madness tournament with current seedings; to give indication of where teams are sitting as of today. As the conference games continue to play out, the field of 68 will become much clearer.

NCAA Rankings on February 7th, 2016:

We now present our top-to-bottom rankings based on wins, game locations, and disparity of points.