With so many bid-stealers this past weekend, the Friars weren’t even in the first four out for NCAA Tournament consideration. You can read the recriminations anywhere you look. Personally, I don’t have a problem with Providence missing out, given relatively soft KenPom and Net ratings. But I do have a few gripes:
- FAU coasting off last year’s Final Four reputation, with some terrible losses
- Virginia… just inexplicable
- 6 Mountain West (!) and 5 ACC bids, relative to only 3 from the Big East—particularly with the Big East rating as the second best conference by most advanced metrics
Feels like Seton Hall and especially St. John’s got screwed. The incentives within the net rating encourage larger margins of victory, which discourages competitive out-of-conference games. And the Big East gets the worst of both worlds with 9 highly competitive teams in conference, but 2 absolute dog$hit programs in DePaul and Georgetown, who dim the strength of schedule advantage that the Big 12 enjoys. Woof.
Friars accepted an NIT bid and will host Boston College next Tue night. But more importantly, it’s now officially portal season.
I’ll post a retrospective on this team later in the spring.