Michigan State Basketball: Why did committee give Spartans a 3-seed?

Michigan State basketball is the 11th-best team in the country according to the NCAA Tournament committee. That makes sense from the committee’s perspective, but doesn’t in terms of common sense.

The NCAA Tournament committee released its initial top-16 teams on Sunday. As expected, some things didn’t make sense and it was almost as if Saturday’s games weren’t taken into account. But instead of putting too much time analyzing something that doesn’t matter, it’s best to take a step back and look at things from the outside.

Must Read: MSU Basketball: Game-by-game predictions for February

Michigan State is the No. 2 team in the country as of Monday afternoon, but polls mean little when it comes to the NCAA Tournament and seeding. This doesn’t require proof, but Saint Mary’s as the AP’s No. 11 team in the country is all you need to know. The Gaels, similar to Gonzaga, beat up on the WCC and lost non-conference, neutral-site games to Washington State and Georgia. Just because a mid-major wins a lot of games, doesn’t mean it’s good.

It’s also important to not put too much into results from the last couple weeks. A number of teams lost games, but that doesn’t mean you can disregard what happened the first two months of the season.

The committee considers Michigan State as the 11th-best team in the country and while that seems extreme, it also makes sense. The Big Ten is in a down year and that hurts the level of wins the Spartans can get. It also doesn’t help that they play the other three best teams in the conference just once (Purdue, Ohio State, Michigan).

In non-conference, their only relevant wins were against North Carolina, Notre Dame and Connecticut and I’m not sure beating the Huskies can be considered relevant. OK, it isn’t. Michigan State had two relevant wins in non-conference play no matter what you want to say about Oakland.

With the Big Ten being down, most road wins aren’t considered much of anything. Winning at Rutgers or Illinois isn’t easy, but those are considered freebies in the eyes of the committee. I’m not sure you can say winning at Iowa State, South Carolina or Wake Forest is more difficult than anyone in the Big Ten, but that’s how RPI looks at it.

Since the Big Ten is bad, most of the conference games mean nothing for the ones that are making the NCAA tournament. That’s one thing that will come back around to bite teams like Nebraska, Penn State and Maryland.

Hurting Michigan State even more is that it scheduled numerous freebies in the non-conference, which took down its overall strength of schedule. This is another faulty method, but it’s a stat the committee uses. While the Spartans played UNC, Duke, Notre Dame and a few other solid teams in non-conference, those were almost irrelevant because teams like Southern Utah, Houston Baptist and Cleveland State are so bad. To be clear, if Michigan State would’ve scheduled opponents with an RPI of 100 or even 50 spots above those teams, it would probably be looking at a 2-seed.

At the end of the day with RPI still being the main ranking that the committee uses, it makes sense that Michigan State is a current 3-seed. The Spartans jumped seven spots to 14th in the latest RPI, but they still only have eight wins (and three losses) against Quadrant 1 and 2 teams and three of those came in Quadrant 1.

To put that into perspective, Oklahoma has six Quadrant 1 wins mostly because it plays in the Big 12. Even Arizona State is nearly on the same level with an 8-5 record against Quadrant 1 and 2 teams. There are numerous dumb comparisons you can make with this model and a lot of college basketball Twitter has been doing such over the last month.

With all of this information, it’s pretty clear why Michigan State is a 3-seed. The Big Ten isn’t good and there are few opportunities to pick up decent wins in conference play.

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I’ve hinted at it throughout this article, but the system is clearly broke unless the committee changes things a month from now on Selection Sunday. At this point, with the Quadrant system and strength of schedule the major selling points, we’re still a year away from the RPI getting faded out.

It makes zero sense that Michigan State’s win against Notre Dame gets rated as it does. The Irish lost their best player for multiple months and their second-best player for a few games, yet that was considered a Quadrant 3 win for the past month (it recently moved to Quadrant 2). In that same mold, it makes zero sense that a home win against UCF and road win at Memphis is rated above wins at Iowa and Illinois. A neutral win against North Carolina is in the same Quadrant as a neutral win over Buffalo. A road win at UCF is considered Quadrant 1, but a road win at Indiana is Quadrant 2.

If the committee looks at things like this individually and doesn’t think changing to a different method is needed, then something is clearly wrong with the system. Yes, it’s confusing why a three-loss Michigan State team is rated as the 11th-best team in the country, but when using the faulty method the committee is using, it makes sense.

For me, the two best stats I’ve found to rate teams properly when combined are KenPom and Strength of Record. KenPom is more predictive and is what a lot of sportsbooks use when setting game lines. Strength of Record (SOR) is what it says. It’s how good a team is given the schedule it has played. KenPom overrates mediocre teams like Gonzaga and St. Mary’s because they beat up on a weaker conference.

SOR shows that a lot of teams can have the same record as Gonzaga and St. Mary’s with the same schedule. The same goes for Cincinnati. Combine those two and I think you have a realistic look at how teams should be ranked. Of course, there are multiple metrics to use out there, but without making things too confusing and using five or six systems, these two make the most sense.

For Michigan State, a 1-seed might not even be possible if it wins out and wins the Big Ten tournament. That’s a problem. Will the committee change its mind on teams like Michigan State a month from now? It’s hard to say. For now, the Spartans are a 3-seed and there’s not much they can do about it except win.

Next: MSU Basketball: 5 takeaways from win over No. 3 Purdue

As of note, the NCAA Director of Media Coordination/Statistics said on Twitter that the committee doesn’t look at all Quadrant wins equally. If that’s the case, why even have Quadrants? Also, why use Quadrant wins when trying to explain certain decisions? We’re all waiting for a good answer.

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