Well, the bracket is out, and Vanderbilt is… the 5-seed in the South Regional. The Commodores will head to Oklahoma City for their first and, we can only hope, second round games and, if they get past that, Houston for the regionals. They drew McNeese as their first-round opponent, and that game will tip off at approximately 2:15 PM CT on Thursday as the second game in the pod, after 4-seed Nebraska plays 13-seed Troy in the first game.
But really, WTF?
Yeah, I know. By Saturday, after Vanderbilt drubbed Florida in
the semifinals of the SEC Tournament, the low end of Vanderbilt’s bracket projection was a 4-seed, and there was an outside shot at a 3-seed. The NET hasn’t been updated, but Vanderbilt was ranked 13 as of Saturday — or, higher than Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, and Alabama, also known as the 4-seeds in the bracket. Vanderbilt also went 10-6 against Quad 1; to compare the same four, Nebraska was 9-6, Arkansas was 7-8, Alabama was 7-7, and Kansas was 9-9. And, sure, Vanderbilt did have a Quad 2 loss, but so did Alabama and Kansas.
Vanderbilt also ranks higher than all four of the 4-seeds in KenPom, while we’re on that subject. Really, Vanderbilt’s profile looks more comparable to the 3-seeds in the bracket (Illinois, Michigan State, Gonzaga, and Virginia — oh, hey, that last one is also ranked one spot behind Vanderbilt in KenPom) than it does to the 4-seeds or 5-seeds. So, yeah, we got screwed here? To add insult to injury, Vanderbilt drew the second-strongest 12-seed in McNeese and the strongest 4-seed in Nebraska (though, we’ll get to them in a minute.)
On the other hand, this isn’t so bad
Drawing Vanderbilt as its first-round opponent, in reality, is probably a bad deal for McNeese moreso than it’s Vanderbilt getting screwed. McNeese ranks 68th in KenPom, but they’re a small team whose main trait is ranking #1 in the country in defensive turnover percentage. They’re also a poor-shooting team that I watched struggle to put away UT Rio Grande Valley last week by shooting 16-of-31 at the foul line, a team for whom the term “hope tosses” is appropriate. “Hope that you can pressure Tyler Tanner into coughing it up” is, uh, not really a formula for success.
As far as the potential second-round matchup, remember, Nebraska has never won an NCAA Tournament game. Granted, the last time we ran into an NU that had never won an NCAA Tournament game didn’t go so well for us, but since the end of January Nebraska has beaten the murderer’s row of Rutgers, Northwestern, Penn State, Maryland, USC, and Iowa after starting the season 20-0. In other words, are you actually confident we wouldn’t face Troy in the second round?
And in spite of all that, Vanderbilt drew the weakest 1-seed — which also happens to be the same Florida team they drubbed on Saturday (and nearly beat in January at Memorial.) If Vanderbilt did get to the Elite Eight, it might have to face Houston two miles from its campus, but, well, literally any one of us would take getting to the Elite Eight.
Oh yeah, Greg Sankey is going to have a stroke
And we, of course, are here for it.
Florida, as mentioned, did get the last 1-seed. Nobody else in the SEC was better than a 4-seed, though, and while the league got ten teams in the tournament, Auburn and Oklahoma will be playing in the NIT, while Miami (Ohio) got an at-large bid with no Quad 1 wins. A year after the SEC got 14 teams in the tournament, it seemed like the committee didn’t think all that highly of the league.
