Livescore
The SEC/Big 12 Challenge ran largely in favor of the home teams, but there were certainly a few results that had an impact on the bracket.
Kansas avoided its first ever four-game losing streak under coach Bill Self with a win at Kentucky. That almost knocked the Wildcats out of the bracket. Kentucky is now 1-6 vs Quad 1 opposition, with that win at Tennessee saving them for now. It is the only one the Wildcats have over a team in the updated bracket.
Meanwhile, the Jayhawks added another Quad 1 win to its total giving them a nation’s best eight victories against that group. There is a case to be made for Kansas to be back on the top line because their strength of schedule and record. I left Arizona up there for now though.
Alabama got steamrolled at Oklahoma, which was a more important result for the Sooners than the Crimson Tide. Alabama had enough of a cushion between itself and the rest of the bracket to remain at No. 2 overall, but that cushion is now gone.
One thing to keep in mind is that scoring margins matter a lot to the NET, but the NET itself does not get used to make decisions about selections and seedings. A team’s own NET ranking is nowhere near as important as the NET rankings of its opponents, which are used to decide in which quadrant an opponent is placed on the team sheet.
When the committee debates teams for selection and seeding, the margin of victory does not get much attention. So the loss by Alabama on Saturday and Kansas’ loss to TCU last week will not be as bad in the eyes of the committee as the score might indicate.
Bracketology top seeds
Check out Palm’s latest bracket, full field of 68 and all the teams on the bubble on the Bracketology hub.
Tennessee got a nice home win over Texas, which is very welcome to what is still a somewhat thin resume. The Volunteers have two great wins, but very little depth to its resume otherwise. As I mentioned before, Kansas has eight Quad 1 wins, but Tennessee, which beat the Jayhawks, has only seven wins in quads 1 and 2 combined. Only three of those are quad 1 and four of those teams are in the updated bracket.
In another indication of how metrics do not mean much, Ohio State 29th in NET, but out of the bracket and not even really under consideration at this point. The Buckeyes fell to 11-10 after the loss at Indiana on Saturday, which is their seventh loss in their last eight games. They have a favorable schedule coming up and need to take advantage of it.
Finally, at the top of the bracket, Purdue is still the overall No. 1 seed after completing a season sweep of Michigan State on Sunday. The gap is growing between the Boilermakers and the rest of the bracket as a result of Alabama’s loss.
Next week, the bubble watch will debut. I do not like to think of the concept of a bubble too early in the season because I define that as the list of teams that can still reasonably play their way in or out of the bracket. That is still a very long list.
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