In building the 68-team NCAA Tournament bracket, the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee weighs dozens of metrics, records, eye test evaluations, and more. Occasionally, they will cover the names of multiple teams as a blind résumé test … or at least they claim to.
In some cases, a blind test is meaningless because one or multiple teams’ NET ranking is well-known, especially by some of all of the committee’s 10 members. Same for a Quadrant 1 record, Quadrant 4 loss, winless road record, and so on. In other cases, it’s revealing and eliminates bias.
Entering the 2019 Selection Show, more than 10 teams were believed to be on the at-large bubble. A basic blind résumé test for three of those teams might’ve been:
| Type | Team A | Team B | Team C |
| NET | 32 | 55 | 47 |
| Q1 Record | 3-9 | 4-10 | 2-2 |
| KenPom | 32 | 44 | 54 |
An educated guess says Teams A and B are high-major teams because of 12 and 14 Quadrant 1 games played, respectively, while Team C is a mid-major with a couple non-conference Quadrant 1 games. But unless you have quadrant records and various metrics memorized, you won’t know the exact teams.
| Type | NC State | Ohio State | Belmont |
| NET | 32 | 55 | 47 |
| Q1 Record | 3-9 | 4-10 | 2-2 |
| KenPom | 32 | 44 | 54 |
North Carolina State missed the tournament while Belmont and Ohio State were 11-seeds. A deeper blind résumé test for this season for four bubble teams (as of Friday, Feb. 26):
| Type | Team A | Team B | Team C | Team D |
| NET | 54 | 67 | 61 | 60 |
| Q1 Record | 2-9 | 2-2 | 4-9 | 4-5 |
| Q3 & Q4 Losses | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Road Record | 3-5 | 4-2 | 0-8 | 6-5 |
| NET SOS | 9 | 69 | 5 | 52 |
| BPI | 36 | 98 | 71 | 68 |
| SOR | 52 | 36 | 45 | 61 |
| Sagarin | 36 | 66 | 51 | 64 |
| KenPom | 34 | 76 | 56 | 64 |
Two of these teams are in the field (as the last two First Four teams) in Bracket Matrix’s aggregate Bracketology projections. The other two teams are the first two teams out.
| Type | Indiana | Wichita St. | Minnesota | Stanford |
| NET | 54 | 67 | 61 | 60 |
| Q1 Record | 2-9 | 2-2 | 4-9 | 4-5 |
| Q3 & Q4 Losses | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Road Record | 3-5 | 4-2 | 0-8 | 6-5 |
| NET SOS | 9 | 69 | 5 | 52 |
| BPI | 36 | 98 | 71 | 68 |
| SOR | 52 | 36 | 45 | 61 |
| Sagarin | 36 | 66 | 51 | 64 |
| KenPom | 34 | 76 | 56 | 64 |
In: Indiana and Wichita State.
Out: Minnesota and Stanford.
The selection committee also considers, among other things, other quadrant records, average NET win, NET non-conference SOS, and KPI, therefore this isn’t a comprehensive evaluation of four bubble résumés. It does, however, eliminate one highly polarizing brand name, Indiana, and one big-name mid-major, Wichita State, to force a numbers-only decision.
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Andrew Doughty is a writer for BetMGM and host of High Motor by BetMGM, an NFL and college football podcast available on Apple Podcasts and everywhere else. He has written for Sports Illustrated, HERO Sports, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation. Follow him on Twitter: @DoughtyBetMGM
