A month ago, I offered my first shot at identifying Mid-Major basketball teams that I believe can spring upsets during the first weekend of play, which begins on Th March 19. It’s something I do every year. I take an initial peek around mid-season to see which teams are doing what and, then, I pick a final set of bracket-busters a week or so before the tournament begins.
In 2019, Murray State’s Ja Morant led his 12-seed Racers to a first-round, 19-point win over 5-seed Marquette (photo, The State)
Last year, I was lucky enough to hit the target repeatedly. My 2019 picks were Belmont, Vermont, Yale, NM State, Wofford, Murray State, Nevada, Buffalo, Houston, Cal-Irvine, Liberty, Northern Kentucky, and Utah State.
Those teams played 13 games during the opening weekend, and here’s how they performed:
Won outright, N=3
Favored, won, and covered spread, N=3
Covered spread, N=4
Favored and lost, N=2
Didn’t cover the spread, N=1
What might be in store for 2020? Here’s how I arrived at my final list of potential bracket-busters (N=10).
Because mid-majors represent a diverse collection of programs, I began the winnowing process by grouping mid-majors into two broad categories. Upper Mid-Majors are teams affiliated with six conferences–American, Atlantic 10, Conference USA, Missouri Valley, Mountain West, and West Coast. Lower Mid-Majors include all other conferences and teams.
I then went to the NCAA’s official stat-driven ranking system (NET) and inspected the distribution of the top 150 teams as of February 1.
The good news, Tom, is that Middle Tennessee won’t be in the tournament this year. The Blue Raiders finished the regular season at 8-23 (photo, Lansing State Journal)
I used three filters to whittle the list.
First, I removed major universities that play in mid-major conferences. That step eliminated Gonzaga, Houston, San Diego St, Brigham Young, Rhode Island, and New Mexico State.
Second, I focused only on those teams I’ve seen play this year. That step yielded Dayton, Wichita St, Northern Iowa, E. Tennessee, Liberty, Vermont, and Northern Colorado.
Finally, I asked: “If I were a head coach, which mid-majors would I want to avoid in the tournament’s first weekend?”
Five teams emerged from that three-pronged scan: Dayton, East Tennessee, Northern Iowa, Wichita State, and Liberty.
On March 7, I used the same procedure to analyze top-ranked NET mid-major teams. Which teams seem best now?
–I’ve seen nothing over the last month that changes my mind about Dayton (Atlantic 10, #3 NET), ETSU (Southern, #39 NET), Liberty (Atlantic Sun, #70 NET), and UNI (Missouri Valley, #47 NET) … although courtesy of Drake (huge upset), UNI will have to qualify as an at-large team, which I believe it will do.
–I removed Wichita State from the list because a strong case can be made that the Shockers are a major university playing in a mid-major conference. To replace WSU, I inserted Richmond (Atlantic 10), which NET ranks #37 in the country.
–To that list of five, I added five more teams: Yale (Ivy, #65 NET), Davidson (Southern, #74 NET), Akron (Mid-American, #76 NET), Vermont (America East, #78 NET), and Belmont (Ohio Valley, #99 NET).
That’s it! My ten teams to watch during the opening weekend of the 2020 NCAA Division 1 Basketball Championship are:
Caleb Homesley is the leading scorer for 30-win Liberty University (photo, LU)
Dayton
East Tennessee
Liberty
Northern Iowa
Richmond
Yale
Davidson
Akron
Vermont, and
Belmont.
(Almost made the list: St. Mary’s, Furman, UNC Greensboro, Wright State, Stephen F. Austin, Duquesne, Loyola (IL), and Northern Colorado.)
Just as I did last year, I’ll give a performance tally after the first weekend of play.
Let the games begin!
