Last week my colleague, Gary Parrish, convincingly laid out the case to have Wichita State in this year’s NCAA tournament pretty much no matter what happens in the Missouri Valley playoff. For the average college hoops fan, the Shockers are easy to cheer for. They’re a known brand, an established program led by a national-name coach in Gregg Marshall, and the fact that WSU has -- in separate seasons -- run the regular-season table and made the Final Four in the past half-decade makes that team easy to identify, digestible to interpret in terms of its at-large candidacy.
In my opinion, with a top-10 or even top-15 rating at KenPom and Sagarin in addition a top-40 RPI mark, it would be a stunner if the Shockers didn’t wind up in the Dance one way or the other.
If you want a team with a legitimate at-large argument but at the same time one that holds genuine concern it will get passed over, allow me to present the case for Middle Tennessee. The Blue Raiders have a 24-4 Division I record (15-1 in C-USA) and are a mid-major intimidator who would likely scare the crap out of whatever team got placed directly above them in the bracket.
The Blue Raiders are riding some carryover momentum, certainly. Kermit Davis’ team was seeded 15th last season, then pulled off one of the all-time first-round upsets by knocking off Michigan State. The only 15 seed to ever look better en route to a commanding upset was Florida Gulf Coast in 2013, but given that MSU was projected as a 1 seed by most, Middle’s conquest could be seen as even better than Dunk City doing in Georgetown.
In this regard Middle Tennessee isn’t coming out of the blue, but even still, it’s made the tournament only twice since the turn of the century. The Blue Raiders are nowhere near the class of Wichita State at this point.
But if you’re going to confidently put in Wichita State, then Middle better be right behind. Here’s why.
The team ranks 31st in RPI and KPI, 41st in Sagarin, 48th in KenPom. That’s a heaping of stats, but it’s important to note that any and all of those rankings could be brought up by those in the committee room, and they’re healthy numbers at that. More good news from the committee room: Middle will automatically be discussed as an at-large candidate because it is the regular-season champion of its league.
The Blue Raiders finish their conference slate this week with two homes games, playing 6-23 FIU and 10-17 Florida Atlantic. Kermit Davis’ group will enter the postseason with a 17-1 conference record. The only mid-major teams in one-bid conferences that can match such a dominant league record are undefeated Vermont (16-0 in the America East), undefeated Princeton (12-0 in the Ivy League), one-loss Belmont (15-1 in the OVC) and one-loss Cal State Bakersfield (12-1 in the WAC).
But Middle’s league rates higher than the OVC, America East and the WAC. Plus, Middle’s metrics are better than all of those teams.
And Middle’s defeated Belmont this season -- at Belmont. That’s the Bruins’ only loss at home.
The reason you haven’t heard more about this team is due to its lack of big-name wins. Here’s how this happens: Middle beats Michigan State and gets the attention of the college hoops world, and as a consequence, any coach inside the traditional big six conferences essentially refuses to schedule this team, especially since it was returning most everyone from last season.
So Davis has to muster up as strong a schedule as he possibly can. This means road games at Ole Miss and Belmont, then getting first-year Vanderbilt coach Bryce Drew -- fresh off his days at mid-major darling Valpo -- to schedule MTSU. Middle wins all of them including -- HELLO -- a 71-48 win at a Vanderbilt team that won at Florida and is still on the bubble’s outer orbit.
If you want splits, consider: Middle is 4-1 against the top 100. It played the 17th-toughest non-conference schedule, an RPI marvel considering how many tournament-quality teams passed on playing Middle this season.
Let’s play this out a bit more. Say Middle wins two games in the C-USA tournament, then falls in the final. That would mean 16 road and neutral wins combined, good for 57 percent of Middle’s wins. Go even further: Middle will have played almost 60 percent of its schedule away from home.
And yet still will flirt with the 30-win mark.
Winning your games has to count for something -- and so does losing so few. The home losses to Tennessee State and Georgia State will ding Middle, but the other two losses came by three points at VCU and three points at UTEP, which is tied for third in Conference USA. Now, C-USA isn’t what it once was, and that really is a shame. It’s a 14-team, one-bid league that’s incapable of getting two into the field in most seasons in this era. It used to have Huggins and Pitino and Calipari. Now it hasn’t had more than two bids since the league was split, in 2005. It truly defines mid-major. But that shouldn’t be held against Middle.
This team rates well, is 19-9 against the spread, is veteran-laden and has proved itself against major-conference opponents. The at-large pool this season among mid-majors is thin, I know. And if Wichita State lost in the Valley final, I’d pick the Shockers into the field before any other team from a smaller league. But Middle would be my No. 2 choice. The committee needs to have a long conversation about what this team has achieved, how seldom is has lost and the strength of that non-conference schedule.
The idea that a 29-5 team with a top-20 non-con strength of schedule and top 40-type rankings across the board needs to sweat it out on Selection Sunday speaks to the flawed process we’ve had. Hopefully we’re moving away from that. Hopefully, if Middle doesn’t earn the auto bid, the committee takes a progressive view of how good this team is, the games it was not even allowed to schedule, and puts the Blue Raiders into the dance.
