NCAA Tournament: North Carolina deserved to be the Last Team In

Much is being made of West Virginia supposedly getting screwed out of an NCAA Tournament bid to the benefit of North Carolina; a review of the metrics used by the selection committee does not bear this out at all.

UNC’s average ranking in the eight metrics was a full 10 spots ahead of the schools listed by the selection committee as the First Four Out.

There was a lot that the committee got wrong, in terms of the seeding of several teams (Auburn, Louisville, VCU) that made it into the field.

Carolina getting a bid, and West Virginia, Indiana, Ohio State and Boise State not jumping the line on the Heels was not a mistake.

	UNC	WVU	Indiana	Ohio State	Boise State
KenPom	33	53	48	39	50
NET	36	51	54	41	44
RPI	33	57	52	76	45
Torvik	36	34	55	41	50
KPI	54	48	36	53	50
BPI	25	51	52	37	48
SOR	38	42	50	56	55
WAB	42	43	48	55	53
Average	37.1	47.4	50.6	49.8	49.4

For the sake of argument, I reviewed the metrics on the four lowest-seeded SEC teams –Oklahoma (nine), Vanderbilt and Arkansas (10s), and Texas (11).

	Oklahoma	Arkansas	Vanderbilt	Texas
KenPom	38	40	49	44
NET	43	40	48	39
RPI	61	65	58	88
Torvik	46	43	42	49
KPI	42	43	46	57
BPI	43	42	56	33
SOR	37	45	41	52
WAB	32	39	37	46
Average	42.8	44.6	47.1	51.0

Maybe the First Four Out need to redirect their fire.