Friend of Phog Blog Ken Pomeroy breaks down the Bracket today, using his efficiency numbers, and I think Jayhawks will be pleased:
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Once again, I repeat:

You could go on gut instinct, and lose, or spend hours and hours poring over endless statistics.

Or if you’re smart, you could spend a few bucks to have access to the same proprietary tools that Vegas uses to pick games. I know I’ll be using the BracketBrains tool this year, and I recommend you do the same. Click on the banner below to check it out, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be as impressed as I am, and if you end up signing up, a little bit of dough will go to keeping the Phog Blog’s server’s running.

Look out world, this team just learned what it takes to win in a big-time environment.

The win is great, but I think it’s the lessons learned in the last few weeks that will prove the most important.

How about Julian Wright tossing down two of the sickest in-game dunks I’ve ever seen in the last 5 minutes.

I tell you, I screamed the Rock Chalk Chant all over Fairway and Westwood.

ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK, KU!

Now throw us a 4 seed selection committee. 9-1 over the last 10.

Chalmersfan’s comment earlier got me thinking about KU’s seed. I’ve heard no definitive answer regarding whether or not KU can end up in Dallas (or Dayton), because I get wrapped up in the legal mumbo jumbo of the NCAA’s guidelines.

But it occurred to me that there are a number of teams in competition with KU for seeds, and I thought I’d look into them. Feel free to add/subtract or modify in the comments. Or if you’re clever, guess my password (I don’t even know it anymore) and change my words.

Without further ado (the more stars, the better the chance, see):

UCLA** - probably better seed than KU

Pitt*** - could drop to below KU if they lose tonight to WVU badly today.

UF**** - after losing 3/4, teetering on the edge. They played well against UK last week though.

Tenn* - Could be a 2-4 seed, I think, depending on the outcome of the SEC tournament.

Boston College** - Lunardi has them as a 5. They don’t deserve their ranking.

GW*** - they could plummet to a 5 or 6 after flaming out today v. Temple.

WVU**** - my gut tells me they’ll get a 4 is a foolish sack of tissue, but they’ve been slumping, a lot.

Iowa*** - Lunardi has them as a 4. Don’t understand this.

Illinois* - Not very likely at all, but Illinois is not playing great basketball right now.

Gonzaga* - pretty unlikely, but they’re not improving, and their recent play shows it.

Washington**** - Washington’s climbing, they’ll need to get upset by somebody in the Pac10 Tourney Thanks to PB reader Josh for letting us know that Washington got Carmelo-ized byt Malik Hairston and the Ducks.

UNC* - Very unlikely at this point. UNC is playing top 10 ball over the last 5 games.

Memphis* - If they get blown out early in the CUSA tournament, they could fall, but KU would need to win B12 tournament.

The bottom line is that KU has and outside chance for a 3 seed. I think they’re a 5 if they win one game, a 4 if they win 2, and a 3 if they win 3. Best case - Memphis loses early and big, KU wins B12 tournament, and KU slides into a 3 seed in Dallas.

Most likely scenario: KU wins on Friday and Saturday and gets the lowest 4, and plays in Salt Lake City and uses run-on sentences in their post game interview and doesn’t care.

Most of the bracket predictions out there are pretty lame. Most have Boston College and KU as 6-7 seeds, which, in my opinion, is bad, bad math. The tournament is less than a month away now, and I think it’s time to start making actual predictions about what seed teams will end up with. This seems to me to be a better use of time than “if the season ended today” predictions. The season doesn’t end today. This is a predictive bracket. I encourage your feedback. I admit I’m mailing it in for the 13-16 seeds.

The First Phog Blog Bracket (2/20/06):

1 Seeds:
Duke, UConn, Villanova, Memphis

2 Seeds:
Gonzaga, Pittsburgh, Texas (-), Ohio State

3 Seeds:
Boston College, Florida, Tennessee, Iowa

4 Seeds:
Kansas, Illinois, West Virginia, GW

5 Seeds
UCLA, North Carolina State, Michigan State, Georgetown

6 Seeds
LSU, Oklahoma, UNC, George Mason

7 Seeds
Northern Iowa, Wisconsin, Bucknell, Washington

8 Seeds
Cal, Nevada, Marquette, Alabama

9 Seeds
Creighton, So. Illinois, Seton Hall, Wichita St

10 Seeds
Arizona, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri State

11 Seeds
UAB, Air Force, Syracuse, Colorado

12 Seeds
W. Kentucky, San Diego State, UW-Milwaukee, NC-Wilmington

13 Seeds
Northwestern State, Montana, Akron, Iona

14 Seeds
Winthrop, Murray State, Penn, Pacific

15 Seeds
FDU, Belmont, IUPUI, Northern Arizona

16 Seeds
Georgia Southern, Albany, Delaware State, Play-in

I’ve got a feeling this thing has more holes in it than a horse-trader’s mule, or will have come Selection Sunday, but hey, there’s only so much you can do.

While I expect soon to see one of Hoopinion’s most choice previews for tomorrow’s game, I would be remiss if I didn’t get my prediction in early in the day to encourage discussion and dissent.

Well, here goes. For the absurd way in which Mizzou beat KU just a few short weeks ago, and even more for the pathetic way in which Mizzou folded like a meticulously crafted Japanese fan post-KU in order to give us a bad RPI loss, I expect us to unleash an unholy terror all over the struggling Tigers.

Remember hearing how tornados could somehow thrust a piece of hay several inches into a brick? Yeah, that’s about what I’m thinking.

Boot to the head!

KU 87
MU 59

Anyone care to disagree?

It’s the day after a game, so it’s time to look at how KU is doing in the predictive power ratings, most of which I have become so fond of that I would happily let the whole lot of them live in a Utopian commune in my backyard.

Without further ado:

Let’s start with Pomeroy, whose statistical burgers are thick and plentiful. In his main Pomeroy ratings, we’ve moved from 14 to 13 after yesterday’s win. We’ve held our position as the 4th best team in the country over the last five games, but oddly, the company ahead of us is different - we’re now behind UConn, Georgetown and Oklahoma!

We’re also still 4th in the country in Pomeroy’s Pythagorean rankings and his efficiency numbers behind only Texas, Duke and UConn.

Dolphin hasn’t updated his stats since Friday, but we’re still 5th in the predictive ratings (it will probably be updated later today)

Sagarain hasn’t updated yet either, but I don’t expect a lot of movement, so we’ll still likely be 7th in that (pure points) rating. Update, we’ve moved up to 6th.

Dunkel hasn’t updated either, so we’re still 4th there.

So this meaningless exercise has proved to be nearly Ecclesiastically meaningless, quite nearly a chasing after a wind which doesn’t even end up being there. But that fact has never stopped me in the past, so you would be return-to-your-vomit foolish to expect that anything will change.

The long and short is that KU is a top 15, and perhaps a top 10 team in the country, right now. Given our youth, we may crash into some wall - physical or emotional - and end this season in a blaze of disappointment.

I don’t think that’s very likely though, because I’m not sure we’re old enough to have learned about walls, physical or otherwise. I expect this team to win out the regular season with the lone exception of our game at Texas, which I believe will be a great one.

Looking ahead, we will almost certainly be ranked for the first time this year when the polls come out tomorrow.

Here’s how the teams in front of us did:

#17/#18 Boston College Two wins on the road in the ACC this week should move them up a little.

#18/#19 Iowa - Lost to Northwestern, and deserve to plummet for that, but they’re leading the Big 10 and they knocked off Indiana in Bloomington, which should keep them from falling too much.

#19/#17 Ohio State Couple of wins this week, including one at Ann Arbor. They will probably creep up, and deservedly so.

#20/#20 OU They will probably stay where they are after two good wins this week, and I don’t think voters will count the KU loss against them.

#21/#23 Washington How on earth they stayed in the polls after losing three straight is beyond me, especially in the Pac-10, but two wins this week, including one over UCLA, should prevent them from falling out of the top 25.

#22/#22 Michigan Michigan can say good bye to their ranking after losing three straight by a combined 51 points. They will go down, and they will go down hard.

#23/#24 North Carolina For losing to Duke by 4, I don’t think they’ll get dropped. If they lose to Miami tonight, which is certainly possible, they will drop.

#24/#21 Indiana Like their B10 counterpart Michigan, Indy will fall after having lost three straight.

#25/#28 Northern Iowa A loss yesterday to Missouri State is plenty to drop them significantly.

#33/#25 Colorado That Colorado stayed ranked after getting run out of the gym by Iowa State is an embarrasment to the Coach’s poll. A loss to the Texas Aggies this week won’t help their case.

#26/#26 LSU LSU is a good team, but their loss yesterday to Florida will keep them out of the top 25.

I think three teams will drop in each poll, leaving the door open for up and comers like KU, Bucknell, Cal and UAB in the cool kid’s club.

I think KU will be ranked as high as #19 and as low as #22 in the polls. A lot more pundits began noticing KU this week and the fact that we’re 14-2 in our last 16 isn’t being lost on most folks.

Regular Phog Blog readers know that I try to follow the power ratings pretty closely, as they can often reveal things about teams that a straight up win-loss record does not. Here’s how we stack in the various predictive ratings around the country.

Pomeroy still has us at 14th, although we’ve moved up to 4th in his Last 5 games rating. In his efficiency and pythagorean ratings, we’re 4th in the country, behind Texas, Duke and UConn, respectively. That’s mighty nice company.

Dolphin still has us at 5th in the nation, behind the above three and Villanova.

Jeff Sagarin has us as 7th in his Pure Points rating, the predictions of which are always eerily similar to Vegas lines.

And finally, the Dunkel index, which last week had us at 6th best team in the country, now has us as the 4th best team in the country (doesn’t include Nebraska win).

Last year, we had the best RPI in the nation, and yet we lagged in these predictive ratings. We all know what happened last year. This year, though our RPI has improved to 45 after last night’s win, we’re excelling at the ratings that the casinos use to predict games.

My bet? Go with the casinos.

Groans could be heard across Kansas City today as KU fans trotted out their driveways to open the Star.

That’s right, Jason Whitlock - Big Sexy himself - believes in the Jayhawks.

Earlier this year, JW was optimistic about KSU - he had to beg the bunch over at Phog.net for forgiveness for that one.

And now so many Jayhwawks’ fears have come true. Whitlock has boarded the Jayhawk bus; he’s nestled comfortably on the bandwagon. And he’s using a bull horn to tell everybody about it.

I would be upset, except that I’ve been saying basically the same thing as he has (perhaps without the explicit comparisons to top 10 teams which at this point can only be dangerous) for the last few weeks.

So you tell me, are the Jayhawks soon to be off the radar? Not if we don’t beat OU.

Now if we beat them by 10 as I think we will, then that’s a different story.

UPDATE:

KU is up to eleventh in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings.

And twelfth in Sagarin’s Pure Points.

And FIFTH according to the Dolphin Predictive Ratings.

And SIXTH according to Pomeroy’s efficiency and Pythagorean ratings.

Again - lies, damn lies and statistics - but look at our company on these links.  It’s Duke, Texas, Villanova, Memphis, Illinois, Florida etc.  Are they wrong for all of them too?

I emailed the below to some friends earlier, and though it might be of interest to PB readers.

According to Ken Pomeroy’s stats, Mario Chalmers leads the nation in Steal %, which, though I can’t find the explicit definition, is a normalized stat to measure a player’s effectiveness at stealing the rock.

Good grief.  The kid’s just a freshman but how fast are his hands?

A few other things from Ken’s stats that I believe are telling.  The bottom line is that KU’s record is misleading since we’ve lost 5 games by a total of 13 points.  Had we scored 18 more points this season, or had our opponents scored 18 points less, we’d be in the top 5 in the country.  Would we be a better team at this point in time?  No.  We would be the same team, except we’d probably be more complacent.  Don’t believe me?  Look at Ken Pomeroy’s numbers, which look at a team for the sum of its possessions more than simply for its wins and losses.  The former is, in my opinion, a better indicator of future success, particularly for a young team.

According to KP,

I know all about the lies, the damn lies, and the statistics, but I think the way that Pomeroy ignores wins and losses is very useful for looking at KU, which has a disproportionate representation of close losses which make their record look worse than it actually is.  Mike DeCourcy told me he thought KU was probably between 15-20 and KP’s stats seem to back that up.  The last 5 stats seem to indicate that the team is improving however, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they continue to show that as the team matures.

I’ve been very bullish on the Hawks this year, even during the weeping and gnashing of teeth sessions post so many close losses.  Perhaps I’ll be proven to be a naive, heart-before-head fool at the end of the year, but I think there are a lot of reasons for optimism.  I’m confident that we’ll make the tournament with at least a 10-6 record in the B12, and I think we’ve got a fair shot at 12-4 or better and a decent seed in the Big Dance. 

I can tell you this, we’ve got good guard play and great defense, and any team with both of those is a hard out in the Tourney. 

Anybody want on the bandwagon?

Both Tom Keegan and Gregg Doyel are both saying that KU is the Big 12’s second best team. I’m not sure these bold words are more indicative of KU’s budding uber-potential or the Big 12’s general youngness, but as much as I like Keegan, I’m going to give Doyel the credit for calling KU out before OU’s ignominious loss to Mizzou at Norman last night. That’s pathetic.

Especially since the empty chairs, which outnumbered those with Sooner fans in them, appeared more interested than their human counterparts.

Keegan and Doyel join Mike DeCourcy, who, in naming himself the driver of the KU bandwagon, suggests that KU could win it all if we get our situation at point guard figured out. DeCourcy’s among the most knowledgable in the business, so I wouldn’t write his comments off as quickly as you might be inclined.

KU is talented, and I do think that moving Russ Robinson to point appears to be bearing fruit and allowing the super-frosh Mario Chalmers to work himself into the offense more. Plus Micah Downs, who has been injured (please stop sending me emails asking me why Micah isn’t playing more) will likely get some better minutes as the season progresses.

I’m feeling pretty good about this team going into tonight’s game against Colorado. It will be a tough test - certainly tougher and in many ways more important than the headline grabbing pasting of Kentucky - but I think KU will pull it out in the end.

The Coors Event Center will be filled with as many Jayhawks as Buffaloes, and I like our ability to contain Roby better this year than last. The predictive stats (Pomeroy, Sagarin, etc.) will sing a different tune, but I feel comfortable saying

KU 76
CU 69

This is an important game for Mark’s REAL standings as well, as KU can come pretty close to turning itself into a contender. I’m afraid that OU can no longer be considered a contender, but I’ll leave that for Mark to confirm.

Update: I should note that according to Ken Pomeroy, KU is the nation’s 6th best team over the last five games, so maybe DeCourcy is right.

I’ve said in the Phog Blog chat several times that KU will beat Kentucky. This team is getting better while finding an identity and I trust that in the next 5-6 games, they’ll suitably self-identify to beat the Cats in Lawrence.

But that Cats will be without Randolph Morris, which while it will make the game less losable, it’s also going to make it less spectacular, as the Cats will be extremely thin down-low.

So it goes.