How might March Madness play out when looking at teams currently?

The Super Bowl, by the way, is Sunday for those of you not aware.

I'm sure Jerry Palm is aware that the Super Bowl is coming up, but others might not be. Others might be too focused in on brackets because now that the Duke Carolina game part one is over, most people go, oh that's right, it's college basketball season. It is the unofficial start to the college basketball season. Jerry Palm, Chief Bracketologist, CBSSports.com, at JP Palm CBS on Twitter.

All right, I'm going to put it to you straight. Why is the ACC getting dissed by everybody? I think you have just three ACC teams in your current. Did you add one?

Who did you add? Virginia. Oh, you added Virginia? Yep.

Good on you, mate. I know you had Virginia Tech at the beginning of last week. You had them in, I believe, the first four.

Yeah, beginning of last week, right. Okay. Now you don't even have them in the first four out. How many Big 12 teams do you have? All of them? A bunch. All of them? 42. All right, so here's my question.

It's nine. Nine Big 12 teams. Yep. BYU's in, right? Yep. Iowa State's in, right? Yeah. Texas Tech is in, right? Sure.

So my question is, and this is, I'm not in any way, you know how you and I work, I'm not in any way coming at you because this is everywhere, all over. Anybody that is doing a bracket has the exact same stuff basically within, you know, a team or two here and there. So what I'm curious about is the non-conference credentials for those three teams in particular, which are pathetic. Yeah. Even compared to, so why do those teams have such high metrics? Is it simply the neighborhood?

Like you could have a trash house in a great neighborhood and the value of your house goes up. Is that it? Are you talking about like net and Ken Palm? Yeah.

Yes. Those metrics, especially Ken Palm, are basically all margin of victory. Now the net's got a little bit of a one loss component to it, but that basically Ken Palm is trying to predict point spreads. Those are predictive metrics. Basically all you use to do that is point spread. Now you can do sophisticated math with point spread, right?

So, but that's what you're trying to do. So with you look at say, just you go out and find, you know, the average margin of victory for these teams in division one games, right? And you're going to see a lot of correlation between that and Ken Palm rankings. Now it's obviously not going to be equal cause you know, like I said, he's doing sophisticated math to margin of victory, but, um, you know, that's what he's trying to measure and, you know, resumes, you know, selection and seating for the tournament. It's not based on that.

They're on the team sheets, but nobody gets in on Ken Palm or net alone. It's just like with the RPI, it was when, you know, they had the RPI. I mean, it's all you got is RPI.

You had nothing. So there has to be something to back that up and, you know, but that's how Ken Palm is not, but the net is used, you know, solely to put teams in quadrants on team sheets. Right. But, but it's the quadrants on the team sheets that leads us to the, they are blank and blank.

We just thought we'd talk to Gary Parrish, a colleague of yours, uh, about it a little bit more than an hour ago. Um, but it's the, cause he had mentioned, I'm forgetting, I guess it's Duke is five and five in quadrant one games. Yeah.

Right. Based on the ACC's soft power numbers, right in the net. And they are soft in the net, even though they're non-conference credentials are better than, I mean, I'm not talking about Houston.

I think they are. I'm not talking about Houston. I'm not talking about Kansas. I'm not talking about the school Baylor, the, the, the schools that we know are really good at, you know, nationally, but I'm talking about the BYU's, the Iowa States, the Texas techs, the Oklahomans of the world, which don't have anything in the non-conference, but have great power numbers. They provide quad one opportunities for these teams game in and game out, which it's a self fulfilling prophecy. And that's what I'm trying to get at is that we're judging the ACC on quad one or quad two wins when they don't have nearly as many chances because maybe they overscheduled this year and lost some of those games.

Whereas that's the problem, you know, your non-conference performance is definitely something to carry through and you'd much rather have teams that win their games and lose them. But you know, the, the big 12, the ACC are the same size. I think the ACC is going 14. No, we have, we have actually right now, right now, it's just at 15.

We, we don't know. It could be 18 next year. It could be 17. It could be 40. We don't know. In fact, I'm not so sure it's not changing day to day, but so the big 12 collectively has got 10 quadrant one wins 10 and 17. And the ACC has got 11 quadrant one wins co collectively and non-conference play, but 11 and 25. True or false hats make you go bald.

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That's k e e p s.com slash podcast. So it's their fault for playing too many good games. Well, it seems that they couldn't beat I suppose that that's right.

So but how many very carrying through it hurts everybody. No question, right? So but but here's this like would the ACC have been better off because you get criticized. If you do this, we have criticized NC State for doing this and I'm just bringing them out because it's one of the teams we talk about in a daily basis. Jerry Palm CBS sports.com chief bracketologist and a man who puts up with me as often as I call him.

It's amazing. Like BYU's best win is San Diego State. I'm outside of the league. I'm not talking about anything they've done within Big 12 play. I was thinking that top 25 team. That's a good team. Yeah, I'm not noggin it. That's that's their that's their best win. Who's what's Texas Tech's best win?

I'll stop my head. Couldn't tell you, right? But outside the league. Yeah, not much, right? Iowa State's best win outside League is Iowa outside the top 50, right?

Yeah, right, not great. That's Iowa State. Iowa State, by the way, is a head-to-head loss, head-to-head loss, I believe to Virginia Tech. So they may very well, right? So probably one of the reasons why Virginia Tech made a right appearance in the bracket event. And we hope that Virginia Tech gets back in it.

I actually look, I don't even know if Virginia Tech's all that great. I'm not even saying that they are. All I'm saying is that the it has been a narrative and it's very easy because I know the committee members. We like to say that they're just looking at data, but I don't believe, I mean, they have a five day meeting, right? You know, they watch these teams play.

There's, you know, it's, there's a lot of data, but a list of subjective process guided by the objective data, right? They, they, they listen to the narrative. Like they, I believe that they were swayed in football to vote against Florida. I absolutely believe it. We're talking about different people and a different situation, right?

Yes. Oh, I don't know if they were swayed or swayed, but they were, that was just egregious. So I'm just looking at Virginia Tech and they've got five. Oh, they've got bad losses too. They got tons of losses. That's the problem.

Yeah. They they've got seven quad one losses. You can overcome that, but you can't lose to Miami at home. You know, unless Miami is actually, you know, a middle, you know, a bottom of the at-large pool caliber team.

I've never even been in my pool yet. I I'm not, again, bad example, probably I've watched them play. I, I saw them play last week and I honestly, I thought I was watching a middle school game. Uh, there's the state Miami game was one of the worst basketball games I've ever watched.

It was an embarrassment. Part of the problem now that the ACC has after poor, relatively poor non-conference performance is that you've got all of these teams looking to resume build and literally just three teams. They can do that again.

Right. You know, Carolina, Duke, and Clemson, those are the three teams that you can beat. That's going to get the committee's attention now that you're in conference play because non-conference play did not go well. And whether it was, you know, over scheduling or whatever my scheduling advice to coaches, conferences, whatever is always the same thing. Schedule the best teams you can beat, but you, if that means the knowledge of your own team, you know, a knowledge of the teams you're scheduling, it's easier to do it in basketball than it is in football because it doesn't matter as much football, hardly at all.

But, um, but in basketball, you know, you try and schedule the best teams you can beat, you know, but there there's, that's as much art as it is science. Uh, but you know, that this year, you know, Virginia, Virginia Tech, I mean, NC state, some of these teams that either over-scheduled or had other problems that, that made it so that they were not up to enough of their non-conference schedule to put them really in contention, um, for spot spots in the field. And it's going to be a down year for the ACC probably historically down. Um, it's a down year in the big 10 too. I mean, outside Purdue, Illinois and Wisconsin, there's not much there. Um, Michigan's take out up to a horrible start.

Yeah. Now I've gotten Nebraska, Northwestern and Michigan state in the bracket. That's more of, you know, it's a 68 team field. You got to put somebody in, but it's going to get bigger, Jerry.

You know what you're doing? It's still six weeks, almost a fortune Sunday and brackets at this time of year, there's a lot of that kind of thing going on with this. They need 68 teams. They talk about expansion and I'm like, we need to take 14,000. Yeah.

Well, what are the, what are the odds of that as gambling is available here, uh, starting March 11th, uh, what are the odds of four teams coming out of the field as opposed to 12 to 20 going in? Yeah, right. Exactly. So, all right. I appreciate you. Uh, you let me bounce stuff off you, uh, because, uh, we're glad to talk to you, Adam. It's, it's this time of the year. Uh, Jerry Palm, chief bracketologist, cbssports.com at JP Palm, CBS on Twitter.

Thank you very, very much. Hey, your, uh, your Boilermakers are pretty good. I know that. Yeah.

I can't necessarily watch them, but they're pretty good. Yeah. It's, uh, it's fun to have a team that, you know, it's, it's got a legitimate chance to win a national championship or stick another dagger through my heart. Um, or any, anything is possible, right?

With Purdue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I've got one day I'm going to write a book about all the crap that happens to Purdue in the NCAA tournament and some of it of course, self-inflicted crap, but still crap. Oh, you're a gentleman. Thank you very much. All right. Take care. That's Jerry Palm, cbssports.com.