Not all Quad wins are the same…

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Call clickgrainger.com or just stop by. Grainger. For the ones who get it done. I am curious, based on that return, what kind of a soup would Jerry Palm be, CBSSports.com, chief bracketologist, man who knows the non-conference schedules of all 365 men's college basketball teams at Division I level. What kind of soup would you be? That's an excellent question.

I've never given that any thought. I'm shocked. I would probably be, and I'm just totally butchered the pronunciation of this semi-intentionally, pasta e fagioli. You are the best, man.

I'm not even going to correct it because I'm just going to leave it out there. It's a quality soup. I thought you were going to go like gazpacho, which is a cold soup, because that's you throw cold water on ACC fans.

I prefer to think of how I comfort people with my... Soup is comforting. There's no question about that. Gosh, you are the best. Jerry Palm, CBSSports.com, chief bracketologist. I think the last time we spoke, there were just three ACC teams in your bracket, and I detected a fourth in your bracket. We still have issues, but I detected a fourth.

Thank you. What gives? Did the league just get dramatically better? No, Tony Bennett got his team playing better. They've won what, eight in a row?

Yeah, they're pretty hot. One of those was at Clemson, which is, as I have talked about with you before, one of the few teams you can resume build against. So Virginia has picked a good time to start playing better, and there's not much of a margin for error, although I've got them in the middle of the bracket, so there's a little margin for error. But the problem is that the ACC hasn't got enough good teams that you can lose to where you're not starting to hurt yourself. But yeah, Virginia's done a great job. They're going to get, I think, Wake Forest this weekend, which is a big game for Wake Forest because they need to beat somebody like that. Couldn't quite get it done last night against Duke, but yeah, so Virginia's up there now, and I don't know if that's a great team to resume build against, but it's better than any of the others, except Carolina, Duke, and Clemson. Right, and Wake Forest's best win so far is probably their win against Florida, which happened... Well, they beat Virginia at home, didn't they? Yeah, that's very possible.

It's so long ago, I don't even remember. But I do want to ask you about, and I'm not saying that it's wrong to refer to what they have done in quad one games or quad one and quad two, but it does seem self-fulfilling to me. It's a cycle. Because I went through all of the Big 12's schedules, and the non-conference schedules were, other than Houston and Kansas and Baylor. The non-conference schedules for the other teams are tragically bad, and yet it doesn't hurt them.

So not only did they not play anybody good, they actively played everybody bad. You have four or five teams, maybe six, that played at least seven quad four non-conference games. At least seven. And a couple played like nine quad four non-conference games.

That's just like not even trying. Nine, nine, eight, eight, eight, ten, eight, eight. It is amazing to me that, and because of that, so like you have Iowa State as a three seed I believe in your current bracket, right?

Yeah. And Iowa State's net rating is nine. And I can't for the life of me figure out how the numbers work out with their number nine in the net. I will explain that to you very easily.

Sure. It's all about margin of victory. Ken Palm, the net, both heavily influenced by margin of victory. Strength of schedule is definitely part of it, but it's also based on, you know, like Ken Palm is trying to predict margin.

Right. Therefore he's going to do, base everything on margin of victory. I mean ultimately strength of schedule is going to come down to that.

There's no one loss component in it. The net has a small one loss component, but those two rankings correlate statistically very close together. So when the committee went out and created the net, it was like, we're going to try and get as close to Ken Palm as we can without his formula.

And that's basically what they've done. So those two are heavily, heavily margin of victory based and the selection process is not. So, you know, it's fine for the net to be that way. I guess they're just putting teams in the quadrants with the net. They're not using the net to decide it. But they're using the quadrants, but my point is that they're using the quadrants to separate. And you're not, we can't say on one hand, they're not selecting based on net rating, but your net rating and your selection is based on how you did in their quadrants, which is comical to me.

It's not as, it's not as. Crude as that, but because not all quad one wins are the same. Right.

And you might have a quad two win or two that's better than some of your quad one wins. I mean, and so it's more nuanced than that. So they're not just sitting there and looking at records versus quadrants and not, you know, digging into details because you wouldn't need a five day meeting otherwise. So what is the justification? Okay, your basic point is right.

So what is the justification? You've got TCU in your field, right? You've got Texas Tech in your field. What is the basis for including them in the field? TCU in the non-conference beat nobody in the top hundred, zero top hundred teams in the non-conference.

Texas Tech, I think Michigan might still be in the top hundred. I'm not sure. Like, how did they get in without beating a top hundred team outside of the league? Well, you don't have to it. That's only about a third of your schedule still. So why don't we talk about it?

Why is it even a book? Because if you don't do anything in your league and you didn't do anything out of your league, then you're not going to get in. We see teams get left out almost every year. Usually major conference teams that that got left out because their non-conference schedule was crap.

Yeah, and they didn't do enough in the league to make up for it. So, you know that there's a risk to doing that. But it's, you know, so if you go to if you go to a site where you can find average margin of victory, right? For these teams, you're going to see that there's there's a pretty decent. You know, if you're looking to see why is such and such so high, you'll find them high in the average margin of victory. Michigan State and Gonzaga, who really haven't had great years, are in the top 25 of the net. And it's because when they do when they win big, you know, it's or they don't lose by much. Kansas State is terrible in the net because they've got six overtime wins. You know, you're not winning by much when you win at overtime. Right. That is so so they've actually done pretty well, although they're not a conference schedule with awful crap. But they bet, you know, they they've gotten some some, you know, their profile is better than 75th or whatever they are today in the net. And it's, you know, it's because they don't win by enough. Jerry Palm, CBS Sports dot com, chief bracketologist joining us here on the Adam Gold show at J.P. Palm CBS.

I love having fun with you on this. I am not about to suggest what you think I'm about to suggest. But when I when I look at the profile of Iowa State and Georgia Tech. There's not a lot of difference other than Georgia Tech has been poor in league play, but in terms of high profile wins or League as well.

But how do we know that? I like I I'm not saying that the Big 12 isn't better than the ACC. I would submit that the difference is a lot closer than anybody wants to admit because we are propping up Big 12 teams because they have beaten other overrated Big 12 teams that somehow give them. Quad one and quad two wins that they shouldn't otherwise have.

I will die on that hill that some of the teams that give you a quad one win on your home court do. BYU is not one of the top eight teams in the country. According to the net, right?

It is fraudulent. But nobody, nobody would feed them that highly. I'm not saying they're seeing them, but because you bring the Georgia Tech to Iowa State or BYU, I'm not saying that this I'm not saying Georgia Tech is as good as them. If they were as good at them, they wouldn't be whatever. They they've lost so many conference games and some of them are bad, right? But they also have the attack of 10 and 14, right? They have wins.

Well, they're their biggest problem it to to borrow from an Abraham Lincoln quote better to remain silent and be fought a fool. Then to speak and remove all doubt because they actually played a pretty decent non-conference schedule unlike all of these other team. Not all but a lot of these teams in the Big 12 that just opted out of that. So it all it all kind of runs in a cycle like like I pointed out the good in the league either.

No, I know that's why that's the that's the separator. If Georgia Tech were 14 and 10 in the league rather 14 and 10 overall rather than 10 and 14. I mean, I could make a thousand arguments why they're better than some of these teams.

Yeah, well, you'd have to tell me probably which for your games are changing but still it's all even if we change the bad ones in 10 if they're 14 and 10 right now instead of 10 and 14 and then they get rid of the four quad three losses. I mean, there's probably still a trouble but I beat Boston College. Look, they lost the Boston College and Notre Dame both on their own floor, right? I mean we could I'm not saying they're better than Iowa State but when you look at their profile had they one of those by the way was in overtime.

So Notre Dame didn't get a bounce for that shame on you Notre Dame for winning an overtime one. Gosh, so the more I read the more I delve into this the more angry I get at how the Big 12 is going to have more than twice as many teams in the NCAA tournament as the ACC and it's all built on a house of cards. I know who to bet against now when we get to the tournament. I Kansas Houston and I'm not even sure about Houston to be honest Baylor.

I don't think is as good but Baylor's played a good non-conference schedule at least challenged themselves everybody else. I'm betting against them everyone all of them. All right, I'm not gonna argue it. You're not betting on it either. Are you Jerry? I don't I tend not to bet it's usually doesn't go well for me.

Yeah, it doesn't go for me either. All right. You're a perfect sounding boy. I think this year if I were going to bet I would bet that Purdue with its first tournament game this year. And after that something stupid is going to happen because well Purdue and something stupid happens. How many good teams are in the Big Ten? Purdue. Three, I mean produce, you know potential national champion good Illinois and Wisconsin are Illinois is sweet 16 possible good Wisconsin up until two weeks ago.

Yeah was sweet 16 possible good and that's about it. You know Northwestern and Nebraska Michigan State all have some chance of making the tournament. Northwestern and Nebraska have a problem. They don't get to play at home in the tournament Michigan State just disjointed. At any moment the light could go on for Michigan State. They are not playing to the level of their talent. They have not once all year played except to get Baylor played to the level of their talent.

And if the light ever goes on for those guys if they ever figure it out, you know, they're a danger but time's running out. Jerry Palm. You're the best at JP Palm CBS on Twitter. Thank you much next time. I definitely need to rant about something. I will call you. Okay, and I thought you actually the thing that you were you said that I would question you on with you were going to change my choice of soup. You know, I would not change your choice.

You know what? That's fine. I just I was just not going to correct the pronunciation of pasta visual. Yeah, I like my version better.

Yeah, it's great. That's what you've done. You have you have pronounced it as it looks and I have no problem with that. Thank you, sir. All right. Thank you. Pasta whatever fagioli. I have no idea what he said. It's so phenomenal. Hey, look, we can talk some soup now.

I like the soup talk. I'm going to move off it but it is it's a circular. It's a circular event when if we're if we had Gary Parrish on here last week or two weeks ago. This team is blank in quad one games.

Okay. That is a fact. Now we have to delve into what are those quad one games and should some of those games be quad one games. The big 12 right now plays more quad has more quad one opportunities because they've gamed the math. Their teams are better, which is what it's supposed to be based on. It's because they've gamed the math. They've cracked the formula. Like I said, it not even in basketball anymore. Does the system reward teams that schedule?

Well, yeah, not even in basketball anymore. The big 12 is proof of that when you need auto parts. O'reilly auto dot com is just a click away. Order online and pick up at your local store. Visit O'reilly auto dot com. Auto parts.