HHS Top 25: Welcome to March!

Let the madness begin! It is March, the month of conference tournaments, Selection Monday, and, of course, the NCAA tournament. This month, several teams could go on Cinderella runs in the postseason, but by April 7, the clock will have struck midnight for all but two teams, which will face off that evening for the 2019 national championship.

Odds are that the 2019 champion will come from one of the nation’s top 25 teams, if not from the top ten. With that in mind, here is the ballot we submitted to the STI/Hoopfeed Top 25 Poll for Week 17. This week’s poll covered games played from Tuesday, February 26 through Monday, March 4. Movement up or down from our Week 16 ballot is denoted in parentheses.

1. Baylor
2. Louisville (↑1)
3. UConn (↓1)
4. Oregon
5. Mississippi State
6. Notre Dame
7. Stanford (↑1)
8. Oregon State (↓1)
9. Iowa
10. Maryland (↑1)
11. North Carolina State (↑1)
12. Marquette (↓2)
13. Gonzaga
14. Miami (FL)
15. Iowa State (↑2)
16. Syracuse (↓1)
17. Arizona State (↑1)
18. South Carolina (↑1)
19. Texas A&M (↑5)
20. Drake
21. Texas (↓5)
22. Florida State (↓1)
23. South Dakota
24. Kentucky (↓2)
25. South Dakota State

On Monday, at halftime of UConn’s hard-fought win over South Florida, the NCAA selection committee revealed its top 16 teams. The top 16 list is significant because those schools, as the Nos. 1 through 4 seeds, will get to host the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. This reveal was the second of the season and the last one before the official tournament bracket is announced on Selection Monday, March 18. Let’s compare the committee’s top 16 teams with our ballot’s top 16 teams:

Our ballot had 14 of the 16 teams that the selection committee picked. The two teams that the committee included and we did not were South Carolina at No. 12 (a 3-seed) and Texas A&M at No. 16 (a 4-seed). The Gamecocks were ranked No. 18 and the Aggies were ranked No. 19 on our ballot, which would make them both 5-seeds. Conversely, we ranked Marquette and Gonzaga at Nos. 12 and 13, respectively, but they were not among the committee’s top 16 teams.

Of the 14 teams that appeared on both the selection committee’s list and our Her Hoop Stats ballot, just three were ranked more than one spot differently. Notre Dame was the selection committee’s overall No. 3 team and our No. 6, making the Fighting Irish a 1-seed in the eyes of the selection committee and a 2-seed by our estimation. Oregon State was the selection committee’s No. 11 team and our No. 8, which also means that its seed would differ (a 3-seed versus a 2-seed). Finally, North Carolina State was a 3-seed on both the selection committee’s list and our ballot, but was ranked No. 9 and No. 11 on the two lists.

Of course, with conference tournaments beginning this week, these projections will likely change. A strong run by one of the teams ranked between Nos. 17 and 25 on our ballot could propel them to a top-four seed, while an early exit from their conference tournament could leave a current 3- or 4-seed guessing where they’ll play the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. As you’re following the action, we invite you to use the “Compare Teams” feature on our website to see any two teams’ stats and records side-by-side. (I gave a more detailed overview of this feature back in Week 10.)

Do you mostly agree with our ballot, or do you think the selection committee did a better job picking the top 16 teams? Let us know in the comments section below or on Twitter (@herhoopstats), and keep checking the Hoopfeed website for the STI/Hoopfeed Top 25 Poll through the end of the season.

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