Can Syracuse get in with 15 losses?
Patrick Stevens The magic number is 14. Go through the history of the NCAA tournament, and 14 losses is the furthest the selection committee has ever gone in picking an at-large team. It’s happened on 11 occasions since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, and not once since 2011.
Of course, five(!) 14-loss teams earned at-large entries that year, which was the first season of the 68team era. The teams at the edge of that loss-littered field came in different shapes and sizes.
There was the 11th pick out of a monstrous Big East (Marquette), a pair of bruising Big Ten teams eager for a rock fight (Michigan State and Penn State), a Tennessee outfit that did great nonconference work but teetered down the stretch and a shaky Southern California bunch that bowed out quickly as Virginia Commonwealth’s first victim on its way to the Final Four.
Those were all power conference teams, but then again, who expects to see a Mountain West or Missouri Valley team with 14 losses go anywhere for the postseason but the CBI?
Given the realities of a regular-season schedule of roughly 30 games plus a conference tournament, it’s not surprising the committee hasn’t granted a team with 15 losses or more an at-large bid. All of the 14loss teams were at least two games over .500 (1991 Villanova and 2001 Georgia were 16-14 on Selection Sunday).
But this year just might be different. The edge of the field, while looking a little more formidable than it did a couple weeks back, isn’t particularly strong. That’s a byproduct of the 68-team era, but it’s advanced a step this season.
So is there some school out there that could end up with 15 losses and still make the NCAA tournament? Yup. There’s two serious contenders for the honor, and another team worth mentioning just because of how close to the edge of field others might think it is.
Syracuse (17-13)
The Orange’s path to losing 15 games involves dropping its regular-season finale at home against Georgia Tech and then making a deep run in the ACC tournament.
This isn’t particularly likely for two reasons.
One, Syracuse finds itself in contention for an NCAA bid largely because it is an awesome team in the Carrier Dome (well, aside from when it got skunked by St. John’s). The Orange is 15-3 in its own building, with victories over Duke, Florida State, Miami and Virginia. Syracuse also upended Monmouth and Wake Forest at home.
The issue, though, is the Orange falls apart once it leaves the 315 area code. It is 2-10 in road and neutral settings, with one win coming at Clemson on Tyus Battle’s buzzer-beater and the other coming in overtime at an N.C. State team that had its coach fired before March even arrived. And unfortunately for Jim Boeheim’s team, it doesn’t get to play NCAA tournament games at home.
Nonetheless, Syracuse is a decent bet to win Saturday against Georgia Tech (which has road issues of its own) and avoid any chance of having 15 losses come Selection Sunday. Whether it can do anything next week in Brooklyn at the ACC tournament to reverse its shaky play outside the dome remains to be seen, but it’s probably the key to the Orange’s at-large hopes.
Vanderbilt (16-14)
Ignore the win-loss record for just a second, and the Commodores really don’t look like an outlandish at-large pick.
They’re 6-9 away from Memorial Gymnasium, which isn’t outstanding but not terrible compared to others near the edge of the field. They won at Florida and Arkansas, and also picked off Iowa State and South Carolina at home.
Bryce Drew’s bunch played the toughest nonconference schedule in the country and enter Thursday with a top-50 RPI and sit at No. 40 in the KenPom. com rankings. Vanderbilt also wraps up with a return game from Florida on Saturday, which is another chance to poach a useful victory before next week’s SEC tournament. It was a handful for Kentucky on Wednesday night. The Commodores also lost at Missouri and have that glaringly middling record. Neither is easy to overlook. This much is certain: Vanderbilt will have at least 15 losses if it winds up in the at-large pool. But suppose it wins its next three, advancing to the semifinals of the SEC tournament. It might have a case, especially if no bid thieves emerge elsewhere.
Georgia Tech (16-13)
Like Syracuse, the Yellow Jackets can’t lose more than 14 games if they win their regular-season finale. But that would require Georgia Tech to win on the road, something they’ve done just twice (in an impressive showing at Virginia Commonwealth and, in another echo of Syracuse, at N.C. State).
The Yellow Jackets also knocked off Florida State, North Carolina and Notre Dame, which might turn out to be the top three seeds in the ACC tournament. There’s no arguing with the top of their profile.
While the Yellow Jackets have played strong defense in their first season under Josh Pastner and Ben Lammers has emerged as one of the steadiest big men in the ACC, they’re still 2-9 outside of Atlanta and own a nonconference schedule ranked 259th in the country. No one should begrudge Georgia Tech that schedule — most assumed it would struggle a bunch — but it shouldn’t be rewarded for it, either.
Vanderbilt and Syracuse, despite their warts, have paths to losing 15 games and still finding themselves in the conversation for an at-large bid later this month. It isn’t realistic to expect the same will be true for Georgia Tech.