I am going to start a new series this year entitled "Over/Under" where every week I will provide one team that I believe is overrated and one that I believe is underrated based purely on their actual tournament resume. Feel free to leave a comment if you take issue with my selections or if you have anything to add to my perceptions. Also this only takes into account what these teams have done to this point these perceptions may change in time.
Over/Under #1
Overrated:
Michigan St.- I can not even begin to describe to you how overrated on the Bracket Matrix Michigan State is. Their average seed rankings as of Sunday was a 9 seed. They have several major holes in their profile and most importantly their non-conference quality wins are non-existant. Michigan St. did play a tough non-conference schedule including games against Duke, Kansas and Notre Dame but they didn't win any of those match ups. Their best non-conference wins were against RPI #122 Marquette and #116 Loyola Chicago. They also had a very bad loss at home to #134 Texas Southern. The committee weighs the non-conference season equal to the conference slate and Michigan State has 0 top 100 wins in that 13 game schedule and 1 sub 100 loss(neither of these statistics bode well for Michigan St.). If we dig a little bit deeper their conference schedule contains wins over #31 Indiana, #45 Iowa and #77 Michigan. Those are their three best wins of the season but outside of those three there is really nothing in the middle holding their resume together. On the other hand to their credit the Iowa win came on the road and will be looked at positively by the Selection Committee especially because a majority of bubble teams will not have a road win of that quality. Overall Michigan State's resume leaves a lot to be desired and at this point I consider them the last team in the field. On the bright side though they do have 2 quality opponents at home still in Ohio St. and Purdue and 4 huge road opportunities @Michigan, @Illinois, @Wisconsin and @Indiana to pick up the sort marquee wins necessary to make the tournament.
Analysis: Bracket Matrix- 9 Seed
Me- 12 Seed(Play-in Game)
Underrated:
Butler- While Butler is not in an any sense of the word criminally underrated I believe their resume is actually slightly better than the average seed ranking of a 5 seed the Bracket Matrix has them at. Butler's profile is boosted not only because of their strong out of conference record but also because The Big East has been tremendous this season and has a chance to get anywhere from 5-7 bids in the NCAA tournament. First and foremost in the Non-conference season Butler beat RPI #10 North Carolina and #21 Georgetown. There are very few teams in the country that have two non-conference wins that are better quality than Butlers. Now on the negative end Butler does have 3 losses in the non-conference but two of them came to tournament teams in Oklahoma and Indiana. The one loss from their out of conference slate that could be considered a fairly poor loss is to bubble team Tennessee. In conference though is where they have achieved what I believe is worthy of higher status than a 5 seed. While they have no stellar wins over teams that are elite they do have a huge amount of RPI top 50 wins. They have 2 wins over Seton Hall, 2 over St. John's and 1 over Xavier who all have a very good chance to be in the tournament. While none of this may seem overwhelming as evidence I think the reason they are actually deserving of a higher seeding is because the Big East is arguably the Third best conference in the country and Butler sits alone in second place only a 1/2 game behind Villanova. Regardless I think this is the truest case of a team whose overall resume is considerably better than any individual win or game on their schedule when you add up their schedule as a whole it is considerably stronger than many people believe when compared to other schools around their seed line.
Analysis: Bracket Matrix- 5 Seed
Me- 3 Seed
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