Going to do the first full bracket breakdown of the season on our bye date next week, but wanted to go ahead and share a few things just for folks starting to tune in after we beat Texas. We've been popping up on bracketologies the last couple of weeks but what do the odds really look like, what's the path we need to walk, and how likely is it really?

Annual note: The whole point is that this is a projection of the rest of our season, and is not based solely on results that have already happened.

TL;DR: Right now we PROJECT as comfortably (but not super comfortably) in the field as an 8-9 seed

Full breakdown:
Current resume: NET: 42, NET WAB: 39
Predictive Metrics: BPI: 30, POM: 38, Torvik: 31
Results Metrics: KPI: 50, SOR: 37

Remaining games (projected line per Torvik):
1/21 - Mississippi State (-11)
1/24 - South Carolina (-10)
1-31 - at Georgia (+5)
2/3 - at Alabama (+11)
2/7 - Florida (+3)
2/11 - Missouri (-9)
2/14 - at Vandy (+13)
2/18 - Ole Miss (-10)
2/21 - at Oklahoma (-2)
2/25 - at Arkansas (+7)
2/28 - Texas (-6)
3/3 - Kentucky (-5)
3/7 - at LSU (+2)
Projected SEC record: 11-7

What is the point of this?
I do this every year as a compliment to ColleyvilleAg's bubble watch to give people an idea of what is projected to happen. It's one thing to look at bracketologies, but those are based mostly on what's already happened. They often do not take into account things like unbalanced schedules.

I think this is helpful to look at after games to see what will actually make a big difference when it comes to figuring out if we're going to make the tournament and/or what seed we'll be. There will be people upset that our projection doesn't change much even if we beat State and SC by double digits each, but that is what's supposed to happen. To really change our projection, results would need to deviate from the predicted results.

What are the big takeaways here?
The big thing people need to realize is that we already bagged two of the harder games on our schedule. Yes, the back half of the schedule is tougher than the front half, but by winning at Auburn and Texas, we've drastically improved our situation and now even have a little bit of margin for error for a slip up. That said, the slip up needs to not be one of these next two games. A loss to South Carolina OR Mississippi State would be our worst loss of the season.

The other thing is that some games that we might have considered long shots a few weeks ago now don't look quite so intimidating, namely Missouri and Kentucky, which are now games we figure to be significant favorites in.

That isn't what Lunardi is saying...
GTFOH

This is pretty crazy to be talking about considering where many of us thought this team would end up after the Mgbako injury. Hopefully we can stay healthy (knock on wood) and keep defying expectations.

Basically win all our home games where we are favored and we're going dancing:
1/21 - Mississippi State (-11)
1/24 - South Carolina (-10)
2/11 - Missouri (-9)
2/18 - Ole Miss (-10)
2/28 - Texas (-6)
3/3 - Kentucky (-5)

Lose any of these and pick up a winnable game on the road like OU or LSU. Win any other game on the schedule and we start thinking about a top 6 seed.

Yeah the other reason I like doing this is that if we win tomorrow night by like 2 points and our NET goes down instead of up I think it helps people understand why a little bit.

BaytownAg13 said:

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This is pretty crazy to be talking about considering where many of us thought this team would end up after the Mgbako injury. Hopefully we can stay healthy (knock on wood) and keep defying expectations.

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I was really negative on us but we just continue to get better week to week. Bucky explained that some last week talking about not running a lot of set plays so it takes a while for the team to feel each other out and learn each other's cuts and movements. He has also talked about players buying into the team concept, playing for each other, not being selfish. I think as the wins continue to pile up that will only get reinforced.

I also can't believe how we are able to compete in the paint while getting beaten on the boards like we do. The power of hitting long distance shots opens the floor up and our smaller lineup out quicks the other team. And then we have the Agee factor.

Really fun team to watch so far. If we can avoid the injury bug there's no reason why we can't be a factor in March.

The thing about Florida is that they're one of the worst three point shooting teams in the country, so at times they can hold an opponent in the game even though they're killing them on the boards.

That game is one that the game preview is very simple. We have to shoot like we normally shoot or better, they have to shoot how they normally shoot or worse, and we need to just get crushed on the glass as opposed to getting absolutely murdered.

They will play at tempo so if they shoot and miss some transition threes those should be a little easier to rebound than in the halfcourt where those trees they have will be camped out under the basket.

I'm just kidding, it's just my running bit that I hate Lunardi. He's fine.

I've had this thing going for years of how much I HATE that ESPN goes all in one guy (that isn't even particularly good at it) for their bracket conversations. He's not particularly bad at it either, but if we can get 17 people to post NFL mock drafts you'd think we could at least get one other voice on ESPN.

TRUE.

He isn't the savant they make him out to be.

But if someone tells me I'm Pretty, then I will take the compliment and be happy.

BTW one more break we might catch is we have off the midweek next week but Georgia doesn't. They play Tennessee on Tuesday and there's probably not two teams in the SEC more different than us and Tennessee so that's a relatively tough turn around.

It hasn't gotten the attention that some of our other future matchups have but our game against Georgia could be absolutely wild. They're currently #1 in the country in tempo.

I think it's a pretty long shot. Right now Florida projects to go 14-4 on Torvik, but they're actually probably going to be favored in every remaining game. (Torvik and KenPom's models are based on probabilities, so it's not just favored in every game = winning out.) With the road games we have left it's hard to imagine us posting that kind of number.

But we'll see, this team keeps getting better. If we beat South Carolina, a team that's sort of been our anti-Auburn, and then find a way to win at Georgia then I might start to believe we've got a real shot.