It's Selection Sunday-eve. Tomorrow, Mississippi State basketball will learn where they land in the NCAA Tournament. We know the Bulldogs are bound for the Big Dance, but what seed are they in for? Let's take a look at State's resume and what that means for the NCAA Tournament seeding...
What's helping Mississippi State's NCAA Tournament resume?
The Bulldogs have been locks to reach the NCAA Tournament for a few weeks now for the simple reason that they've racked up an impressive number of quality wins while avoiding any truly damaging losses against a difficult schedule.
State has seven Quad 1 wins, a winning record against Quads 1 and 2, and no losses in Quads 3 and 4. Their overall strength of schedule ranks in the Top 15 nationally, and their non-conference slate was respectable enough. The Bulldogs have six true road wins and are a combined 11-7 when playing either away or at a neutral site.
Finally, MSU owns six wins over teams that should be NCAA Tournament-bound between Memphis, Texas A&M, Ole Miss twice, Georgia, and Vanderbilt. That's the profile of an NCAA Tournament team, and one that won't come close to sweating anything on Selection Sunday.
What's hurting Mississippi State's NCAA Tournament resume?
By far the biggest thing hurting Mississippi State's profile is their performance against truly high-level teams. Seven Q1 wins is great, but not all Q1 wins are created equal. In upper-level Q1 games, which the committee calls "Q1A", State is just 2-8. They went 1-8 against teams ranking inside the Top 20 of the NET.
Essentially, the Bulldogs didn't record the "needle-moving" wins necessary to earn a higher seed in the NCAA Tournament. How they played against those top teams also hurt them. State's eight Top 20 NET losses came by an average margin of 16.6 points.
Taking blowout losses to the best teams you play is a negative for performance metrics (KenPom, BPI, and Torvik), which tend to play a big role in your ultimate seeding. Those metrics average out to rank MSU 34th in the country. Perfectly fine overall, but again, not high enough to justify a higher seed on their own.
Where is Mississippi State basketball likely to land in the NCAA Tournament bracket?
Despite average performance metrics, in many years, the positives on State's resume - the number of quality wins (even without elite wins) and no bad losses against that strength of schedule - would be enough to have them seeded solidly in the NCAA Tournament bracket, likely as a 6 or 7-seed.
This year though, those positives don't necessarily stand out all that much. It's a uniquely strong year amongst teams in the 5-8 range of the bracket. Thanks to super leagues and the transfer portal, there are a ton of talented teams consolidated into a few leagues. This means everyone playing in those leagues gets plenty of opportunities at adding good wins and most of them are good enough to beat anyone else on a given day.
Essentially, having several quality wins doesn't necessarily set you apart this year. That's where having elite wins can really help you stand out, which as we've discussed, State doesn't (it also doesn't help that they took losses to mediocre teams down the stretch). As a result, their resume quality averages out to "only" 31st nationally. That's still perfectly fine for safely making the tournament, but it's not enough to outweigh those average performance metrics and move MSU higher in the bracket.
So what does this all equate to in terms of seeding? Mississippi State is firmly on the 8/9 line going into Selection Sunday. In fact, if the Bulldogs ended up as anything other than one of those two seeds, it'd be a major surprise. That means MSU is all but guaranteed a challenging game in the first round and, if they were to advance to the second round, they'll be squaring off with a 1-seed (barring a ridiculous 16 over 1 upset).
That's not exactly a path conducive to making a March Madness run, but it's one the Bulldogs will have to deal with. Either way, State is in the NCAA Tournament for the third-straight season, and anything can happen in the Big Dance. It's called March Madness for a reason.