Avert your eyes!

Ugh, please don't look! Nothing to see here.

Yep, the 17th Seed finished in 163rd place out of 195 this year, after finishing in the top 25 last year. We sure did struggle this time around. So what happened?

1. We whiffed on Texas, Indiana and TCU. Everyone whiffed on TCU, so no problem there. We should've known better about UT and IU. That's just too many losses, no matter who you beat or what your other metrics look like.

2. I'm not sure we'd have put Temple, Belmont or St. John's in, either. Dan (my son) argued for St. John's on the basis of their good wins, but I talked him out of it because their NET was so low. Score one for him. I've said all year that the Committee doesn't like to put in mid-major bubble teams at the expense of mediocre majors with better schedules, and here's Belmont with UNCG as the first team out. Maybe something's changed. And I didn't think they'd think Temple did enough, but in hindsight we should have seen that they had - good record, decent numbers. We'll have to look more into it. St. John's would've been worth 6 points to us (they'd have been in the play-in for us) and Temple would've too (they were a late subtraction), so 12 points.

3. We blew it on seeding four teams: Iowa, Seton Hall and Minnesota were all overseeded, and VCU was underseeded. That cost us 8 points. I thought Seton Hall's late-season run and the others' overall profiles were worth more, and we made a stupid mistake on VCU, penalizing them too much for the early loss to Rhode Island.

4. Our last-minute change from Gonzaga to Sparty for the last 1-seed cost us four points total. I love the Zags and they're a worthy 1, but I don't feel bad about this change. Michigan State won the regular season and tournament titles for a conference that got 8 teams in the tournament, they had the Quad 1 wins too. They were worthy of a 1. Still, we probably should have stuck with our earlier gut feeling.

5. I probably overreacted to the tournaments. I was sure the Seminoles would move up a line after beating Virginia. I thought less of Purdue after their early exit. I already mentioned VCU.

6. I should have spent more time on the bottom quarter (the AQ's). I mostly sorted them by NET and checked against SOS, but I should have dug deeper.

7. Most of all, we did terrible with the bubble, as evidenced by the teams we put in/left out. Partly that was due to time... we were rushed at the end. But that's also not great planning by us. But on the third hand, the committee threw us a curve with Belmont and reached (NET-wise) on St. John's over TCU.

Well, we'll take a look at it and do better next year. Right?