Big 12 Basketball: Key storylines heading into 2019 NCAA Tournament

By Chris Kern | Mar 18, 2019

LAWRENCE, KANSAS - FEBRUARY 25: Kamau Stokes #3 of the Kansas State Wildcats drives toward the basket as Mitch Lightfoot #44 of the Kansas Jayhawks defends during the game at Allen Fieldhouse on February 25, 2019 in Lawrence, Kansas. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images) /

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KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI – MARCH 13: Desmond Bane #1 of the TCU Horned Frogs celebrates as the Horned Frogs defeat the Oklahoma State Cowboys during the first round game of the Big 12 Basketball Tournament at the Sprint Center on March 13, 2019 in Kansas City, Missouri. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images) /

TCU and Texas left out

Selection Sunday came and went and the TCU Horned Frogs and Texas Longhorns didn’t hear their name called. They each were considered but at the end of the day, their resumes were not good enough to get in after multiple bids were stolen in Conference Tournaments.

Texas despite their 16-16 record had a very compelling case. They had five quad 1 wins and just 1 loss to quad three. Their NET ranking of 38 would put them into the tournament if the tool was the main metric used but instead they weren’t even in the First Four out. While we saw St.Johns get selected to play in Dayton for the First Four despite being ranked 73 in the NET.

I’m not saying Texas is more deserving but in this evaluation tool, one in which they developed to help select teams to the field, you wouldn’t expect this big of a gap between teams that got in and teams that didn’t. That makes people question what is the point of the NET. It didn’t make a huge difference but one area it did is in the quadrant system.

light. Related Story. Biggest snubs from Selection Sunday

The quadrant system seemed to be a focus for the committee as they evaluated the quality of the wins and they used the NET to do so. Wins are considered quad 1 under these circumstances; home against a top 30, neutral against top 50, and road against top 75. The system may be better than the RPI system used before but it still needs improvements.

TCU may have had a better record than Texas but they certainly didn’t have the quality of wins they did. They have 3 quad 1 wins but those were against Iowa State x2 and at Texas. The Longhorns wins included games at home against Kansas and Purdue, as well as beating North Carolina on a neutral floor.

TCU was also ranked 52 in the NET rankings which shows that the quality of their wins wasn’t as good as Texas. Both of these really struggled down the stretch of the season so they have nobody to blame but themselves. All they can do is go out and try to win the NIT to show the committee they made a mistake.

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