NCAA Tournament 2020: Selection Committee bracket preview takeaways

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY - MARCH 30: The Virginia Cavaliers raise the trophy after defeating the Purdue Boilermakers 80-75 in overtime of the 2019 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament South Regional to advance to the Final Four at KFC YUM! Center on March 30, 2019 in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images) /

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DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA – JANUARY 18: Jordan Nwora #33 of the Louisville Cardinals is trapped by teammates Javin DeLaurier #12 and Jack White #41 of the Duke Blue Devils (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images) /

Duke Over Louisville?

One of the most surprising takeaways from the first release was that the Duke Blue Devils were ranked ahead of the Louisville Cardinals. Louisville beat Duke in Durham less than a month ago in a game that the Cardinals controlled for basically the entire 40 minutes.

So with that being said, what did the Selection Committee see that made them believe Duke is a better team than Louisville right now?

Well for starters, Duke has two wins over teams who were included in this early release with a win over Kansas who is the overall two seed and a win in East Lansing against Michigan State who is the overall 16 seed.

Louisville, on the other hand, has only one win against a team on this list, but it was against Duke. The Cardinals have played two other ranked teams, Kentucky and Florida State and both games resulted in a loss, the FSU game was a 13-point loss.

So what we can draw from this is that the Selection Committee values overall resumes between similar teams, more than head-to-head games.

With Duke sitting at 19-3 and Louisville sitting at 20-3, it is quite puzzling to many as to why Duke would be two spots ahead of the Cardinals considering two of Duke’s three losses came against teams they should’ve beaten handily and the other was to… Louisville.

Here are the resume comparisons between Duke and Louisville:

Duke:

20-3 overall
4-1 vs quad one opponents
4-1 vs quad two opponents
10-1 vs quad three opponents
2-0 vs quad four opponents

Louisville:

21-3 overall
3-3 vs quad one opponents
4-0 vs quad two opponents
9-0 vs quad three opponents
5-0 vs quad four opponents

What this shows you is that Louisville has better losses with each of their three losses coming against quadrant one opponents, while Duke has a loss against both a quadrant two and three opponent.

This means that Duke’s losses are far worse than Louisville’s are, but Duke also has better wins than the Cardinals.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t mean a whole lot, both are two seeds, but it is still a bit confusing as to why the Cardinals would be ranked behind a team they already beat who also arguably has a worse resume than their own.

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