The teams you meet in the Tournament
With a strong seed solidifying, it's not too early to start thinking about what Nebraska is looking at this March.
After a poor-shooting first half Saturday that saw Nebraska trail Northwestern by as many as 8, the numbers evened out—which is to say, NU shot 58.3% from the field and 60% from 3 in the second half—and the Huskers raced away for a 68-49 win. That was the expectation against a Wildcat team with just two Big Ten wins, but at this point in the season, being as good as expected is priority No. 1.
There are five great-to-very good teams in the Big Ten this year: Michigan, Illinois, Purdue, Nebraska and Michigan State. The Huskers don’t have to face any of the other four over the remaining six games. They’ve already more than held their own against that group, going 2-3 with both wins and two of the losses decided by a possession.1
Nothing is hard and fast until Selection Sunday of course, but NU has been good enough so far that it feels like things are solidifying. At The Bracket Matrix Sunday morning, the Huskers were looking like a 3-seed with 49 of the collected bracket predictions having NU as a 2 and 63 predicting a 3.
This is almost unprecedented territory for this program. Normally, in the good years anyway, Husker fans are sweating out a bubble watch this time of year. Since that’s not a concern, let’s start considering the types of teams NU might face.
We know it can change—and we’ll refine this as needed in the coming weeks—but let’s hypothetically lock Nebraska in as a 3-seed for simplicity’s sake. That would mean a game against a 14-seed in the first round and (it better mean) a game against a 6/11 winner in the second.
A 14-seed
Matchups matter a ton come tournament time, and the value of a high seed is how much time a team can buy itself before it’s almost all about matchups. This is why in recent years I’ve almost perennially picked Houston to win the tournament.2 The Cougars under Kelvin Sampson usually play defense like an actual cougar, they can occasionally out-shoot teams and they almost always are able to out-jump, outrun and out-rebound teams. Houston and teams like it have a lot of ways to win games.
Nebraska, as good as it has been this year, ain’t that. The Huskers out-skill and out-execute teams, and they’ve done it against some of the best, but it is perhaps a slightly narrower path than your typical 3-seed.
That said, as I rolled through the numbers for six likely3 14-seeds from Bracket Matrix, there wasn’t much there that made me stop and say, “Well, that wouldn’t be ideal.” Teams were talking about in this range: UNC-Wilmington, California Baptist, Troy, North Dakota State, East Tennessee State and Portland State. Not that you should think about those teams in particular this far out, but those types of teams—low-major conference winners. And while some of those teams are intriguingly good and potentially dangerous, none of them have a better than 50% chance of winning their conference tournaments per Team Rankings’ model, so they’re all one March loss away from forcing the deck to be reshuffled.
But we can still look at the sample as a whole to understand the ask in the first round. On the low end, by the current KenPom ratings, NU would be about a 22-point favorite over UNC-Wilmington and, on the high end, about a 26-point favorite over a Portland State or Troy.
Nobody’s taking anything for granted of course, but if the Huskers land a top-four seed, they should be well-positioned to finally remove its scarlet letter as the only major-conference team without a tournament win. That’s probably the only accolade that matters for judging this season.
But if Nebraska finishes the regular season and Big Ten Tournament looking as good as it has all season, this team should aspire to more than just a first-round win.
A 6-seed (or an 11)
While spurring my cart even farther ahead of my horse, I did hit a few potential 6 seeds where I thought, “Oh, yuck.” Right now, we’re talking about top-third of the SEC teams like Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky. Throw Louisville and BYU in there, too, as well as the second-best mid-major, Saint Louis, which only has one loss. Again, based on KenPom, we’re talking about the Huskers as maybe a 5-point favorite or maybe a slight underdog.
Even as a potential 3-seed, Nebraska might only earn itself a one-round reprieve from styles-make-fights danger, and it’s not drastically easier should the Huskers face an 11-seed coming off an upset.
In that range were talking about above-average power-conference teams—USC, UCLA, Texas, Missouri are all in that range at the moment—or good mid-majors like St. Mary’s, Miami (Ohio) or Santa Clara.
The Huskers face the Trojans and Bruins as part of a tricky, two-game road trip coming up at the end of the month. It wouldn’t shock me if they dropped one of those. The Huskers also have to face Iowa twice, the first matchup tomorrow on the road. The Hawkeyes might be the sixth-best team in the Big Ten, which is still plenty good.
Nebraska might be favored for the remainder of the regular season, but I don’t expect the Huskers to win out. That said, NU’s ultimate mark of quality so far this season is that it has only lost to teams who might be better. It hasn’t slipped up.
If it doesn’t the rest of the way, and wins at least a game in the conference tournament, a top-three seed becomes even more likely.
Hopefully it’s not too early to start thinking about what that looks like.
Monday miscellany
Nebraska softball drank No. 1 Texas Tech’s oil-money-fueled milkshake, beating the Red Raiders 3-2 Sunday. Huskers kinda needed it, too. After splitting with No. 1 Texas last weekend, part of a 3-2 start, Nebraska dropped a spot in the rankings to No. 11. It started this weekend 2-2, beating No. 12 LSU and UCF but losing to No. 20 Georgia and No. 3 Tennessee. These are tough, early-season matchups, but the Huskers weren’t off to an undeniable start. They are, however, already 2-1 against teams ranked No. 1.
Baseball got off to a 3-0 start with solid wins over UConn, Northeastern and Grand Canyon. Nebraska faces Stanford, as a slight underdog, today at 2 p.m. CT on MLB.com.
ESPN has acquired the Big Ten’s internal memo outlining its proposal for a 24-team College Football Playoff. It’s, uh, bold. Per ESPN, it outlines a 23+1 format,4 no automatic bids, the elimination of conference championship games, two rounds of home playoff games5 and a committee mandate to avoid rematches in the first round. To summarize: The Big Ten would like as many possible spots for its teams as possible, it doesn’t want those that make it to beat each other if possible, the only counterweight to these maneuverings is whatever the SEC wants but the two power leagues will eventually agree on something and everyone else can go to hell. Everyone has known that’s where we’re headed, but it doesn’t make feeling closer any better.
Illinois beat Nebraska by 9 a few weeks back, but NU had some late chances to change that. Not a bad loss by any means.
Well, that and it’s not much fun picking Duke or UConn. Because others in my bracket pool don’t share this aversion, Houston usually offers some value.
As of Feb. 15. This deep in the bracket, things are quite fluid.
That means doubling the size of the playoff but still only guaranteeing the G6 teams one spot.
OK, I like this one.