NCAA Tournament 2017: 6 overrated/underrated teams

Overrated: Seton Hall Pirates

There were a couple teams from the bottom of the Big East bubble here, but the biggest offender was Seton Hall. The Pirates were awarded a 9-seed in the South, despite an adjusted efficiency rank that landed at 53rd. That rank is above more than a few teams that didn’t make the tournament, including TCU, Utah, Houston, and Syracuse. Their gap of 19 spots between S-curve rank and adjusted efficiency was the 2nd highest in the tournament field.

It’s understandable why the Committee appeared to overvalue Seton Hall — they’ve been on a tear lately. At 15-9 after a loss to St. John’s on February 11th, Seton Hall was on the brink of losing their season. They were 6-8 in the Big East, and basically had two quality wins, one over Marquette, and another over a Sindarious Thornwell-less South Carolina.

The Pirates collected quite the tournament resume in the season’s last few weeks. They beat Creighton, Xavier, Butler, and Marquette (again) in their next seven games, all teams within KenPom’s top 40. And they just barely missed out on taking Villanova down in the Big East tournament for a 3rd year running, as a late putback from Josh Hart and a missed bunny from Angel Delgado sealed a 2-point loss.

The point is, all signs pointed to a middling team through two-thirds of the season. While their late charge certainly gave them a tournament-worthy resume, the close quality victories weren’t enough to erase the advanced metric stank of the season’s first three and a half months. While I like Seton Hall’s rotation — Angel Delgado has been one of the better big men in the country, and Khadeen Carrington and Desi Rodriguez can fill it up — it’s tough to see an argument for them as a 9-seed, other than recency bias. They’ll have a blah-ish matchup against Arkansas for the 8-9 game, before a matchup with UNC looms. The Hall will have their chances to prove me wrong there.