NCAA Tournament 2017: One key stat that shows why your team is doomed in March
Gonzaga, Arizona, and Oregon: Strength of schedule
Gonzaga is back as a No. 1 seed, to haunt fans of the Power 5 conferences. Though the Zags finished with a 32-1 record and played several strong squads in their non-conference schedule, the same arguments are back — they’ve played no one. To be fair, this is almost entirely true regarding the West Coast conference. No team besides Saint Mary’s finished higher than 78th in KenPom’s adjusted rankings for the conference, and four were below 200th. That’s really not very good. Their final strength of schedule on the year came out to 128th — worst among the top seeds.
Arizona and Oregon, meanwhile, weren’t really tested in the Pac-12 schedule outside games among each other and UCLA. And while they had some marquee opponents in the non-conference portion, both played against nonconference schedules that ranked outside the top-100. Arizona finished with the 65th-best schedule in the country, while Oregon came in at 67th.
Schedules that weak can tend to skew adjusted ratings for quality squads — which the Zags, Wildcats, and Ducks truly are. But, the argument goes, they’re not national title contenders.
And, looking at tournament history, the haters just might have a point. Only three top-4 seeds in the last 15 years have had an overall schedule rank outside the top 100 — and all of them lost in the Round of 32. Uh oh, Gonzaga. Expanding it out even further — looking at teams with top 60 or worse schedules — it still doesn’t look good. Of the 26 teams (with top-4 seeds) with schedules ranked below 60th, just one made it into the Final 4, and 11 bowed out in the first weekend.
History has not been on the side of teams that pile up top seed resumes against poor schedules. In the last 15 years, Gonzaga, Oregon, and Arizona have never made it past the Elite 8 with one. They probably shouldn’t be counted on now.