In the category of way to early to be talking about this, I was looking at a writeup on UNM and the article had some interesting comments about what it takes to get an at large bid. Needless to say to anyone here, they are very hard to get for non P5 schools. Obviously you have to beat some good teams, but you simply cannot lose to a bad team.
The question is, are there enough opportunities for an at-large bid?
While there a few games on the schedule that can polish said schedule and boost NET ratings, there are more than enough opportunities for losses coming from opponents that, more than likely, will not be in the upper two quadrants in the NCAA’s NET ranking system.
...[snip], but losses against teams like McNeese State, Montana, or any of the bottom of the conference could spell doom for New Mexico’s chance at the NCAA tournament.
And if last year’s NCAA Tournament at-large bids are any indication, there is not a whole lot of wiggle room to go through growing pains... [snip]
New Mexico has nine projected games that could be categorized in either the quadrant 1 or quadrant 2 categories.
If we compare these numbers to the total number of quadrant 1 and quadrant 2 games of the four number one seeds and the last four at-large bids in the 2019 NCAA Tournament, we can get a rough idea of the what it takes to make it into the tournament and what it takes to be a highly seeded team.
The top four seeds (Virginia, Gonzaga, Duke and North Carolina) had a combined average of 19 quadrant 1 and quadrant 2 games played and a combined win/loss ratio of 77.6% in such games.
...[snip]
The last four in (Belmont, Arizona State, Temple and St. John’s) had a combined average of 15 quadrant 1 and quadrant 2 games played and a combined win/loss ratio of 55.7% in such games.
Now, this is a little more reasonable.
Still, of the last four in on the 2019 tournament, only Belmont had a similar number of quadrant 1 and quadrant 2 games played to New Mexico’s nine projected quadrant 1 and 2 games. The Bruins played eight combined quadrant 1 and quadrant 2 games. Of the rest of the eight teams that were compared (the four number one seeds and last four in), Gonzaga had the next fewest number of opportunities with 13 quadrant 1 and 2 games played.
Because New Mexico has a schedule that looks similar in strength to the ’18-19 Bruins, we can take a closer look at Belmont’s schedule to get a vague idea of what the Lobos need to do to secure a berth in ’19-20, assuming all other things equal.
Quadrant 1 Quadrant 2 Quadrant 3 Quadrant 4
2-2 3-1 3-2 17-0
Teams on the bubble last year that got an at-large bid generally took care of business when it came to quadrant four games, leaving virtually no room for a loss to a quadrant 4 team. Belmont epitomized this.
