Yes, USC should’ve made the NCAA tournament

USC was one of the first four teams out of the NCAA tournament field, released Sunday night. The Trojans should’ve been in the tournament, and it’s surprising that they’re not.

Almost everyone thought USC would make the field.

The Trojans appeared on 79 of the 84 bracket projections collected at BracketMatrix.com. That’s not quite unanimous, but there was an overwhelming consensus that the Trojans would be among the 68 teams to dance. Among teams that made the field, Syracuse appeared on 15 of the 84 projections, and Arizona State appeared on 42.

These projections were reasonable. USC had a solid resume.

The tournament has 36 at-large spots. Because the Trojans didn’t win the Pac-12 Tournament, they had to grab one of those spots. The Trojans lost 11 games despite playing in a Pac-12 that was pretty mediocre, so they shouldn’t have felt safe, necessarily. But they had a resume that should’ve gotten them over the hump. Some highlights:

• The Trojans were 34th nationally in RPI. The NCAA has used that stat, which stands for Rating Percentage Index, to help pick tournament teams since at least the 1980s. RPI is far from a perfect stat, but it’s a little weird that USC’s wasn’t good enough.

• The Trojans were 12-6 in the Pac-12. There have been plenty of teams from the power leagues over the years who have missed the tournament after posting .500-ish conference records or better. But it’s downright odd for a power-league team to win two-thirds of its conference games (before going 2-1 in the Pac-12 tournament) and then not make the field. USC is the only such case this year. Was the Pac-12 that bad that USC couldn’t get in?
• USC ranked pretty well in other stats that mix schedule strength and overall record. The Trojans were 41st in Sports-Reference’s Simple Rating System and 43rd in ESPN’s Basketball Power Index. They were among the 36 highest-rated at-large teams in both metrics.
• Really, they just won a lot. USC’s 23 total victories (and 14 in conference, or 12 if you don’t count the tournament) were more than any other power-conference team not to make the field. Penn State was next, with 21 total wins and 11 in the Big Ten.

So, why’d the selection committee keep USC out?

I don’t know. There’s one fair rationale and a few that aren’t as good.

The strong point against USC is that the Trojans were 0-7 in games against teams in the top 50 nationally in adjusted efficiency margin. They lacked anything approaching a great win. They did, however, win a handful of games just outside that range, and a range of opponent-adjusted metrics liked them just fine. This is the likeliest strike against USC.

The Trojans are one of the four teams to have an assistant coach charged so far in the ongoing federal investigation into college basketball corruption. The school fired that assistant, Tony Bland, not long after the government accused him of accepting bribes to steer players to businessmen. That’s a criminal charge and a whopper of an NCAA violation.

The selection committee can consider whatever it wants when deciding whether to put teams in the tournament or not. Extenuating circumstances like a program being swept up in an FBI probe aren’t listed. It’s notable that one of the other high-profile bubble misses was Louisville, which is also caught up in that investigation, and that Arizona won the Pac-12 and only got seeded on the No. 4 line. For those reasons, this view won’t be uncommon:

That’s one explanation, although most people didn’t think Louisville would get in. The Cardinals’ omission is hardly evidence of anything other than them being mediocre.

Another idea is just the the committee really didn’t like the Pac-12. Arizona’s seed is evidence of that point, but Arizona State and UCLA making the field over USC kind of flies in the face of that argument. The Trojans certainly suffered from going 0-3 against those teams, though. The Pac-12 rationale would have some merit.

Anyway, USC should be in the field.

The Trojans lost three games in a row from Feb. 3-10. Other than that, they’ve been one of the better teams in the country, and they’ve played their best basketball lately. Their resume was good enough to make it, and they could’ve done some damage had they gotten in.