Affiliation:
1. University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA
Abstract
The 2018-2019 NCAA men’s basketball tournament featured 32 automatic qualifiers and 36 at-large selections. A new metric, College Basketball Rating (CBR), agrees with 30 of the 36 at-large selections but disagrees with the other six teams. CBR finds St. John’s, Temple, Seton Hall, Ole Miss, Baylor, and Minnesota unworthy of an at-large selection and instead prefers Clemson, Texas, Lipscomb, Nebraska, NC State, and TCU. In the most extreme case, CBR identifies 45 non-tournament teams more deserving of an at-large selection than St. John’s. This paper highlights the numerous benefits of CBR and presents strong evidence in favor of its use in determining future NCAA tournament at-large selections.