Stanford Men’s Basketball hoping Quad 1 wins will get them dancing
On the eve of Selection Sunday, Stanford men’s basketball finds themselves hoping for the NCAA tournament committee to forgive their early exit in the ACC tournament to Pittsburgh and still grant them a spot in the field of 68. A spot that would almost certainly be an 11 seed in one of the First Four/play-in games in Dayton, Ohio.
While a win over Pittsburgh in the ACC tournament very well may have been enough to get the Cardinal into the tournament, their hopes aren’t completely dead. To help folks understand what is giving the Cardinal odds in the range of 10-15% of making the tourney, the answer lies in what are called “Quad 1 victories.” Something head coach Kyle Smith understands quite well:
“We have one of the best players in the country and we got a lot of Quad 1 wins and really competitive conference…I think our conference was really impressive. I think we led all the power four conferences in Quad 1 wins and had the most wins and winning percentage versus other power fours.”
Every game a college basketball team plays is broken into quadrants ranging from 1-4. In Quad 1 games, the highest tier, Stanford is 5-6. Their five Quad 1 wins are over North Carolina at home, Louisville at home, NC State away, Virginia Tech away, and Saint Louis on a neutral floor. Of those five wins, two of them are currently Quad 1A, which is the upper echelon of that highest tier. Those two wins are the wins over Louisville and NC State. Earlier in the week, the North Carolina win was also a Quad 1A victory, but now it’s Quad 1B. At the time of the win, it was a Quad 1A win. So, that’s 2-3 Quad 1A victories depending on how you slice it.
Across the board, Stanford is 5-6 in Quad 1 games, 4-2 in Quad 2 games, 5-4 in Quad 3 games, and 6-0 in Quad 4 games. Their NET ranking is 61, which puts them squarely in the mix. Sometimes that’s a good enough NET ranking to make the tourney and sometimes it isn’t.
Earlier this week, one of those Quad 3 games was a Quad 4 game. So instead of being 4-4 in Quad 3 games and 7-0 in Quad 4 games, Stanford is now 5-4 in Quad 3 games and 6-0 in Quad 4 games. That I would think help them a bit with their resume as those Quad 3 games are what has most hurt their resume. The Quad 1 wins are a plus, the Quad 2 wins are a plus, and no Quad 4 losses is nice. But the Quad 3, that’s where it hurts them. So, to now go into Selection Sunday with a slightly above .500 record in Quad 3 games certainly helps, even it’s just a little bit.
If someone were to make an emotional plea to the Selection Sunday committee for Stanford, it would be a combination of “It’s been a long time” and “Ebuka Okorie deserves to go dancing.” Stanford hasn’t been in the NCAA tourney since 2014 and Ebuka Okorie’s emergence as one of the top freshmen in the nation would certainly make for a fun March Madness storyline. However, the committee doesn’t make decisions based on emotion or pathos. It’s strict numbers and logos. And that’s the way it should be.
To wrap this all up, it’s important to underscore that Stanford’s NCAA tournament odds are not high according to most projections. They’re somewhere in the range of First Four Out to Next Four Out to even further pushed out. That’s where they seem to lie. That all being said, those Quad 1 wins give them a flicker of hope and having a Quad 4 win turn into a Quad 3 is the kind of nudge that maybe just maybe gets them on a flight to Dayton, Ohio.
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