With 10-12 regular season games remaining for most teams, we can start to get some picture of what teams need to do to end the regular season in position for an NCAA tournament bid (we generally think of ending the regular season in the top 10 as likely being in the tournament, anywhere from 10-15 as on the bubble, and 16 or below as unlikely to make it at-large).
If you’re new to this site or missed last week’s article, First PWR Forecast of 2020 (and why you might care), read that first for some background.
You can always browse the weekly forecast yourself, and might find it useful to follow along with this article, at PWR by wins forecast.
Who’s a lock?
This far out, there are no mathematical locks. Even #1 North Dakota could miss if the Hawks improbably strung together 12 losses to end their regular season. But, in 1,000,000 simulations, none of #1 North Dakota, #2 Minnesota State, or #3 Cornell dipped below #13 (with 2, 4, and 5 being the minimum number of wins simulated for each, respectively). It would take an unprecedented collapse for any of the three to miss.
Unless something fundamentally changes that makes their success to date not predictive of future results, it would take a 1 in a 1,000,000 collapse for any of the following teams to miss the NCAA tournament:
#1 North Dakota
#2 Minnesota State
#3 Cornell
Who’s in if they keep performing as they have to date?
Surprisingly, in addition to the above, only #4 Denver seems almost assured an at-large berth if they win half their remaining games.
The lone team likely to be assured a berth if they keep winning is:
#4 Denver
Who controls their own destiny?
From #5 Boston College down to about #34 St Cloud State can put themselves in bubble position or better with sufficiently good performance over the remainder of the regular season.
Those teams include:
#5 Boston College
#6 Massachusetts
#7 Ohio State
#8 Clarkson
#9 Penn State
#10 Providence
#11 Arizona State
#12 Minnesota-Duluth
#13 Mass.-Lowell
#14 Northeastern
#15 Quinnipiac
#16 Michigan State
#17 Northern Michigan
#18 New Hampshire
#19 Dartmouth
#20 Harvard
#21 Notre Dame
#22 Michigan Tech
#23 Bemidji State
#24 Michigan
#25 Army
#26 Western Michigan
#27 Bowling Green
#28 Nebraska-Omaha
#29 Alaska
#30 Boston University
#31 Maine
#32 Wisconsin
#33 Minnesota
#34 St. Cloud St
Of course, teams near the top of that list have an easier path (winning about 50% of remaining games for #5 Boston College) than teams near the bottom of that list (winning about 80% of remaining games for #34 St. Cloud St).
Who needs help
From #35 down, there aren’t a lot of opportunities to climb onto the bubble. Quite a few in the #35-45 range seem to have a possibility of climbing just onto the bubble with a perfect or near perfect remainder of the regular season. But, even if that unlikely outcome were to occur, anything short of a conference tournament championship would result in a season ending loss that would likely push them back out of contention for an at-large bid. If you like super long shots, the teams with the best chance of that scenario are #35 Sacred Heart, #36 Connecticut, #37 Colorado College, #39 Colgate, and #41 Yale.
The following teams should plan to win their conference tournaments if they want to make the NCAAs:
#35 Sacred Heart
#36 Connecticut
#37 Colorado College
#38 American International
#39 Colgate
#40 RIT
#41 Yale
#42 Miami
#43 Rensselaer
#44 Air Force
#45 Robert Morris
#46 Holy Cross
#47 Lake Superior
#48 Merrimack
#49 Canisius
#50 Bentley
#51 Vermont
#52 Ferris State
#53 Princeton
#54 Union
#55 Niagara
#56 Alaska Anchorage
#57 Brown
#58 Mercyhurst
#59 St. Lawrence
#60 Alabama-Huntsville
What next?
The forecasts are updated weekly, usually Monday or Tuesday, so you can always browse them yourself. I’ll also try to post interesting interpretations here, with increasing frequency as we near the end of the regular season. Meanwhile, you can explore more of the data yourself:
