CBS Sports' Jerry Palm explains why he's lower on Maryland than other bracketologists
It's that time of year when the worst bracketologist is the one who doesn't have your favorite team seeded as high as the others. For Maryland fans this year, that's been CBS Sports' Jerry Palm, who's had the Terps seeded a couple of lines below the consensus for much of the season.
It's that time of year when the worst bracketologist is the one who doesn't have your favorite team seeded as high as the others. For Maryland fans this year, that's been CBS Sports' Jerry Palm, who's had the Terps seeded a couple of lines below the consensus for much of the season.
Palm is my colleague under the CBS umbrella, meaning his brackets are shared regularly on 247Sports sites, which means Inside Maryland Sports readers have been less than excited to read about those projections regularly. Je doesn't seem to have any vendetta toward Maryland; he just seems less excited about their prospects than others, slotting them as a low No. 7 seed while they're listed by most as a five.
To bridge the gap between fans and writer, I reached out to Jerry for the formula to his Terps (22-7 overall, 1-6 Big Ten) valuation. The bottom line: it's the schedule. KenPom ranks Maryland's non-conference slate 361st out of 364 teams nationally.
"Strength of schedule, primarily. They are a little light in high-end quality. Three wins over definite tournament teams and also in-for-now Indiana. Three losses to teams not in the bracket," Palm said.
Those three teams not in the bracket: Washington, Ohio State and Northwestern. But the first came by six points, the next two came on buzzer-beaters. All three were on the road.
Still, the analytics love Maryland. KenPom ranks them 14th nationally and they're No. 12 in the NET Rankings. Maryland's AP Poll ranking reached a new season-high Monday, climbing to No. 13. And to some extent, their soft non-conference schedule is offset by the grueling 20-game Big Ten schedule. TeamRankings ranks Kevin Willard's overall strength of schedule the 27th-most difficult nationally.
Not bad for a team that was falling toward the bubble six weeks ago.
He's also not a fan of the margin-of-victory factor, which helps the Terps largely because of the blowout wins during that non-conference slate,
"I think the predictive metrics are a little deceptive in their case. Maryland is seventh in scoring margin, which heavily influences those. The ones that measure resume strength have them in the 6-7 seed range," he said.
Formulas and eyeball tests, of course, are for fans and media. Maryland's rise or fall in seeding will be determined by its play during the next week-plus, beginning with a big trip to Michigan on Wednesday and ending with a trip to Indianapolis for the conference tournament next week.
"Seeding is everything. I mean, obviously, for the Big Ten tournament, it's huge just because it's such a big tournament now that … the difference between playing on Thursday and Friday is monstrous," Willard said last week. And obviously for the NCAA Tournament, just if you look at the historical standards of who really wins national championships and gets to Final Fours, you really – your seeding is everything."
