Houston considered extremely under-seeded for upcoming NCAAs by one analytics website
Houston has received national acclaim all season for its winning culture and veteran experience combined with leadership.
The Cougars are also checking the boxes on an analytical level.
One prominent college basketball analytics website, EvanMiya.com, has had Houston near the top of the national team rankings. Miya also believes the Cougars, though they recently are projected to be a No. 1 seed by prominent NCAA Tournament bracket experts like ESPN.com's Joe Lunardi and CBSSports.com's Jerry Palm, are actually under-seeded.
Evan Miyakawa uses a system that determines whether a team is under-seeded if its pre-tourney team rating is significantly above what is expected for that seed line.
Houston is way above the line to determine which teams are under-seeded or not, with a current relative rating of 34.7.
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Miyakawa also uses historical research for how far under-seeded teams can go in the NCAA Tournament. He notes that under-seeded teams are generally much stronger than typical for their seed and historically, have advanced 59% further in the bracket.
“People don’t realize how strong this Houston team is analytically,” Miyakawa said. “I think they are more likely at this point to get a 1-seed than a 2-seed, but either way, they will be a value pick in the bracket because people are still dismissing them.
“Right now, they rate better than Auburn in terms of predicted team strength at http://EvanMiya.com and are only behind Duke.”
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Indeed, Houston is ranked No. 2 in the nation behind Duke with a relative rating of 34.7, which is the combination of a team’s offensive rate (16.4) and its defensive rate (18.3).
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Houston is also up to No. 3 from No. 5 a week ago in resume quality by the website, which uses a pair of metrics to determine a team’s NCAA Tournament seeding: Win Quality and Loss Quality.
Win Quality “measures how good your wins are based on the difficulty of those games,” while Loss Quality “measures how bad your losses are based on the difficulty of those games.”
Houston is No. 3 with a resume quality total of 7.2, having a Win Quality of 8.4 and a loss quality of -1.3. Auburn is first with a resume quality score of 11.2, followed by Alabama at 8.2.
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The Cougars (24-4, 16-1 Big 12) have currently won 20 out of their last 21 ballgames. They will be at home Saturday afternoon for a nationally televised CBS game against Cincinnati, and have their final home game of the season Monday night against Kansas.
