Based solely on the results and metrics, Alabama almost has to be regarded as a top 16 team.<\/p>\n
The Crimson Tide rank top 12 in all of three of the results-based metrics, they are 8-7 against projected tournament teams and they have yet to suffer a loss to a team presently ranked worse than 28th on KenPom. They also played one of the toughest nonconference schedules out there, which is always a crowd pleaser. And because of it, they are tied with UConn, Florida and Vanderbilt for the seventh-most wins against Quads 1 and 2 (13).<\/p>\n
But what is the selection committee going to do about that great big, super public, Charles Bediako asterisk?<\/p>\n
This isn’t your standard injury\/eligibility situation. Bediako and Nate Oats got a temporary restraining order from a judge\u2014who just so happened to be an Alabama donor\u2014and effectively dared the NCAA to do anything about it.<\/p>\n
And while Bediako’s impact for those five games didn’t exactly answer the “What would happen if you put Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on Valparaiso?” hypothetical, he was most definitely a factor for Alabama in the three-point win over Texas A&M and four-point win over Auburn, logging a combined 41 minutes with 17 points and seven rebounds in those victories.<\/p>\n
If Alabama doesn’t appear in the top 16, should we assume the committee disregarded, or at least significantly discounted the wins in which Bediako played?<\/p>\n
Will we actually hear from the committee chairman how they are discussing Alabama?<\/p>\n
Frankly, this is probably the most important thing we’ll learn from the reveal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Based solely on the results and metrics, Alabama almost has to be regarded as a top 16 team.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-493457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}