Updated Frogs O' War Bracketology

Welcome to the second edition of Frogs O' War Bracketology! With the Big 12 Tournament beginning tonight in Kansas City, it is time for the Frogs to play their way into the NIT field. As it stands right now, the Frogs have likely earned a bid to participate in the College Basketball Invitational, at the very least. TCU is guaranteed to finish the season with a winning record overall, and recent history with the CBI suggests that a winning record from a power conference team should be good enough to get in.

The Frogs still have a shot to enter the NIT, but there are a lot of factors at play. Let's start with a little bit of technical details surrounding the NCAA Tournament. As you know, 68 teams are invited to the Big Dance every year. Of those 68 teams, 32 are awarded automatic bids by virtue of winning their conference's postseason tournament (except for the Ivy League, where the regular season champion is given an automatic bid), while the other 36 are awarded at-large bids.

The Frogs could, theoretically, play their way into the NCAA Tournament by winning the Big 12 Tournament, but that looks unlikely at this point. The NIT would be the next logical destination for TCU, but that is beginning to look like a longshot as well. The NIT consists of 32 teams, with a fluctuating number of automatic bids and at-large bids. Why does the number fluctuate? It all depends on the aforementioned conference tournaments. The NIT awards automatic bids to teams who win their regular season conference championship but fail to earn a bid to the NCAA Tournament by winning their conference tournament. This often happens with small conferences.

Take the Southwestern Athletic Conference, for example. In 2014, the Southern Jaguars were crowned SWAC Regular Season Champions and were awarded the #1 seed in the SWAC Tournament. However, the Jaguars were upset by the #8 seed Prairie View A&M Panthers in the Quarterfinals. Texas Southern would go on to win the SWAC Tournament and receive the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Southern's consolation prize was an automatic bid to the NIT. Make sense?

Therefore, TCU's odds of receiving an NIT bid are contingent on how many of these small conference regular season champions go on to win their automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. TCU fans should be rooting for all of the top seeds in these small conference tournaments, so that there are less automatic bids in the NIT. As of this morning, seven automatic bids to the NIT have been awarded. With eight more small conference tournaments still to go, let's assume that only half of the top seeds win out, thus resulting in a total of 11 automatic bids in the NIT. That leaves us with 21 potential at-large bids.

So, let's get down to it! Starting with the NCAA Tournament... Since it is unlikely that TCU wins the Big 12 Tournament and earns a bid to the Big Dance, let's (somewhat unscientifically) fill out the field of 68.

Let's start with the 32 automatic bids for conference champions. Eleven schools have already earned automatic bids. As for the rest, this is a pretty difficult task, as March is unpredictable and any team theoretically can win their conference tournament, especially in the smaller conferences. For the sake of argument, let's say that the teams that the highest remaining seeds in each of the remaining conference tournaments all win out. (I know - this is highly unlikely, if not impossible, but that's beyond the point.) Information is current as of March 11, 2015.

* denotes current top seed

That leaves us with 36 at-large bids to distribute out. Let's start with teams that should be a lock to get in. These are the teams that aren't conference champions or currently leading their conference but should get into the NCAA Tournament no matter what. After that, let's look at everybody else - teams that are somewhere between locked and on the bubble.

Every year there are teams "snubbed" from the NCAA Tournament. These teams usually highlight the NIT field. Now it's time to take a look at the 32 teams that could receive invitations to the NIT. But first, we need to make another important assumption. Remember those small conference teams that win their conference in the regular season but not the postseason tournament? Since 2007 when the NIT contracted from 40 to 32 teams, 77 small conference schools have received an automatic bid, an average of about nine per season. For argument's sake, let's assume that 11 teams will receive automatic bids to the NIT this season. That leaves 21 at-large bids for everyone else, including TCU.

After removing the 68 NCAA Tournament teams, let's assign these 21 remaining spots to the next best teams. I used a combination of overall record, RPI, strength of schedule, quality wins, quality losses, and conference strength to assign seeds to these 22 at-large teams, based on how they stand right now.

These next teams are the ones barely outside the NIT picture, as of today. The inclusion of these teams are contingent on the number of automatic bids that are distributed over the next couple of days. You can keep track of that right here.

As it stands right now, the Frogs are slightly on the outside looking in. TCU's RPI and strength of schedule measures just aren't high enough to legitimately put the Frogs in the field today. So that begs the question, what does TCU need to do to jump into the field?

To jump into the NIT bubble, the Frogs need to likely win at least two games in the Big 12 Tournament. TCU has proven that it can beat Kansas State, and the Frogs played the Jayhawks close in both meetings in the regular season. It would take a heroic effort from the Frogs to win two games and advance to the Big 12 Semifinals, but accomplishing that feat would increase the chances of a bid to the NIT. Three wins in Kansas City would give the Frogs 20 for the season and all but guarantee a spot in the NIT. However, that would mean that TCU would be in the Big 12 Championship Game as the #9 seed, a feat that has only been accomplished one time in the history of the league. In 2009, Baylor advanced to the title game as the 9-seed but fell to Missouri. Coincidentally, the Bears earned an NIT bid with 15 losses overall and a 5-11 mark in Big 12 play.

To further increase the Frogs' chances, each remaining top seed in the small conference tournaments would need to win out. The more at-large bids that are available, the higher the odds that TCU earns a spot in the NIT. But for now, the most important thing to worry about is the Frogs defeating Kansas State tonight.

Editor's Note: This is the just the second time I've ever done something like this, and it is quite difficult to predict so many moving parts all at once. I wouldn't go running to Las Vegas with this information.