2018 Southwest Basketball Tournament

Seven Texas schools made the 2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. Four of them didn't make it out of the Round of 64. Texas Tech was the most successful, but the Red Raiders fell to No. 1 seed (and eventual champions) Villanova 71-59.

The only Texas school to win the Tournament was, famously, Texas Western (now UTEP) in 1966, and the only other school to finish even runner-up was Houston in 1983 and 1984.

Texas produces plenty of talent despite its reputation as a football state, but it hasn't translated that into Tournament success.

What if they had another prize to win?

For many years, the idea of an all-Texas tournament has bounced around my brain. I've set it up on March Madness 08 and then College Hoops 2K8 (when I realized which college basketball game I should have been playing). When watching this year's NCAA Tournament, however, I got the idea of finding appropriate venues for a Texas tournament, as well as properly seeding teams by their 2018 performances.

Of course, if you want to match even the NIT's 32-team field, you cannot do an all-Texas tournament; the state is only home to 21 Division I teams. However, if you incorporate all the states bordering Texas, you get up to 44. So it instead becomes a Southwest Tournament.

First, we need to set the locations of the tournament. I looked for venues in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas that can hold 10,000 people or more and have a record of hosting basketball. I found more sites than I needed, but for now, I'll just list the number I needed. Included are venue capacities and host schools.

South

Play-in, First Round

Montagne Center (10,746) – Beaumont, Texas
Lamar University

Laredo Energy Arena (10,000) – Laredo, Texas
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Sweet 16, Elite Eight

AT&T Center – San Antonio, Texas
University of Texas at San Antonio

West

Play-in, First Round

Tingley Coliseum (11,571) – Albuquerque, New Mexico
University of New Mexico

Don Haskins Center (12,222) – El Paso, Texas
University of Texas at El Paso

Sweet 16, Elite Eight

United Supermarkets Arena  (15,098) – Lubbock, Texas
Texas Tech University

North

Play-in, First Round

Lloyd Noble Center (11,562) – Norman, Oklahoma
University of Oklahoma

BOK Center (17,839) – Tulsa, Oklahoma
Oral Roberts University/University of Tulsa

Sweet 16, Elite Eight

Chesapeake Energy Arena (18,203) – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
University of Oklahoma

East

Play-in, First Round

CenturyLink Center (14,000) – Bossier City, Louisiana
Grambling State University/Louisiana Tech University/Northwestern State University

Cajundome (11,550) – Lafayette, Louisiana
University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Sweet 16, Elite Eight

Verizon Arena (18,000) – North Little Rock, Arkansas
University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Final Four

American Airlines Center (21,146) – Dallas, Texas
Southern Methodist University

Like I said, there are other arenas I looked at. Any site (except Lubbock) hosting this year's Sweet 16 and Elite Eight, I've decided, works as a potential Final Four site. So do the Toyota Center in Houston and the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans. Austin's Frank Irwin Center might work, but I prefer the Final Four be off-campus.

The North is my biggest concern. The state of Oklahoma lacks many venues of 10,000-plus people, which means the University of Oklahoma (the closest school to Oklahoma City) hosts games in each round. The northernmost Texas arena that comes close is North Texas' Super Pit, but it comes in just under the 10,000 threshold, so I left it out. I considered rearranging the brackets a bit to give Stillwater the regional instead of Norman, but I decided against it because A. that's not how these tournaments are planned; and B. the result would have been messier and weakened the bracket's integrity.

Let's set that bracket. I started by finding all 44 teams' RPI ranks. And let me tell you: There are some terrible teams from which to choose. Division I is comprised of 351 teams; eight teams in the original pool are ranked 307th or worse, including three (No. 342 Northwestern State, No. 345 Houston Baptist, and No. 347 Incarnate Word) in the bottom 10.

Clearly, we cannot let everyone in. Setting aside how terrible some of these teams are, a 44-team tournament is a little weird, don't you think? So I decided on a 32-team field divided into four regions. Just to include a few more teams, I made it 36 teams, with the No. 8 seeds doing play-in games.

The placement process is pretty simple. The top four teams by RPI are given the regions closest to them. Each seeding group that follows (No. 2s, No. 3s, etc.) is assigned with the top seeds in mind: In a perfect bracket, the top overall seed is matched with the worst No. 8, the worst No. 7, and so on; the fourth-ranked No. 1 with the best No. 8, the best No. 7, and so on.

There are a couple of wrinkles that disrupt that, however. If a school hosts a round in a given region, then its team must go in that region. There's a good example below: The worst No. 6 is a host school, which means instead of going into the best No. 1's region, it goes into the worst No. 1's region. Too much of this rearranging for hosts ruins the bracket. As you'll see, while it complicates things, it doesn't happen enough times to pose a real problem.

(In order to keep hosts at their arenas, I allowed some flexibility in assigning Round of 32 sites within regions. Originally, I had Tulsa playing in Norman rather than Tulsa and UTEP playing in Albuquerque instead of El Paso. It works better this way.)

The other thing is that I give myself the liberty to move teams of the same seed (who are unattached to a site) to another region to boost attendance at these games. There are few situations where this is really necessary, and I didn't want to use this liberty too much.

The top seeds in each region are as follows:

South: Houston (RPI: 18)

West: Texas Tech (23)

North: TCU (25)

East: Texas A&M (29)

Since Houston and A&M are pretty close to each other, either could have a claim to the South. Houston gets it as the top overall seed though, meaning A&M is placed in the East.

The second seeds are below:

South: Texas (50)
West: New Mexico State (35)
North: Oklahoma (48)
East: Arkansas (30)

From here on out, there's a bit of finagling that somewhat disrupts bracket integrity. Again: If a school hosts a round in a given region, then its team must go in that region. The only No. 2 seed this applies to is Oklahoma, which means the Sooners swap with New Mexico State. I might have made this switch anyway to boost attendance and to reward both teams for being higher seeds.

And the No. 3s:

South: Oklahoma State (90)
West: Baylor (68)
North: Tulsa (88)
East: Louisiana-Lafayette (61)

Here we have two hosts, Tulsa and Louisiana-Lafayette. Tulsa is the only one that affects the bracket, pushing Baylor to the West.

The No. 4s:

South: SMU (110)
West: New Mexico (117)
North: Texas-Arlington (105)
East: Stephen F. Austin (104)

New Mexico hosts games in the West; therefore, they get a slightly easier region. The other teams fall as they are supposed to.

The No. 5s:

South: Texas-San Antonio (186)
West: Tulane (175)
North: Southeastern Louisiana (150)
East: Louisiana Tech (192)

As Sweet 16 and Elite Eight hosts for the South, UTSA stays in that region. Louisiana Tech is one of three schools hosting games in Bossier City, so the Bulldogs stay in the East.

The No. 6s:

South: Central Arkansas (223)
West: Texas Southern (222)
North: Louisiana-Monroe (217)
East: Sam Houston State (206)

Since there are no hosts, nothing changes here. I might switch Central Arkansas and Sam Houston State for attendance purposes, but that's it.

The No. 7s:

South: Lamar (230)
West: New Orleans (240)
North: North Texas (235)
East: Texas-Rio Grande Valley (229)

Lamar is bound to Beaumont. I considered switching New Orleans and UTRGV for shorter distances, but I again decided against it. The bracket has been shuffled enough by accommodating hosts, and the teams down here are bad enough that it's not really worth messing with further.

As said earlier, there are play-ins for the eighth seeds in each region. The way it works: The next four teams by RPI are the designated "home" teams for the play-in rounds:

Grambling State (249)
Oral Roberts (255)
Prairie View A&M (248)
Texas State; RPI (243)

The "road" teams are the next four by RPI, the last we let into the tournament:

Abilene Christian (260)
Arkansas State (291)
McNeese State (298)
Texas-El Paso (293)

We need to pair these two sets of teams so that the average of the two set to play No. 1 overall seed Houston is the worst. This would ordinarily mean matching Oral Roberts with McNeese State, Grambling with UTEP, Prairie View A&M with Arkansas State, and Texas State with Abilene Christian.

However, in the first group, we have two hosts: Grambling (East) and Oral Roberts (North). So the worst two home No. 8s are stuck in the regions of the worst two No. 1s. So we just give the remaining home No. 8s the worst two road No. 8s. Luckily, UTEP, the only host among road teams, goes to the West anyway.

The resulting matchups are:

South: Prairie View A&M vs. McNeese State (Average RPI: 273)
West: Texas State vs. Texas-El Paso (Average RPI: 268)
North: Oral Roberts vs. Arkansas State (Average RPI: 270)
East: Grambling State vs. Abilene Christian (Average RPI: 254.5)

Remember that the goal was to give the No. 1s paths that ascend in difficulty – meaning Houston gets the easiest path, Texas Tech the second-easiest, TCU the third-easiest, and Texas A&M the hardest. Let's see if that held up.

Below are the average RPIs of teams ranked second through eighth in each region, with the No. 8s' RPIs averaged to represent one opponent in the calculations. A higher opponent RPI means an easier schedule.

South: Houston: 166 opponent RPI
West: Texas Tech: 160.7
North: TCU: 159.4
East: Texas A&M: 153.8

And – what do you know? – despite the various concessions to host schools, we accomplished an ascending difficulty.

One issue, as you'll see below, is that the next seeds' paths are not that much harder than those of the No. 1s. Texas, the lowest-ranked No. 2, actually faces the second-easiest opponent RPI of anyone in the tournament (161.3). Five No. 2s or No. 3s face easier opponent RPIs than A&M.

However, the reason for this is likely that in calculating opponent RPI, I did not take into account the likelihoods that a given team faces each opponent in its region. It is highly unlikely that Texas plays Prairie View A&M or McNeese State; Houston is guaranteed to play one of them. Texas' probable Sweet 16 opponent is Oklahoma State; Houston's is SMU. I expect that if proper weighting was applied to the calculations, everybody's strengths of schedule would look normal.

With all the work out of the way, here is the complete bracket, as well as all my work. Below is the full spreadsheet I made to complete this project. I would have liked to have displayed it differently, but everything else I tried was too unfriendly to the user or too hard to read.

I think this turned out pretty well. I don't see much use for it, but it was a fun thought exercise. Hopefully, you found it worth reading.