NCAAB

The 6 Best Teams Left Out of the 2017 NCAA Tournament

Every year, the night of Selection Sunday is full of fans and analysts providing their opinions on which teams they thought should've been in and out of the NCAA Tournament.

Bits and pieces of math are often used to support arguments on one side or the other, but our math here at numberFire is without bias. Our nERD metric, specifically, accounts for many different factors, and in doing so, represents the number of points we'd expect a team to win by against an average one on a neutral court. If a team has a nERD of, say, 14.56, we'd expect that team to beat an average one by close to 15 points. If it's -5.67, then they're below average.

Using nERD has nothing to do with who beat who or whose resumé looks better. It's all about team performance (or efficiency), and that alone.

Knowing that, let's take a look at six teams who were good enough to compete in the NCAA Tournament, but failed to build a strong enough resume to actually make the big dance.

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