Purdue has battled its way into the Big Ten's driver's seat and, presumably, the good graces of the NCAA Tournament selection committee in the last month and change. But we'll know a lot more about where the Boilers stack up this time next week.

Currently the winner of 11 of its last 12 games, No. 7 Purdue plays No. 20 Michigan on the road Tuesday and No. 16 Wisconsin at home Saturday. And it won't immediately get easier after that; this is the Big Ten, after all.

The opportunity is there for a strong resume to get stronger – and chances are that it will, given Purdue's status as the best team in the conference according to record and other metrics. Stumbles, however, could add significant roadblocks to the Purdue's path to another Final Four come March.

Every Monday through the rest of the season, Boiler Upload will share the opinions of the people and algorithms that try to predict what the committee will decide next month when it draws up the tournament field.

This week, Purdue mostly held steady ahead of the most make-or-break stretch of its season.

Purdue is almost universally a No. 2-seed, according to bracketmatrix.com; the Boilers' average seed on the site is 2.02. And while one prominent reporter recently graduated Purdue to the top seed line, there's reason to believe its stay there will be short-lived.

Sports Illustrated's Kevin Sweeney assigned Purdue a No. 1-seed Thursday, a day before it dismantled USC 90-72 at home. Here's his justification:

"Perhaps the biggest mover in the entire field this week is Purdue, which ascends to the No. 1 line and claims the last top seed in the field," Sweeney wrote. "The margins here are tight between the Boilermakers, Tennessee and Florida, but Purdue’s 13 wins against the top two quadrants really stood out in making a final decision. This spot is far from secured, but Matt Painter’s team has chances to improve its standing further with six projected Quad 1 games in its final eight."

The problem for the Boilers is that Florida just claimed the best win of the college basketball season so far on Saturday, a 90-81 out-grinding of No. 1 Auburn in Neville Arena on the eastern edge of Alabama. It was Florida's second win of the season over the AP Poll's top team – the Gators toppled then-No. 1 Tennessee in early January. Those two wins are both better than Purdue's best win, at home against Alabama, according to an EvanMiya.com metric that estimates the difficulty of winning a given game.

ESPN's Joe Lunardi moved Purdue up from a No. 3 to a No. 2 seed Friday morning, and USA Today also adjusted the Boilermakers upward to a No. 2. Purdue remained in the two-spot on CBS.

The most common projected region for the Boilermakers is the Midwest, which plays its Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games in Indianapolis. Common possible second-round matchups include projected No. 7 Louisville or No. 10-seed Texas.

Purdue does a little better in resume metrics, currently ranking fifth in Barttorvik's Wins Above Bubble stat and sixth in EvanMiya's Resume Quality. But it's a logjam: A mere 2 points separate No. 4 Florida (5.8 wins above a tournament bubble team) and No. 7 Texas A&M (5.6) on Barttorvik. For more information on those statistics, see the section below.

Purdue is 7-5 in the NET system's Quadrant 1, in a seven-way tie for third in the country in total Quad 1 wins. The Boilers are tied for the best Quad 2 record in America, at 7-0. For comparison, Florida is 4-3 in Quad 1 games and equals Purdue at 7-0 in Quad 2. But, like discussed earlier, the Gators' wins are a little better.

Wisconsin is also 7-5 in Quad 1, a tie with Purdue that will be broken no later than Saturday in Mackey Arena.

The most-discussed numerical resume system is probably the NCAA's NET Quadrants. The NET, or NCAA Evaluation Tool, ranks teams very similarly to Kenpom or other algorithmic interpreters of game results.

The Quadrant system is just a way of ranking wins and losses through the lens of the NET rankings. A Quad 1 game is a home game played against a team ranked 1-30 in the NET, a neutral court game against a team ranked 1-50 or an away contest with a top-75 opponent. Quadrants two through four are much the same, just with lower NET rankings thresholds.


The Quadrant system is easy to understand, but there are two very sound, straightforward alternatives: Barttorvik's Wins Above Bubble and EvanMiya's Resume Quality.

Those two metrics correct what can be a pretty big shortcoming of the Quadrant system: beating Auburn in Neville Arena would count the same as, say, a road win over 68-ranked USC .

Barttorvik and EvanMiya's stats more closely hew to the committee's process in evaluating the strength of wins not with four rigid buckets, but by assigning "points" based on impressiveness. They each estimate how likely a team on the tournament's bubble would be to win a given game, and use that likelihood to give or take credit from the teams playing it, depending on the result.

For instance, a team smack-dab right on the cutline to receive an at-large tournament bid would be expected to win 14.2 games so far if it played Purdue's schedule. The Boilermakers have 19 wins, and so possess a Resume Quality of 4.8 (wins above a bubble team).