Here are some semi-random thoughts after Selection Sunday
– Maybe Earl is right…karma is a bitch. The most undeserving team to receive an at-large bid last year (Air Force) turns out to be the highest ranked team to be left out this year. (Air Force’s at-large bid last year is possibly the worst decision ever made by a Selection Committee.)
– If you saw Dick Vitale’s interview last night (or the video excerpt at ESPN) then you saw circular logic at its best. Syracuse should have gotten in….just because. Drexel should have gotten in because they beat Syracuse.
– If Drexel is the best example that anyone can come up with for a team that got shafted…then the NCAAT Selection Committee must have done a pretty good job. Looking over their record, I didn’t see anything that screamed NCAAT team.
– How Digger thinks that K-State deserves a bid and Arkansas doesn’t is hard to follow. Hey Digger…look at wins versus top-50, wins versus top-100, and total games played in both categories if you really want to understand.
– FSU is the highest ranked BCS team (#41) to get left out this year. Stanford is the lowest ranked at-large bid at #65.
– Herb Sendek’s last two teams both played in their conference’s championship game. Congrats to the Redhawks for winning the MAC tournament.
– Before the ACCT, I predicted that Wahoo fans would be upset once the seedings were revealed. Boy was I wrong! Over the last three weeks, UVa has managed to lose to the bottom three teams in the ACC. In addition to that embarrassing little fact, UVa played an easy OOC schedule and one of the easiest conference schedules. UVa fans should be tickled with a 4-seed.
– As predicted by the experts, VT was seeded two places above BC with essentially the same record and RPI ranking. A closer look at the records shows that VT had a better record against Top-25 and Top 50 teams. I still say that sweeping UNC was the single biggest thing working in VT’s favor.
– I was almost as surprised with Duke’s 6-seed as I was with UVa’s 4-seed. Both seedings suggest that conference W/L record was more important for these two teams than either total wins or RPI ranking.
– As I expected, winning the 8/9 game in the ACCT wasn’t enough to secure an NCAAT bid. You just don’t want to go into Selection Sunday with a losing conference record.
Over the last week or so, I’ve decided to look at in-season RPI rankings differently than I have in the past. Here is a snap shot from Feb 15 combined with the final, regular-season stats.
|
|
15-Feb |
Final |
||||
|
|
Conf |
RPI |
Conf |
ACCT |
Total |
RPI |
|
|
8-3 |
3 |
11-5 |
3-0 |
14-5 |
3 |
|
|
8-3 |
38 |
11-5 |
0-1 |
11-6 |
55 |
|
Virginia |
8-3 |
22 |
10-6 |
1-1 |
11-7 |
34 |
|
|
9-3 |
26 |
10-6 |
1-1 |
11-7 |
32 |
|
|
5-6 |
28 |
10-6 |
0-1 |
10-7 |
16 |
|
Georgia |
5-6 |
43 |
8-8 |
0-1 |
8-9 |
52 |
|
Duke |
6-6 |
11 |
8-8 |
0-1 |
8-9 |
15 |
|
|
5-7 |
33 |
7-9 |
1-1 |
8-10 |
41 |
|
Clemson |
5-6 |
29 |
7-9 |
0-1 |
7-10 |
46 |
I have decided that my future discussions about “The Bubble†will include conference record as well as RPI. In other words, teams with losing conference records and teams with RPI rankings of 40+ will be considered on the bubble. All this really means is that selected teams need to start playing better if they want to make the NCAAT.
GT is a good example of a team that played its way off of the bubble and into the NCAAT. GT was in pretty bad shape going into the last two weeks of the season. Two wins against UNC and BC got them to 0.500 in the conference and gave them two nice wins on their resume…which was enough to overcome an RPI ranking of 50+ and a first-round ACCT exit.
As shown by Clemson and FSU, you can not maintain a reasonably high RPI ranking if you continue to lose conference games. If a losing conference record is included into the definition of bubble…then we would have identified both teams as being in trouble in early Feb.
CZAR FOR THE DAY
I rarely participate in “Czar of the Day†projections, but I just can’t help myself this time. If I were NCAA Czar for just one day…this is what I would change:
– I would take the bottom 15 basketball conferences (or so) and reform the Div 1-AA classification.
– I would use my newly acquired NIT tournament as the logo/name for the Div 1-AA tournament.
– The NIT Final Four would be played at MSG (or some other suitable venue). Earlier rounds would be played at the home courts of the higher seeds.
– I would console the lower conferences with financial projections showing that making the NIT Final Four would be worth two-three times as much as a first-round, embarrassing loss in the NCAAT.
– ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPN U(navailable), and either ESPNews or ABC could cover every NIT game…thus giving smaller schools a lot more TV exposure.
– I would supplement whatever TV contract I could negotiate with money siphoned off from the NCAAT.
– I would console the bigger conferences with the fact that more of their teams will play in a real post-season tournament (as opposed to having some play in a loser’s tournament) and the promise of more TV money in the future.
– My initial thoughts for the NIT would be 64 teams…to mirror the real tournament. However, a cogent argument could get me to consider a smaller number.
