NCAA Tournament

How do you know that? Maybe some at-large spots went to supposed conf champs who lost their tourneys. Just because there are 25 teams available doesn't mean those 25 get in. This year, Clemson had an RPI of 26. They didn't get in. The team immediately below them (Sorry, I forgot who) didn't get in. Why? Because RPI isn't the only factor. Records play in. Remember that this year we had few spots "stolen" by teams that sneaked in by winning the tournament, and we still had many legitimate contenders left out, including many 20 game winners.

Remember, this isn't bowls or the BCS. The "requirements" are subjective. They cannot be "lessened." I wouldn't want anything to weaken the Big Dance. You believe it can be. I believe that bringing in the good teams who get left out only makes it stronger. Why not have one more day like today! It's been exciting!

FYI, I think there are 34 at-large teams already.

 

Are you for expanding the number of automatic bids then, so that the winner of the conference regular season and the winner of the conference tournament get in? I don't have any problem with that. I don't like to see teams that grind out the regular season conference title lose the conference tournament but get snubbed for an at-large bid by the committee in favor of a team from a big conference. The number of at-large teams would increase because of teams that win both regular season and conference tourney titles, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be a substantial number.

If that's how you expand the tournament to 96, I'm Ok with that. Expanding the tournament by increasing the at-large bids does lessen the requirements to get in because teams with a weaker RPI, record, conference record would get in where they don't today. I'm not for that.

Yesterday was exciting? What games were you watching? 13 of 16 games were double-digit wins and 7 of those were by more than 20. VCU over Duke doesn't redeem a day of awful basketball.

 

Yeah, but for any Louisville fan it was exciting. And any win over Duke is a very good start! Now if Eastern KY could have just knocked off North Caroli... :praying: :laugh: :laugh:

Ed

 

Now if Niagara can upset Kansas, UK will have a shot at the sweet 16!

 

Just the tiime of the year is exciting. Agreed that the games were not close. So what? And, if you want close games, consider this: under expansion, the first round NIT games would've been opening round NCAA games. Wouldn't that have been a much more exciting first day for you?

Yes, that's part of it. Read my proposal in the other thread.

AARGH! :BangHead: No it doesn't! Something isn't true just because you keep repeating it :laugh: I've already pointed out how numerous 20 win teams are left out and how two teams in the RPI top thirty are not in the 65 team field this year. (Even if you expanded to 80/96 teams, some in the RPI top 100 are going to be left out.) And there are no requirements. This is not CFB or the BCS.

You would have a point if teams that had .500 or worse conference records didn't make the tourney as at-larges, but they do already (ARkanas this year immediately comes to mind). Sub-20 win teams get in as at-larges. How, when this year over 100 teams get in? Beats me, especially without many stolen bids from mid-major conf champs. If you aren't for teams going 6-10 in their conferences and 14-14 overall going to the tourney, join the club. That won't happen. The worst that will happen is a 20-win mid-major who finishes 2nd or third in their conference or a 19 win, 7-9 high major getting in. But like I said, it already happens. Let them weed each other out in the opening rounds and make this thing more competitive.

Obviously, you love tradition and don't want to change. That's fine. Consider this, though: we accept the high number of bowls in CFB. There are 117 I-A teams and 56 go to bowls. That's 48%, and many have .500 or just slightly higher records. In the present situation in NCAAB, 65 teams make the tournament out of 335. That's 19%. If 8 and 9 win teams got left out of bowls, people would be screaming. The bball corollary is a 20 win team. This year, what, 2 dozen got left out? Heck, maybe more, maybe almost 30. I disagree that that's okay. The good games in the NIT could've been good opening round NCAA games as part of March Madness. I think it would be good for college basketball to have more excitement and more passion. That's my position, friend. :wavey:

 

Actually, I believe Arkansas had a .500 conference record, not below .500. But I could be mistaken on that, (Correct me if I am wrong.) and there is no "rule" that a sub .500 record conference record will keep one from the NCAA tourney, that I know.

Ed

 

Arkansas was 7-9 in the regular season. They went 3-1 in the tournament, so if you count tournament games, they were .500, but otherwise they werent.

 

The NCAA counts the tournament wins, as well, to determine conference records, so I was correct.

Ed

 

Actually, they consider tournament play, but there are no objective standards that the committee uses

 

I think my Hogs and Stanford have shown that they did not belong.

It's a bad year to be a Razorback fan. We can't win the "big one" in ANYTHING!!!

 

Approximately 33% of Division I teams (105 out of 336) won 20 games or more. 20 wins is no guarantee that a team is good. I'm not going through every schedule of every 20 win team to see how many of them got those wins at the expense of Division II and Division III teams. However, I did put some stuff together that I think shows how the bar does indeed get lowered in order to expand to a 96 team field.

If this year's tournament field was 96, and if both regular season conference champions and conference tournament champions received automatic bids, that would have given us 45 automatic bids. For conferences that are split, like the SEC, I only gave one automatic bid for the regular season, which would have gone to Florida.

This leaves us 50 at-large bids. Of the teams that wouldn't have received an automatic bid in the 96 team tournament, 27 of those were given an at-large bid by the committee to fill out the 64 team field. Now, we have to fill out the field with 23 more teams.

Since you're hanging your hat on 20 wins, a team without 20 wins will not be selected. Here are the 23 teams listed, in order of RPI, that have at least 20 wins. And, I randomly added a few extra details for some of the teams. If you want to see these details for the rest of the teams, please feel free to look at this stuff for yourself. I used the RPI found here, and used espn.com for the rest.

Air Force: 23-8, RPI 30
Missouri State: 22-10, RPI 36
Bradley: 21-12, RPI 38
Drexel: 23-8, RPI 39, 4th in CAA
Florida State: 20-12, RPI 41, 7-9, 9th in ACC
Utah State: 23-11, RPI 43
Clemson: 21-10, RPI 45, 7-9, 8th in ACC
Alabama: 20-11, RPI 49, 7-9 in SEC, same conf. record as Ark. btw
Syracuse: 22-10, RPI 50
Oklahoma State: 22-12, RPI 51
Michigan: 21-12, RPI 54, 8-8, 8th in Big 10
Kansas State: 22-11, RPI 56
West Virginia: 22-9, RPI 57
Mississippi: 20-12, RPI 58
Appalachian State: 25-7, RPI 59
Massachusetts: 23-8, RPI 62
San Diego State: 21-10, RPI 66
Akron: 26-7, RPI 67
Hofstra: 22-9, RPI 73, 3rd in CAA
St Louis: 20-13, RPI 74, 8-8, 8th in A-10... btw why is St Louis in the A-10???
Bucknell: 22-9, RPI 77
Kent State: 21-11, RPI 86
Fresno State: 22-9, RPI 87

To get to 96, take the current 64 team field, add the teams listed above, and add the teams that won their regular season conference title, but not the conference tournament. These are Vermont, Toledo, Marist, Austin Peay, Delaware State, East Tennesse State, South Alabama, and Mississippi Valley State.

By the current criteria the selection committee uses to build the at-large pool, none of the schools I listed would have made the tournament. Since a 96 team field has to be filled somehow, and adding automatic bids didn't get the job done, the only way to fill the field is to lower the bar for entry. The RPI calculation that the committee uses wouldn't change, but something has to change to get 96 teams in. You can't say that a solid conference record gets you in, because it clearly wouldn't.

Get mad at me all you want, but I don't see how the bar wouldn't have to be lowered in order to fill a 96 team field.

I don't see a need to change something just for the sake of change.

 

Not at the expense of some other more deserving teams, though I believe Ark would beat Stanford all day long.

 

I could live just fine with the scenario you presented. People used to paint the scenario of having the UNCs of the world playing EKU and UConn playing Albany and Indiana playing Richmond as the end of the Big Dance. It only helped it grow.

I still say that if you take the 65 teams the NCAA invited to the Big Dance, and add 31 of the 32 that the NCAA invited to the NIT (and who accepted), you have a strong field for a 96 team tournament that is probably even stronger than what you mentioned. Let Drexel play Arkansas for the right to play Texas A&M. Let Long Beach State have to play Clemson for the right to play Tennessee. The opening round and the first round would be more competitive.

No one's mad at you, friend. It's just sophistry to believe that, if you repeat something often enough, it's a truism :)

Precedent shows that this is considered a good benchmark for NCAA entry. You may disagree, but precedent disagrees with you. IMHO, winning 67% of your games in men's CBB is pretty good. It's not stellar, but it's pretty good, all things being relative and equal.

That's a strawman, dear brother. Some of the best minds in all of CBB are advocating a change. This is the longest time in CBB that the NCAA field hasn't been changed. Why? Money. No one wants to share the wealth. Same reason there's not a playoff in CFB and why Notre Dame is still Independent and why a myriad of other things in sports haven't been changed.

Too bad we took this discussion out of the forum it was intended for. At any rate, enjoy the Big Dance! :wavey:

 

I disagree with you, StevenM on Arkansas. They deserved to be in. They made it to the championship game. They beat some decent teams in the SEC tourney. I had no problem with them being in. As far as for Stanford, didn't they have an 18-12 record? How did they make it with a record like that? I think that a mid-major team was done wrong here. There were MANY mid-majors with better records than that, and they should have went ahead of Stanford.

 

I'm just a bitter Hog fan sick of losing.

Hopefully that will change soon. Heath is probably about to be fired.

 

Tom, I guess I'm one of the few who believe the big dance is for the top teams. I tried to watch some round ball this week end, on a lot of those games you would have to be a fan of a team to watch the game. That team out of Rock Hill, SC didn't look so hot yesterday. They are a very good team but not a national champion type team, what are they doing there? Let it get down to the final 8, it is great to watch most of the time. I don't enjoy seeing a team I like win or lose by a large number, its makes a bad game, much less two team I could care less about.

 

I've never heard anyone say that the tourney shouldn't be for the top teams. But how do you determine the top teams? Either we have a playoff or we have the debacle like we have in CFB. Given that CBB has more parity than CFB, you have to have a playoff with a fairly decent number of teams. Winthrop beat a very good Notre Dame team and almost beat last year's SEC East champions. And who would've thought Rollie's Villanova team was National Title-worthy at the start of the tournament back in '85? Kansas in '88? George Mason last year? Jimmy V's Wolfpack in '83? While Winthrop did get beaten convincingly yesterday, some other notables got hammered, too. When you have teams in the top 30 RPI getting left home, something needs to change. When teams win 70% of their games yet still are not invited, something needs to change. This is akin to a BCS top 12 not going to a bowl, or a team that wins 9 games not going to a bowl.

Maybe the NCAA should have to adopt some criteria. Still, there are more than 65 teams that deserve to be playing at the end of the season. Maybe 80 is the right number. Maybe three or seven more teams to make the 15 & 16 seeds play-in games (although the small conferences will not stand for this).

Something else that's unfortunately going to make the NCAA probably get with the times and get past their hackneyed tradition is this: charges of racisim. Recently, the NCAA has come under fire for sending traditionally black colleges (like FAMU, twice) to the play-in (Err...I mean, opening round) game. No shakedown should make the NCAA have to get with the program. But since the NCAA is so slow to do what is best for its product (at least not as slow as MLB), who knows?

 

No more a strawman than this:

Now this is starting to bring some compelling evidence to the table. When I compiled all that data in my most recent post, I was surprised to find a team like Air Force, RPI of 30, wasn't invited, but the teams at 31-35 were invited. I should have noted this on Saturday, but a team with an RPI of 30 not being invited doesn't make any sense.

I saw this suggestion in a column last week.

"Expand the tournament to 72 teams, and make the worst 16 teams play each other on Tuesday."

If it would help avoid the absolute basketball disasters played last Thursday in the first round, I'd be on-board with it.

 

I'm not making a strawman. I'm making a value judgement based on your preference for tradition. I'm not building an argument so I can tear it down.

See...you're coming around to my point of view! :applause: :laugh:

 

You built an argument that I was bound by tradition.