NCAA tournament 2011 — running thread

And I'm guessing Indiana State was the last time it happened before Butler. So you either need a Basketball God playing for you or have the NBA decimate the upper crust talent in college basketball to have a Mid Major in the finals.

 

The lines between major and mid-major are blurry in college basketball. For example, I wouldn't call Gonzaga a mid-major any longer; they've been a Top 25-caliber program for more than a decade. Butler is a Zags starter kit that could be good for years if their coach sticks around, like Mark Few has done.

Same goes for BYU, San Diego State, Utah or UNLV in the Mountain West, or Memphis in C-USA, or Xavier or Richmond in the A-10. (At least in most years.) I suppose other teams in those leagues could be rightly considered mid-majors. But not the big dogs.

 

Nope, never said that. I was questioning your numbers and the logic you used in getting to them. Majors would, of course, be close to .500 in one round of a tournament if most of them were playing each other. You conveniently ignored that part, either because you didn't understand it, still don't understand it, or hoped to distract by making some other point about last year, which has nothing to do with this year.

Also, you say the major conferences used to be loaded with pros, but you just got through bashing about 25 years of Big Ten POTY winners.

 

You guess wrong. Utah, 1998, unless you are moving the line for a mid-major.

 

The Mountain West and the CAA are in two different classes. Doesn't UNLV play in the Mountain West as well?

 

I was thinking of the A 10 as a mid major and not the Mountain West when I came up with that 3-3.

 

UNLV was in the Big West when it was a national power. Utah was in the Western Athletic Conference when it reached the Final Four.

Conference and athletic budget, not on-court performance, determine the mid-major label. Butler, like Gonzaga, remains very much a mid-major.

Besides, Gonzaga has faded away as a consistent NCAA threat. Butler has had a couple of great years. Both do well against lesser conferences.

 

Not sure why but this made me laugh really, really hard.

 

Despite the slobberfest about mid-majors and how they are "catching up" -- the truth is it is still rare for any of those teams to get to a Final Four and more often than not, the ones who do - like Memphis and UNLV - have teams loaded with NBA talent and thus aren't exactly little sisters of the poor.

We had Butler last year - (in a year when I'd argue that three of the Final Four teams were among the worst teams to ever make the Final Four)

We had Memphis in 2008

We had George Mason in 2006

We had Marquette in 2003

We had Utah in 1998

We had UMass in 1996

We had Cincy in 1992

We had UNLV in 1991

So that means in 20 years, that's 80 Final Four teams and only 8 of them are from "mid-major" conferences and if the mid-major apologists among us were honest with themselves, they'd admit that UNLV, Cincy, Utah, Marquette and Memphis were not truly mid-major teams from the standpoint that they were all NBA-laden rosters.

And even Butler, if Mack and Howard are drafted, will have had three legitimate NBA players last year and UMass had Marcus Camby.

But on that list of eight - Butler, Umass and George Mason were mid-majors (though wasn't UMass a No. 1 seed?).

In other words, the idea that mid-majors getting to the Final Four are pulling upsets and closing the gap is asinine.

The ones who have gotten there - besides George Mason, which was just a fluke of flukes - have all had major-conference/NBA talent.

 

How many major-conference teams have qualified for the tournament in that 20-year span, and how many mid-major teams have qualified?

Shouldn't we be comparing ratios, not quantities?

 

Math. Blah.

 

Gotta agree with Zag (oh look, frogs falling from the sky!). I know by the technical definition Utah, UMass, et al, were mid-majors, and that Gonzaga remains one, but Gonzaga played exactly two road non-conference games this year, and one was against Wake Forest so it shouldn't count. Xavier played three road games, and the only one out of state was at Gonzaga. When you barely leave your state except to play in a big preseason tournament, you're not a mid-major anymore.