Running 2010 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament thread

I don't think people fawn. These schools are good stories. If you'd been working the East regional, you'd probably have been part of a Cornell story. How could you not? Doesn't mean they're gonna be national champs, but there are a lot of schools playing good basketball out there, and the tournament is when the obscure ones get a CHANCE to strut their stuff. St. Mary's got massacred last night, but they were damn near perfect against Villanova. Wake got massacred against Kentucky, too, but nobody holds that against them. They just got beat by a better team. The identity of their regular season affiliation was not an issue. It shouldn't be an issue for anybody in the field.

 

Seems there's a double standard sometimes, though. Cornell or St. Mary's big victories, fine isolated performances, are followed by a chorus along the lines of "Mid majors deserve more bids, better seeds and more respect!" and then those teams advance a round, lose, and that argument evaporates and is seen for what it is - built on a very small sample, and not incredibly persuasive.

Butler's the only team from outside the big six conferences left and it should have been the team expected since it was in the top 15 and top 10 almost the entire year.

 

If we're judging on possible champions, then the overwhelming fact is that there shouldn't be a 64-team field. The old, old field of 32 would do fine. I mean, the Big East had 8 teams in, one eighth of the whole field, and there's one of 'em left. The ACC has one left out of five. SOME of those clubs were as irrelevant to the process as any of the mid-majors who qualified or were invited.
The current system is an attempt to balance giving every school a (highly) theoretical chance to be national champion with providing an equitable means of determining said champ, and on balance it works quite well. The fact that fans are more attracted to the mid-majors and would rather see them play than watch Louisville or Oklahoma State (to name two lower-level power conference teams at random) is both understandable and kind of irrelevant.
But complaining that the mid-majors are underrepresented in the Elite Eight is silly. EVERYBODY's underrepresented. That's why there's only eight of 'em.

 

The Big East started with 1/8 of the field and has 1/8 of the Elite Eight.
Seems about right.

 

First round, "upsets" happen because you have some very good smaller-conference champions who are often underseeded due to SOS playing some mediocre mid-pack major-conference teams who are often overseeded for the same reasons.

But the Sweet Sixteen can produce more predictability for one major reason -- time. Teams have four or five days to prepare for their Sweet Sixteen opponents, and one can find (and find ways to exploit) the weaknesses of an opponent more easily over that time. More time to study film, more time to practice tendencies, et al. The stronger teams, obviously, have fewer weaknesses to exploit.

The Elite Eight (and second round) offer less than 48 hours to prepare for the next opponent, so there's a tremendous amount more unpredictability, as the playing field is leveled in terms of preparation.

 

I bet the CBS boys are praying for a Duke win Sunday to set up a Duke-KY semifinal AND to keep Ken Starr, prez of Baylor, to get any TV time.

 

Nope.

What was the lowest Big East seed? Take that number, multiply it by four, divide it by eight, and that should be their proper ratio right now.

 

Do you take everything so literally?


And what do you mean by lowest seed... #1 Syracuse (X 4 divide 8 = 1/2) or No. 10 ND (x 4 divide 8 = 5). Doesn't make sense either way.

 

Michael - when you continually have to listen to this nonsense about how these teams play the game the right way, how they are real teams and not hired guns, how they are real student-athletes, how they could compete in power conferences, how the mid-majors are dissed come selection time, how casual fans are going to be more interested if more of these teams advance - it gets old.

If nothing else, the Sweet 16 round -- where excellent coaches with superior talent generally get a few days to look at what these teams are doing, prepare for it and shut it down - should put an end to these flights of fantasy that if, say St. Mary's, was in the Big East it would finish in the top four, just because they beat Villanova.

It is ridiculous.

These teams are good stories, no doubt, and when they pull an upset it goes to show that in a one-and-done format, anything can happen, but the constant need to read anything more than that into these games is just not being honest.

 

You're unbelievable.

 

The Elite 8, where you can see all the missed jump shots you want!

 

Actually, ND was a 6. But still, Devil's point makes no sense.