Selection Sunday-NCAA tournament thread

I think that's because it can cost schools a lot of money if they have to travel.

 

Virginia played at Mason and vs. ODU in Richmond this season. Didn't do any good. It is a total guessing game whether those teams will help your strength of schedule or harm it.

 

Which is why the best way to a strong OOC schedule is to play AQ schools. At the very least, their own strength of schedule isn't going to torpedo your RPI

 

Is the UVa-Mason series done? Or is there one more game in Charlottesville left?

 

Teams that have surpassed preseason expectations in the regular season have tended to underachieve in the tournament, and vice versa.- From Nate Silver's analysis.

Since the tournament field expanded to 64 teams in 1985, there have been 41 cases in which a school that was unranked to start the season entered the tournament ranked in the A.P. top 10 (excluding a couple of cases where the team was ineligible for tournament play). These schools, as you might expect, were seeded highly: eight were No. 1 seeds and another 17 were seeded No. 2.

Absolutely none of these teams have made the Final Four, however: they are 0-for-41. Instead, they have been the victims of some notorious upsets, like the No. 2-seeded South Carolina Gamecocks losing — by 13 points! — to the No. 15 seed Coppin State in the opening round of the 1997 tournament, and the No. 3 seed Wisconsin Badgers being one of Davidson’s victims in 2008. Three of the No. 1 seeds that fit this description — Michigan in 1985, St. John’s in 1986, and Cincinnati in 2002 — lost in the Round of 32.

 

Unless you're an top, top program, you're going to have a hell of a time scheduling a home-and-home with another major conference school.

Most major conference schools won't even agree to a home and home anymore. It's usually 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 or something like that. That's why the bulk of programs might play in a tournament early in the season and then maybe home and home with another team in their state, but they rarely do a straight home and home unless it's something set up specifically for TV.

Hell, look at Kentucky's schedule this year. They played Duke and Maryland at neutral sites and only traveled in non-conference to play Louisville and Notre Dame. So they basically the defending national champs only have a home and home with two teams, one in its own state and another that is a very short flight away...

It's a big reason why college basketball essentially sucks for the whole month of December...

 

Yeah, I get that. But teams like Kentucky will sell out Rupp Arena for Podunk State, so there's no financial incentive for them to travel anywhere non-conference.

 

Is Rupp Arena going to be ready for a second-round NIT game?
Kentucky plays the winner of Charlotte-Providence in the second round and from what I've been reading here, PC's of-campus home - the Dunkin Donuts Center - is booked. The gym the women use, Alumni Hall, was the men's home in the 70s and 80s, but it's far too small for a game against Kentucky.

 

I think the second round starts no earlier than Monday, March 25, so the NCAA circus will have packed up and left town by then.

One minor pet peeve that brings to mind: I really hated it when the NCAA started using the custom made courts that all look alike at every site. I like the old days when you used whatever floor the home team in that arena used (or like bring in George Mason's floor to the old Capital Centre). It gave the arena a distinctive feel.

 

Is it worse than the Bob Morris gym pictured earlier?

 

Uh, how do you know that?

No one thought Michigan was a potential champion in 1989. Or Villanova in 1985.

Unless you can see into an alternate space/time continuum you have no way of knowing how a team that was left out would do in the tournament.

 

Michigan was a 3 seed in 1989 and Villanova was an 8 seed in '85. So your argument takes us down to arguably someone as low as the #32 pick. I am talking about the #64 pick.