Selection Sunday-NCAA tournament thread

there is a history of the committee overvaluing teams from power conferences who win their conference tournaments, though. syracuse was squarely on the bubble in 2006 and got a 5 seed after winning the Big East touney and lost in the first round. 19-win Maryland got a 4 after winning the ACC tourney in 2004 and won its first-round game by three before going out in the second round.

 

I think some among us might just tell the mid-majors to fuck themselves. If they do, let's just have an Elite Eight with the major conference champs and a couple of wild cards. You got balls to finish fourth in your conference, or sixth, and bitch about deserving a spot in any championship? Stay the fuck home and have a tournament with real balls.

 

Syracuse and Maryland might have been on your bubble, but their seedings are a clear indication that they were not in any jeopardy despite what Joe Motherfucking Lunardi might have said. The NCAA selection committee doesn't publish a list of bubble teams.

 

I think that works against some "power conference" teams as well.

Look at Ohio State's run. They blew through the Big 10 Tournament and really didn't have to sweat anything. They won the conference tournament of the top conference in the country, but Indiana was already entrenched as a No. 1 seed, so there was no way the Buckeyes were going to be a 1.

Remember when Kenyon Martin broke his leg in Cincinnati's first game of the 2000 Conference USA Tournament? Cincinnati was the No. 1 team in the nation and still won the conference tournament, but ended up with a 2 seed because, as the selection committee explained, the seedings did not reflect the entire season, but how the teams were playing at that point heading into the NCAA tourney.

The Hoosiers lost in the Big 10 semifinals. They did not even make it to their conference championship game, yet were given a no. 1 seed and Ohio State a No. 2...this despite the fact that the Buckeyes beat the Hoosiers by nine on March 5 in Bloomington. The Buckeyes have won eight games in a row, with that win against Indiana, two wins over Michigan State (a three seed) and a win over ranked Wisconsin.

Ohio State has seven losses, all to teams ranked 20 or higher. One was by five on the road against Duke, and another against Kansas.

Indiana's resume is not as good. Four of its six losses came to teams that were not ranked when they played...Butler, Wisconsin (at home), Illinois and at Minnesota. Indiana's top non-conference wins were Georgetown and North Carolina, so they have the edge over Ohio State there (the Buckeyes' best non-conference win was over Washington...that's pretty bad).

Indiana being given a No. 1 seed before the Big 10 Tournament even started cost Ohio State any shot of also receiving a No. 1 seed...despite being a better basketball team right now.

 

cincinnati didn't win the conference tournament when martin broke his leg. a really mediocre slu team led by justin love did.

LTL, no one hates lunardi more than i do, but if you're 16-11 after the regular season and 7-9 in your league, you're definitely not a shoo-in, and you sure as fuck don't deserve a 4 seed three games later

 

It's funny to me that so many people demand a football playoff so that the "legitimately" best team in the nation can be determined, yet your argument for not including Southern is that a team that we KNOW is not the best in the nation (Kentucky) might win it all in a tournament format.

 

It turns out you are better off scheduling Division II or III teams than a D-I team that might rank near the bottom of the RPI.

http://www.thebiglead.com/index.php/2013/03/18/jay-bilas-was-wrong-about-the-committee-going-by-who-you-lost-to-it-was-the-bad-teams-you-beat-that-were-the-difference/

 

and cincinnati didn't get a 2 seed so much because of how it was playing down the stretch but that its best player wasn't going to be playing in the tournament

 

That's right...mental lapse on my part. Regardless, my point about Ohio State stands. If you want to look at which team is playing better right now, who are you going to take?

 

Maybe the committee took more into consideration than the conference tournament?
Maybe they saw winning the Big Ten tourney, at best, as a wash with winning the Big Ten regular season title?
Maybe they liked a 7-2 road record over a 5-5 road record.
Maybe they valued wins against RPI top 25 teams (Indiana went 7-2, OSU 4-5)
Maybe they thought non-conference wins over Georgetown and UNC were more impressive than non-conference wins over, umm, Washington, Albany or Winthrop (seriously, not sure who the "best" OSU non-conference win was)
Maybe they looked at head to head and saw a 1-1 record, with Indiana +4 in point differential.
Maybe they said "Yeah, Indiana lost to Wisconsin twice, but at least they never lost to them by 22 points."

Honestly, looking at the whole season, I can't really make a case for OSU over Indiana. That's not a knock on OSU, which is having a good season, but their resume is just slightly worse than Indiana's.

 

Rupp Arena is a Thursday-Saturday site for the NCAA, I believe.

I would think it would be able to host a second-round NIT game the following Tuesday.

 

Can you reconcile any of this with the "not how the team has played all season, but how the team is playing right now" mindset the committee has claimed to take?