Selection Sunday thread

Go back three seasons to 1994 and the SEC adds three more championship game appearances and two more titles.

Face it, as I mentioned before, if you're a mid-major and you don't win your conference tournament (or, like Drexel, weren't even close to winning the conference in the regular season), you're almost always going to lose out to a team with a national rep in a BCS conference that makes a strong conference tournament run. And speaking of reps, if Syracuse gets to the Big East final, the Orange is in and Arkansas is left out. The conference that should be ashamed is the Big Ten. Purdue AND Illinois (Sorry, Doc). Please.

 

Virginia beat Arizona and Gonzaga non-conference. Who did Syracuse beat? Once and for all, you cannot schedule the kind of cupcakes Boeheim did in the early season and then whine when you don't get in. He wants to pad his record against non-conference patsies, beat up the bottom half of the Big East, and then yell, "Hey, we had 20 wins!" The committee saw through that. F--k him.

 

Win your freaking games.
That is all.

 

I don't like Boeheim or his whining (2003 might have something to do with it). That said, I did some research ...

Non-conference SOS rankings
122 -- Syracuse
130 -- Vanderbilt
149 -- Indiana
160 -- Georgia Tech
175 -- Virginia
181 -- USC
309 -- Notre Dame

 

And I'm still waiting for the list of mid-majors that deserved to be in that aren't. Apparently six mid-major at-larges is a travesty of justice </gorillamonsoon>. But outside Drexel, nobody makes a good case. Not Appy, not Mo. St., not Air Force and certainly not the teams below them.

Syracuse and Drexel in, Stanford and Purdue or Illinois out, and the field is solid.

 

MM, my list starts and ends with Drexel. There's no rule that says mid-majors must get eight, 10, 12 teams into the tournament every time. Just be fair and award at-large berths to teams that deserve it, that's all I ask.

 

To hell with ESPN's Joe Lunardi. The only Web site of the 31 predicting the field that picked 64 of 65 teams was <a href="http://bracketproject.atspace.com/">
The Bracket Project.</a>

The Bracket Project also led the 31 in number of correct seeds (34) and number of seeds predicted within one of actual seed (54).

They had Syracuse in instead of Arkansas, but 30 of the 31 sites had Syracuse in.

 

Agreed, but a few pages back there was a hue and cry over only six mid-major at-large bids. This wasn't a good year for them. And actually, having Nevada and Xavier and Butler lose helped them because it made two-bid conferences out of three would-be one-bidders. Take them out of the equation, and you might be looking at four, five at-large bids tops (assuming Drexel and either Missouri State or Air Force, depending on how you view the MWC).

 

Virginia: 19-10, 11-5 conference, 55 RPI, 49 SOS, 175 NC SOS = No. 4 seed
Ga Tech: 20-11; 8-8, 52 RPI; 41 SOS, 160 NC SOS = No. 10 seed
Stanford: 18-12, 10-8; 65 RPI; 32 SOS, 116 NC SOS = No. 11 seed

Syracuse: 22-10, 10-6 conference, 50 RPI, 46 SOS, 122 NC SOS = OUT!

Yeah, Boeheim has no reason to complain.
I repeat...no team in the country got fucked worse than Syracuse.

 

Too much was made of Virginia gaining a share of the ACC title. That's the only reason the Cavs are a four. It's a sham.

 

Virginia had the weakest conference schedule in the ACC, which had a lot to do with it sharing the regular-season title.