One thing I would change about Tournament Selection

[nelsonmuntz]

A lot of the talking heads have been filling time this week talking about how they would change the tournament (fewer automatics, more at large bids, etc.) and drawing sweeping conclusions off a handful of games, which is silly. As any UConn fan who remembers the 2011 Final 8 game knows, an inch can make a huge difference in a basketball game. You need to look at the results holistically and over time, not just based on a couple of games.

The only change I would implement is to require the lower conferences to send their better teams. It is a waste of everyone's time to send Cal Poly or Albany to the NCAA Tournament when UC Irvine and Vermont don't go. If you ever want to see a 16 beat a 1, you have to start by keeping teams like Cal Poly out of the dance. The part I can't figure out is that the small conferences have every incentive to send their best teams, so why play a useless tournament that no one will watch that risks knocking off your 1 seed?

I don't know how you enforce this, but I think the smaller conferences should just have their 2 top regular season teams play a 1 game playoff. Why make a Green Bay or Robert Morris or Vermont run a gauntlet where a bad team gets hot on one night and knocks out the conference champ?

NC Central should have been a 16 seed having to play in. Cal Poly and St. Marys should not have been anywhere near the NCAA tournament. Ironically, if more of the small conference tournaments had gone chalk, Mercer would have probably been knocked down a line. I love the Cinderella's as much as anyone, and I like them in the tournament. But there are Cinderellas, and there are Cinderellas. I think the tournament would be better if the low majors sent their best teams instead of the potluck, hodge podge that goes now.

 

[Bryan Lord]

Yea not a terrible idea. It'll
Never actually happen most likely but that's the way the cookie crumbles.

 

[Husky25]

The only way I could see something like this remotely happening is a reward system like the football bowls. If a school does not have at least a .500 conference record or in the top six in the standings (You would only have to satisfy 1 of the 2 criteria), they are not allowed in their conference tournament. This allows for 3 days of games in most tournaments (top two seeds get a bye) and only the top half of the conference is eligible for the NCAAs.

One huge issue is where is that line drawn in terms of conference application. Personally, I think it should be applied to all conferences, but the multiple bid/major conferences would never agree to it. As fair as it may be, it calls out and brings attention to the SEC (for sucking) and ACC (11 bids but 8 are paper tigers).

 

[bleeny72]

I disagree. While at UConn it is so much about the tournament time, at these little schools, it is the hope and opportunity to get there that is the best part. We cherish the late run where they care as much, if not more, about the journey. Outside of the ivy league (that cannot have a conference tournament b/c of the academic requirements and rules of the league), every team gets the chance to "dance." Conceivably, if one team in the league runs through the first half of the season and the rest of the league beats up on each other, 90% of schools' seasons are DONE in early February. While the big schools go far in March, the smaller-budget teams' chance to play and go through a conference tournament is the equivalent of a deep run for the blue bloods in importance and excitement.

If a GB or a VT loses in its conference tournament, it still does get the chance to play postseason basketball in the NIT and be able to make it to MSG for a night or two, which at the low budget schools has importance and value. Often, these schools get to play more than once and their conference gets more schools playing some form of postseason basketball. Is it the "big dance?" No, but it is not "season over."

If anything, I believe that the small schools should not play any play-in games and make sure they have the opportunity to play in the round of 64 at the real sites other than Dayton. The budgets at the high-majors should put all such teams in position to make the tournament without needing to play in. The same cannot necessarily be said for the other 230 schools around the country.

 

[Husky25]

I disagree. While at UConn it is so much about the tournament time, at these little schools, it is the hope and opportunity to get there that is the best part. We cherish the late run where they care as much, if not more, about the journey. Outside of the ivy league (that cannot have a conference tournament b/c of the academic requirements and rules of the league), every team gets the chance to "dance." Conceivably, if one team in the league runs through the first half of the season and the rest of the league beats up on each other, 90% of schools' seasons are DONE in early February. While the big schools go far in March, the smaller-budget teams' chance to play and go through a conference tournament is the equivalent of a deep run for the blue bloods in importance and excitement.

If a GB or a VT loses in its conference tournament, it still does get the chance to play postseason basketball in the NIT and be able to make it to MSG for a night or two, which at the low budget schools has importance and value. Often, these schools get to play more than once and their conference gets more schools playing some form of postseason basketball. Is it the "big dance?" No, but it is not "season over."

If anything, I believe that the small schools should not play any play-in games and make sure they have the opportunity to play in the round of 64 at the real sites other than Dayton. The budgets at the high-majors should put all such teams in position to make the tournament without needing to play in. The same cannot necessarily be said for the other 230 schools around the country.

I agree for the most part and my proposal was intended is sort of a compromise between the OP and what it is now. It doesn't happen too often, but a team with an overall losing record (i.e. Mount St. Mary's) really has little claim to an NCAA bid. As I understand it now that the Field was increased to 68, that the First Four games are between the last 4 at larges in and the weakest of the Conference championships. Part of me agrees that every lower budget conference champion should get one of the 62 byes (the stupidity of issuing that many byes invalidates calling the first Thurs./Fri. games the 2nd round), but then there is no shot of one of these schools having a "legitimate" NCAA Tournament win. I was fine with the Great Danes getting a win before being offered up to the Alligator gods of Gainesville.

 

[pepband99]

I disagree. While at UConn it is so much about the tournament time, at these little schools, it is the hope and opportunity to get there that is the best part. We cherish the late run where they care as much, if not more, about the journey. Outside of the ivy league (that cannot have a conference tournament b/c of the academic requirements and rules of the league), every team gets the chance to "dance." Conceivably, if one team in the league runs through the first half of the season and the rest of the league beats up on each other, 90% of schools' seasons are DONE in early February. While the big schools go far in March, the smaller-budget teams' chance to play and go through a conference tournament is the equivalent of a deep run for the blue bloods in importance and excitement.

If a GB or a VT loses in its conference tournament, it still does get the chance to play postseason basketball in the NIT and be able to make it to MSG for a night or two, which at the low budget schools has importance and value. Often, these schools get to play more than once and their conference gets more schools playing some form of postseason basketball. Is it the "big dance?" No, but it is not "season over."

If anything, I believe that the small schools should not play any play-in games and make sure they have the opportunity to play in the round of 64 at the real sites other than Dayton. The budgets at the high-majors should put all such teams in position to make the tournament without needing to play in. The same cannot necessarily be said for the other 230 schools around the country.

100% agree on both points. My only reason to hesitate is that, as currently constructed, it would mean that 2 more at-large bids magically appear. That will anger some people, but probably not 1-win-Jimmy.

 

[Palatine]

The only coverage that small conferences get is their tournament. It's also the most excitement the conference produces each year. Not to mention, they need the revenue. If there is not a bid at stake, no one has a reason to attend. And the conference loses a major source of money, it loses it's most exciting moment of the year and it also loses it's only guaranteed TV face time.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I think my proposal does 2 things:

1) Helps the small conferences have a better shot at winning a game in the NCAA Tournament; and
2) Results in a higher overall level of competition in the NCAA Tournament.

Mount St. Mary's and Cal Poly had no prayer of winning a game. The gap between them and a Mercer level team is pretty big, and letting schools like that in the Tournament leads to a lower overall quality of play in the opening round.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

The only coverage that small conferences get is their tournament. It's also the most excitement the conference produces each year. Not to mention, they need the revenue. If there is not a bid at stake, no one has a reason to attend. And the conference loses a major source of money, it loses it's most exciting moment of the year and it also loses it's only guaranteed TV face time.

I would be surprised if the conference tournaments are a major source of money. I suspect that getting their conference final on ESPN is worth several times the broadcast value of the rest of the conference tournament combined. I believe many of the smaller conferences do hosted games at this point because no one would show up to a neutral court game. Maybe you could do something like give conferences that don't have a full tournament an extra conference game under NCAA rules to offset the revenue loss, and then just do the Final 2 or Final 4 in a mini-conference tournament. It would make the regular season more meaningful, that is for sure.

 

[Husky25]

This is not the cesspool, so I'm justified in agreeing with Pal.

Making the Tournament is the smaller conferences' national championship and if Mt St. Mary's had beaten Albany, they would possess a what is technically considered a Tourney win before getting blown apart by Florida.

 

[borninansonia]

The conference tournaments with an automatic bid at stake gives all the kids from all the teams in the league hope. "Keep practicing, keep getting better and maybe we can make it to the big dance, even though we had a losing record January."

 

[nelsonmuntz]

This is not the cesspool, so I'm justified in agreeing with Pal.

Making the Tournament is the smaller conferences' national championship and if Mt St. Mary's had beaten Albany, they would possess a what is technically considered a Tourney win before getting blown apart by Florida.

That's not what I am saying. I am saying that Robert Morris and Vermont should have gone to the dance instead of Mt St Mary's and Albany. However that happens is fine with me, but I think it would be better for the small conferences and better for the tournament if those leagues put their best foot forward.

 

[DarthGrumpy]

Isn't this why the the Play-In, First Four games were created?

 

[Husky25]

I would be surprised if the conference tournaments are a major source of money. I suspect that getting their conference final on ESPN is worth several times the broadcast value of the rest of the conference tournament combined. I believe many of the smaller conferences do hosted games at this point because no one would show up to a neutral court game. Maybe you could do something like give conferences that don't have a full tournament an extra conference game under NCAA rules to offset the revenue loss, and then just do the Final 2 or Final 4 in a mini-conference tournament. It would make the regular season more meaningful, that is for sure.

It's simpler than that. Neutral courts cost rent money.

Don't look now Nelson, but your proposal would widen the gap between the haves and have-nots. The exact opposite of what you pontificate for UConn in conference realignment and Football.

My secondary question to you is: Why make the process more difficult?

 

[nelsonmuntz]

It's simpler than that. Neutral courts cost rent money.

Don't look now Nelson, but your proposal would widen the gap between the haves and have-nots. The exact opposite of what you pontificate for UConn in conference realignment and Football.

My secondary question to you is: Why make the process more difficult?

Why would just having the top 2 or top 4 schools from America East play for their bid be making the process more difficult?

I want the best teams in the dance while still providing for access by the little guys. That shouldn't be that controversial.

My proposal would shrink the gap. A big reason why a 16 has never beaten a 1 is because the 16's are usually teams like Mt St Mary's or Cal Poly that got hot at the right time but don't deserve to be in the tournament. What if your 16 was a team like Davidson or Mercer or Vermont. Could one of those teams, given enough cracks at the 1 seeds, eventually get lucky? I think so. Could a Cal Poly or MSM? No chance.

 

[Husky25]

That's not what I am saying. I am saying that Robert Morris and Vermont should have gone to the dance instead of Mt St Mary's and Albany. However that happens is fine with me, but I think it would be better for the small conferences and better for the tournament if those leagues put their best foot forward.

Which is why I proposed the "Bowl" criteria to qualify. However good points were raised in the meantime. There are snubs every year. Its what makes the Tournament great.

It's going to happen in football starting this year as well. The football playoff is going to expand as soon as the selection committee picks the #5 ranked AP team in over the 4th. The Tournament is going to expand to 8. Then the #10 team is going to win out over #7. I personally think the sweet spot for the football tourney is 10 teams, considering the opportunity for at-large bids and conference winners.

 

[Husky25]

Why would just having the top 2 or top 4 schools from America East play for their bid be making the process more difficult?

I want the best teams in the dance while still providing for access by the little guys. That shouldn't be that controversial.

My proposal would shrink the gap. A big reason why a 16 has never beaten a 1 is because the 16's are usually teams like Mt St Mary's or Cal Poly that got hot at the right time but don't deserve to be in the tournament. What if your 16 was a team like Davidson or Mercer or Vermont. Could one of those teams, given enough cracks at the 1 seeds, eventually get lucky? I think so. Could a Cal Poly or MSM? No chance.

It expands the gap because you are saying that the smaller conferences are unimportant and should have to play by different rules.

It make it more difficult because you say:

Maybe you could do something like give conferences that don't have a full tournament an extra conference game

Forget about governing body for a second. Someone has to be the away team at those games. How do you pick? Why give one team an extra home game an not another? Are you going to force a lower record team into more debt by making them travel, and not get a return game? Why would they play another game that doesn't mean anything? Who's going to watch? If no one watches, how does that make up for lost revenue?

 

[Cyclone]

The Mercer, FGCU, Norfolk State, etc, etc upset wins are what makes the NCAA tourney amazing.
The revenue and TV exposure they get in their conf tournaments is probably too great for them to turn down for their automatic bid process. Lets face it, the mid-major teams and conferences need butts in the seats and dollars in hand, so their conference tourneys will continue to crown some illegitimate NCAA berths. It's the only way to attract as many fans as possible by offering "NCAA tourney hope" to every fan base in your conference.

I do hope that if the NCAA tourney ever expands a little more, some sort of emphasis or provision is put in place to try and award the great teams from smaller conference with at least a play-in game, instead of the typical "1 bid league" business. We've seen with the programs I listed above that the mid-majors can do some damage in the dance.

I do wonder who benefits financially from the N.I.T.???? I'm sure they love the thought of getting some powerhouse mid-majors that were unable to win their conf tourneys. Gotta expect that those fan bases are eager to support their team more-so than a power conference team that was 17-13.

 

[Fishy]

The automatic bids make the NCAA tournaments first weekend.

Mercer over Duke is an event - no one would care if, say, the 9th best team in the Big 12 upsets Duke.

Plus, if you're the 9th best team in the Big 12, you've won nothing and done nothing - the NCAA tourney is better off with out 'em. Albany wasn't the best team in their conference but they won the conference tournament - the ninth best team in the Big 12 wallowed in mediocrity for the entirety of their season. We're better off with Albany.

The NIT is a great tournament for programs like Clemson or SMU who are at least trying to build something - if UConn ends up in the NIT, it's a penalty box.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

The automatic bids make the NCAA tournaments first weekend.

Mercer over Duke is an event - no one would care if, say, the 9th best team in the Big 12 upsets Duke.

Plus, if you're the 9th best team in the Big 12, you've won nothing and done nothing - the NCAA tourney is better off with out 'em. Albany wasn't the best team in their conference but they won the conference tournament - the ninth best team in the Big 12 wallowed in mediocrity for the entirety of their season. We're better off with Albany.

The NIT is a great tournament for programs like Clemson or SMU who are at least trying to build something - if UConn ends up in the NIT, it's a penalty box.

I am not sure if I am posting in a different language or something. I am not proposing changing the number of automatic bids or which conferences get them. I am saying the low majors should change the way they pick their own NCAA Tournament representative so that the best teams represent each conference.

 

[zls44]

No way was NC Central a play-in-level team.

 

[whaler11]

I think my proposal does 2 things:

1) Helps the small conferences have a better shot at winning a game in the NCAA Tournament; and
2) Results in a higher overall level of competition in the NCAA Tournament.

Mount St. Mary's and Cal Poly had no prayer of winning a game. The gap between them and a Mercer level team is pretty big, and letting schools like that in the Tournament leads to a lower overall quality of play in the opening round.

It does. It also harms major schools, because it creates tougher roads for high seeds.

Your proposal kills off more than half off all schools by New Years Day. It makes the entire season irrelevant for the majority of schools in the country.

I'm in a small minority of people who follows the NEC, MAAC, America East pretty closely. This plan murders their basketball seasons.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

It does. It also harms major schools, because it creates tougher roads for high seeds.

Your proposal kills off more than half off all schools by New Years Day. It makes the entire season irrelevant for the majority of schools in the country.

I'm in a small minority of people who follows the NEC, MAAC, America East pretty closely. This plan murders their basketball seasons.

I think that is a little dramatic. If you are at Cal Poly and are not playing for the love of the game and free education, then you are delusional. Also, by your standards, the Ivy League is murdering its season by selecting the regular season champion as its tournament representative. Someone should tell the Ivy.

Many of the leagues have already taken steps to stack the deck in favor of the higher seeds anyway. Double byes and home courts in the conference tournament are all designed to get just the outcome I propose. I think the regular season has more meaning if only the top 2 or 4 from a league can play for a conference title.

I also didn't realize that the point of letting these small conference upset winners into the tournament was to provide first round exhibition games for the 1 seeds. The 1 seeds should have a harder road to win. There have been 3 15 over 2 seeds in the last 3 years. The difference between a 1 and 2 seed should not be such a dramatically easier first round game.

 

[Kitaman]

Sorry but smaller schools deserve to play post season whether they are chosen by the Committee or by winning their conference championship game. If that rule applies to the big boy leagues then it must apply to all Div. 1 schools.

Even though they have no chance of winning, to potentially be a part of "One Shining Moment" is a reward in itself.

Why are we talking about this with an important game tonight?

 

[pj]

I think my proposal does 2 things:

1) Helps the small conferences have a better shot at winning a game in the NCAA Tournament; and
2) Results in a higher overall level of competition in the NCAA Tournament.

Mount St. Mary's and Cal Poly had no prayer of winning a game. The gap between them and a Mercer level team is pretty big, and letting schools like that in the Tournament leads to a lower overall quality of play in the opening round.

Right now, the conference champion gets a bid, but the conferences have the right to decide how their champion is chosen. They don't have to hold a championship tournament, and if they do, they don' t have to invite every team, as the Big East didn't for a while. So they are allowed to implement your proposal. None do.

Nor should they. First, your points (1) and (2) are wrong.

If your proposal had been applied to major conferences, it would unselect NCAA champion UConn in 2011 (#9 in BE) and this year, conference champions like Providence (#3 in BE), St Joseph's (#4 in A10), and Michigan State (#3 in B1G), even though they were the hottest teams at the end of the season and proved their ability to win pressure, one-and-done games. These are the teams that tend to outperform in the tourney, while teams that looked good over the course of the season but failed in the conference tourney (Nova, Creighton, Duke) tend to do poorly in the tourney.

So to be right, your claim would have to work in weak conferences even though it fails miserably in major conferences. This amounts to a claim that there is more clear separation between the top and middle of weak conferences than of major conferences. But, any statistician knows that the middle of a group tends to cluster in quality, it is the top and bottom that are more dispersed. Weaker conferences have the bottom half of teams in NCAA DI and their best teams are in the middle of DI. There is great parity among them. So it actually works the opposite of how you are saying. There is no reason to declare two teams from a weak conference head and shoulders above the rest, so clearly that they don't need to play to prove it.

Finally, there are more important things than potentially winning a game in the NCAA tournament. Palatine has addressed this well. Letting all teams compete in a championship is a worthwhile goal. It is a new season and lets teams start anew, after injuries or other causes may have derailed the regular season. It draws more fan interest when everyone is competing.

There is a reason why no conference has embraced your scheme. It sucks.