A view on lack of parity in WCBB

[DobbsRover2]

I think conferences feel that their best team is their best tournament team, which is the team that wins the conference tournament. Whatever team wins the conference tournament is a proven winner in tournament settings, and arguably has the best chance in the NCAAT. And with unbalanced conference schedules and the ups and downs teams experience during a season a simple comparison of conference records is not a good measure of which team is the best. I also don't see how switching who get the automatic bid does anything about reducing blowouts in the early rounds. The parity problem needs to be solved by bad teams getting better, which will improve the overall women's game.

Small conferences don't usually have unbalanced schedules. True, sometimes a 6-12 conference record team really is suddenly the best team in the conference for some reason, but more often they just got fired up and got the good bounces for a weekend. Was a 15-18 St. Francis that lost to 7-22 Wagner in February really the best team to send to the NCAAT for the Northeast conference instead of 22-9 Bryant? I hope not, but who knows. Again, blow outs aren't the worst

 

[DobbsRover2]

Agree that this might help keep the opening round of game scores closer, but I would think the coaches of the top ranked schools would not appreciate having to keep their teams idle as they sit out the bye weekend as their reward.

Wouldn't have to be a weekend, as it could be wrapped into the first current rounds beginning earlier in the week, maybe at the higher seed's home. As it is, some teams get almost two weeks off after their last game to the first NCAAT game, so they are either idling or taking time to recover, depending on how you want to look at it. But there is room to slip games in on a Tues-Wed slot.

 

[2Husky]

Small conferences don't usually have unbalanced schedules. True, sometimes a 6-12 conference record team really is suddenly the best team in the conference for some reason, but more often they just got fired up and got the good bounces for a weekend. Was a 15-18 St. Francis that lost to 7-22 Wagner in February really the best team to send to the NCAAT for the Northeast conference instead of 22-9 Bryant? I hope not, but who knows. Again, blow outs aren't the worst

Good point. Maybe conferences should have playoff series instead of single elimination tournaments, like the NBA. They could shorten the regular conference season to accommodate it. Somehow I think that would lose some of the excitement.