Conference Tourneys - Should All Teams Play?

[homer the dog]

Improving one's seeding or getting off the bubble is not the same as erasing an entire season of mediocrity.

So you want a 349-team tournament, which would be 8 rounds? No seeding, and purely regional bracketing? So you're okay with the best two teams in the country playing in the first weekend, if they happen to be close to each other?

Yes.

Orange

 

[homer the dog]

Improving one's seeding or getting off the bubble is not the same as erasing an entire season of mediocrity.

So you want a 349-team tournament, which would be 8 rounds? No seeding, and purely regional bracketing? So you're okay with the best two teams in the country playing in the first weekend, if they happen to be close to each other?

you got to beat the best sometimes in the tourney to be the champs

 

[Fairfield Fan]

What to people think about conference tournaments where every team plays?
The positives include that it is nice to extend the season, even if for one more game, for the teams at the bottom of the standings, and you can say that any team has at least a chance, so let them play. (Tulsa and Houston won their first-round games in the AAC this year.)
The negatives are that meaningless games are played with empty arenas, a team higher in the standings has to play an extra game, and tournaments take an extra day to complete.
My vote would be to have a cut-off at the top eight teams in each conference. If a team doesn't qualify, they don't qualify. Tonight, for example, three teams with decent conference records, Gardner-Webb, Asheville, and Bradley each have to play silly games against teams that were 1-17 in conference play (and equally poor results in non-conference play).
Thoughts?

It means that the regular season is meaningless. There are already enough, or perhaps too many, games within a conference. And ordeals like the ACC's tournament leaves good teams tired and drained. One reason why ACC teams often underperform in the NCAA's.

The poor half of the teams should stay home. They haven't earned a tournament.

 

[1-of-the-6]

No one has mentioned that a lot of the conferences utilize tiered brackets for their tournaments. Byes are issued at different levels, making the regular season finish much more important. For instance, the B1G, which now has 14 teams does it like this:

The bottom four seeds play on the first day. The two winners of those games mix with the middle six seeds for four games on the second day. It's only on the third day that the top four seeds join in. So, very tough for the bottom seeds to go all the way, given that they not only aren't as good but would have to win five games in five days.

http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools...6-17/misc_non_event/2017WBBTourneyBracket.pdf

 

[1-of-the-6]

I've even seen one eight-team league that does it like this:

Bottom fours seeds play on day one, producing two winners. These teams square off on day two against the 3 and 4 seeds. These two winners then play the top two seeds, who have received byes into the final four. I like this format a lot, again because it gives more of a reward for doing well during the regular season.