Grading the Selection Committee

[RegisteredUconn]

How well did the Selection Committee do in choosing and seeding teams for this year's tournament? Were the seedings fair? Are the regions well balanced? Which region, if any, is the toughest? Which the easiest? Which conferences were overvalued by the committee? Which undervalued?

Those were the questions I sought to answer by undertaking an analysis of the brackets as selected by the committee. In order to grade them, I needed a standard by which to evaluate the selections. As with other evaluations (primarily Creme's brackets) I've done here, I've chosen the AP Poll as the standard. I prefer a human based standard over a pure calculation (RPI, SOS) because it can accommodate more variables, e.g. injuries, albeit with less precision than more mechanical measures. The AP attempts to make up for the lack of precision inherent in individuals by sampling a group. I prefer the AP over the Coaches Poll because of the built in bias, sometimes intentional, a coach attaches to his/her choices.

The AP only ranks 25 teams so it is incomplete as a standard. It is what it is, however, and what I've chosen despite this limitation.

Each team in the poll receives a rank from one to twenty-five. I've applied a simple transformation of the AP rank so that larger numbers mean "better." I will assign 25 to the highest ranked team rather than 1 as the AP does. Thus the top four teams are ranked 25, 24, 23, and 22 rather than 1, 2, 3, and four. The values I used in my calculations are: UConn (25); Notre Dame (24); Tennessee (23); Louisville (22); Baylor (21); Stanford (20); West Virginia (19); South Carolina (18); Duke (17); Kentucky (16); Maryland (15); North Carolina (14); Nebraska (13); Penn State (12); Texas A&M (11); NC State (10); Purdue (9); Gonzaga (8); Iowa (7); Michigan State (6); Oklahoma State (5); Middle Tennessee (4); DePaul (3); California (2); and Southern Cal (1).

The ranked teams were distributed among the regional brackets as follows:
Lincoln -- UConn (25), Duke (17), Texas A&M (11), Nebraska (13); NC State (10), Gonzaga (8), and DePaul (3)
South Bend -- Notre Dame (24), Baylor (21), Kentucky (16), Purdue (9), Oklahoma State (5), and California (2)
Louisville -- Tennessee (23), West Virginia (19), Louisville (22), Maryland (15), Iowa (7) and Southern Cal (1)
Stanford -- South Carolina (18), Stanford (20), Penn State (12), North Carolina (14), Michigan State (6), and Middle Tennessee (4)

Reasonably equitable distribution of ranked teams across regions. Six teams in each region. Mathematics says that one region would necessarily have more teams than the other three because 4 doesn't divide evenly into 25. But why add the extra team to UConn's bracket? Isn't the #1 overall seed entitled to the easiest path to the final four?

The difficulty of each region (as measured by the strength of the teams in it is:
Lincoln -- 88 (25+17+11+13+10+8)
South Bend -- 83 (24+21+16+9+5+2)
Louisville -- 83 (23+19+22+15+7+1)
Stanford -- 63 (18+20+12+14+6+4)

Not particularly equitable considering the overall #1 team has the toughest region while the weakest #1 seed has by far the easiest placement. Note: I left DePaul's value out of the Lincoln region so that regional totals wouldn't be muddied by calculations based on unequal data points, otherwise UConn's region would have been even tougher.

How were the teams in each region valued by the committee? To determine this, I assigned each team to a category: overvalued; undervalued; or equitably valued. Teams with an AP ranking were assigned to seed lines based on their AP rank. Teams ranked 1 through 4 were given #1 seeds. Teams ranked 5 though 8 were assigned a #2 seed, and so forth.

Teams in the Lincoln Region were slightly undervalued with Duke and Texas A&M overvalued, NC State, Gonzaga, and DePaul undervalued, and UConn and Nebraska equitably valued.

Teams in the South Bend Region were slightly overvalued with Purdue and Oklahoma State overvalued, California undervalued, and Notre Dame, Baylor, and Kentucky equitably valued.

Teams in the Louisville Region were significantly undervalued with nobody overvalued, Louisville (grossly), Maryland, Southern Cal, and Iowa undervalued, and Tennessee and West Virginia equitably valued.

Teams in the Stanford Region were overvalued with South Carolina and Penn State overvalued, North Carolina and Middle Tennessee undervalued, and Stanford and Michigan State equitably valued. Note: even though the number of overvalued teams equaled the number of undervalued teams in this bracket, the placement of South Carolina as a #1 seed simply cannot be ignored.

Conference Valuations:
ACC -- Undervalued (one team overvalued, 3 undervalued, and 1 equitably valued
B1G -- Overvalued (2 over, 1 under, 2 equitable)
B12 -- Overvalued (1 over, none under, 2 equitable)
Pac12 -- Undervalued (none over, 2 under, 1 equitable)
SEC -- Overvalued (2 over, none under, 2 equitable)
Non-P5 -- Undervalued (none over, 4 under, 1 equitable)

Over all grade for the Selection Committee B-
The solidly inequitable Stanford bracket when compared to the other three simply cannot be ignored. If you want to tell me thee committee was hampered by the rules, well they (or someone in the next office) write the rules. They also deserve some lumps for the bizarre South Carolina placement. Not only were the Gamecocks overvalued but their overvalue was doubly rewarded by sending them to the easiest region.

 

[ASweet3781]

I'm not sure I can trust a mathematical equation that suggests Lincoln is the toughest. It is a very manageable bracket for UConn outside of a raucous Lincoln crowd cheering on the Huskers. Sure the 5-7 seeds might be stronger, but the 2-3 seeds are weaker. Many of these undervalued teams will only be faced by UConn should they upset the 2-4 seeds and if they do that UConn is still facing weaker regional opponents than the other 1 seeds.

As is usual, the Stanford regional is the weakest. South Carolina a shaky 1 seed. All top 3 seeds lost in their conference tournaments before they reached the final. PSU has had some real questionable performances. Not sure why the continued Final Four red carpet roll outs in the west. Stanford usually doesn't bring a lot of fans to the Final 4 and plays a rather bland brand of basketball lately, very physical which makes for ugly to the eyes games. The committee even helped Stanford out even more this year, inexplicably making SC the 1 seed which only allows the Tree to play the west coast victim card. The 1 seed did SC no favors seeing it's on Stanford's court. And Stanford by not getting the 1 seed they got to avoid a potential much tougher Sweet 16 match up with UNC.

And of course the biggest consequence of Stanford not getting the 1 seed? No UConn-Tennessee pairing in the semis. If your trying to "Grow the game", put people in the seats, and get eyeballs to the screens why you would try to avoid this match up is beyond me. If Tennessee finally gets to the Final 4 (a big if with that bunch), UC vs UT in Nashville, 8 vs 8 for the right to play for 9, and the first meeting since 2007 would be a far sexier match up than UConn vs Stanford.

I can't give the committee higher than a C based on that Stanford region alone. It screwed a lot of things up all for the sake of giving an unproven SC team a 1 seed.

 

[CamrnCrz1974]

Let me start off by applauding your time, research, efforts, and information you compiled and presented. Kudos to you for taking the time to do this for us.

Your methodology does have some advantages. For example, the Sagarin ratings have Oklahoma at #19, when factoring in strength of schedule. But Oklahoma is 18-14; a ranking of 19 would be a 5th seed (the Sooners have the 10th seed). No team with 14 losses can be a 5th seed. And the Sooners certainly were not #19 in the AP Poll.
While I appreciate the effort and work, only using an AP poll has its own problems. For example, Louisville had a great record, but what teams of note did the Cardinals beat? Even looking at the top four seeds in each region, which ones did Louisville defeat? Even using the Sagarin rankings (which do factor in SOS, etc.), Louisville went 1-4 against the Top 25. Its only win? Oklahoma. Teams like Duke and Oklahoma State, whom you list as being "overvalued," both played much tougher schedules and had more wins against better opponents (Duke went 7-6 against the Sagarin Top 25, while Oklahoma State went 5-8).

Using any methodology, there will always be questions, which is why it is nice to have things like your analysis for comparison to others. Thank you for the work.
As for the Stanford bracket, consider this. South Carolina's reward for being the #1 seed is four games not just on the road, but three time zones away, with an Elite Eight game on the home court of its #2 seed (should the seeds hold).

For UConn, the Elite Eight reward was a depleted Duke team, whom UConn beat on the road by 22 points when it had its full complement of players (Gray and Jones sustained season-ending injuries). While Duke did have a strong schedule (conference and non-conference), it is clearly the worst #2 seed, in terms of available personnel and performances against the other top four seeds in each region. So UConn, as the overall #1, did get the "easiest" #2 seed, which is what one would expect.

 

[tomcat]

I understand it is irrational and not founded by any factual evidence, but I continue to believe that for whatever reason (respect for Pat, perhaps) the selection committee continued to make it difficult for a UConn-TN game to occur.

 

[DobbsRover2]

Nice work. I do prefer a cross-section view of the rankings and ratings for possibly a more balanced view, as long as brain-dead RPI is removed from the picture. A cross-sectional view shows either the Lincoln or Louisville regions being the toughest, depending on what depth you go to in the factoring, and South Bend is a tad behind. But indeed the Stanford region is far back, but that seems to be the perennial issue, as more western oriented teams get overvalued by the committee to give the region a western feel.

Who knows who has the weakest #2, but after a decent run at the end of the season and a victory over UNC, it is not true that Duke is the clearly weakest of the #2 seeds. If we are going to use Sagarin as the bible (for Louisville, I guess), let's try to be a little consistent and mention that Duke is the #3 team there. The Devil doom-and-gloomers will say that all's based on early season results, but that's silly. Duke has rebounded pretty well in the last 8 games after their injury losses with the wins over MD, UNC, and NC St. and decently close losses to ND and at UNC. Personally, on a neutral court I'd pick Duke over USCar now.

And again, Sagarin does have Louisville at #9, partly because its SOS is even more catatonic than the RPI's, but Massey has them at #3. I know some of our southern friends just want to harp on the "good wins" factor since that was clearly where Louisville had the least opportunity to shine in the AAC this year since some of the high ranked teams they played OOC dived after playing the Cards, but at the same time it's a cheat to just try to sweep away all the "bad losses" that many of these top teams had. Louisville at least took care of business and didn't flop against Washington, or at home against LSU, or to Kansas, or to OSU even if it was early, or maybe even at home in mid December against the freshman UNC team since it was the only quality game that USCar played in its abysmal OOC slate.

So yeah, RU, the evaluation looks good, and don't let anyone pull one over on you.

 

[ndmb]

One thing to add is that in an ideal world (where we objectively knew the strengths of every team) we would not want UConn to be in a region with all of the weakest teams. As the one seed, we want UConn to have the weakest two seed, for sure. But if they had the weakest 3 seed, that would decrease the odds of an upset and increase the odds that we would face the two seed. We would actually want the strongest 3 seed, because they would have the best odds of beating the weakest number 2 (but still be worse in our ideal world).

Given that we won't play more than one team from the other side of the region, merely adding up the strength of the seeds in our region does not give an accurate picture of how strong our region is.

I think we got the weakest 2 seed, so I'm pretty happy.

 

[chrissaran]

The selection process needs to be changed. When a team with a losing record, like Prairie View, gets a bid instead of USF, there is something wrong. USF played Louisville and Maryland down to the wire. They also played UConn twice. If USF played Prairie View, who do you think would win? USF and it wouldn't be close. As long as there are tournaments for small conferences, you will always have teams who deserved a bid sitting on the outside looking in.

 

[DobbsRover2]

Teams like Duke and Oklahoma State, whom you list as being "overvalued," both played much tougher schedules and had more wins against better opponents (Duke went 7-6 against the Sagarin Top 25, while Oklahoma State went 5-8).

Just wondering if the 14-no-5 is a hard and fast rule? If a team played an insanely tough schedule for an 18-14 record that included an 0-10 record against the top 10 teams and an 8-14 record against the top 25, might they receive some consideration for a #5 seed? That's certainly not OK this year, but they did have a pretty good schedule even in Sagarin which rates it a #9 while Massey says #15. And OK had some of those "good wins" you love, like OK St., Iowa St., and Gonzaga, so I guess maybe they could deserve that high #19 Sagarin rating.

So if using AP is problematic and even Sagarin as in your OK example, what can we use to do an evaluation? I hope you're not suggesting just wins and losses like in the OK example, because that just seems like brain-dead RPI. I would suggest Massey, but I know that's a nonstarter since Lville is #3 and Duke is #4, and you've already discounted their strengths. So perhaps we're left in a muddle.

But we could take issue with your view on "much tougher" schedules, which perhaps comes from RPI or Sagarin adherence, and both of those SOS systems are based on bad to laughable formulas. Massey's SOS is nicely balanced, and Louisville comes in there at #12, while OK St. is at #18. Duke's SOS was great wherever you look. So if you want to use the brain-dead SOS for your points, that's fine I guess, but it would help if you identified that you are using the brain-dead SOS.

 

[DobbsRover2]

The selection process needs to be changed. When a team with a losing record, like Prairie View, gets a bid instead of USF, there is something wrong. USF played Louisville and Maryland down to the wire. They also played UConn twice. If USF played Prairie View, who do you think would win? USF and it wouldn't be close. As long as there are tournaments for small conferences, you will always have teams who deserved a bid sitting on the outside looking in.

This has all been debated for a long time, and there are many who say that the regular season champ should get the conference's bid. But the adherents of the current system say that it would rob the conference tourneys of their excitement if the winner didn't get the bid. I can see it both ways, but the one good thing the current system does is send a bunch of good mid majors to the NIT where some of them like Drexel, and Toledo, and Wyoming have a nice long ride to a title.

 

[UcMiami]

Chris - For THE tournament I think it is important to include all the leagues 'champion' however each league wants to assign that title. The 32nd best team in the country has pretty much zero chance of winning the tournament so why get worked up about the back end of the at large bids in terms of equity.
Interesting OP exercise. And it points to one issue I hadn't thought much about seeing as I follow Uconn and they are usually a #1 seed and only occasionally a 2 seed - For one seeds, the strength/weakness of a region really involves the 2 seed and maybe the 4 and 3. After that it is really immaterial. For teams down the pecking order the concerns spread much wider. And for this year with Regional hosts the added concern was whose home court you were going to have to play on and when. The positioning of PSU and Nebraska I think was not a 'mistake' but an intentional move of Nebraska to a 4 so Uconn, escaping the better team home courts would be pretty much guaranteed of playing the sweet sixteen on the home court.
Considering there is only one major conference on the west coast that region is always going to end up as the 'weakest' as long as there is any travel preference given to better teams - that is why I think it wouldn't hurt to use a mountain time zone or a southwestern city as a host for the western most regional - at least that starts to bring Big10, Big12, and SEC teams into the conversation on distances. While I think the Stanford region will produce the weakest FF team, who that team will be is anyone's guess - I have seen three different predictions from 'experts' so far.
I do think you have a few variables at play this year in regional strength considerations - a team like UNC scares folks more than PSU or Duke not because they have a better chance to win it all, but because their 'delta' is so high - they can be very good one game and very bad the next. With Duke and PSU you pretty much know what you will get. The same could be said for most of the SEC teams - the only team that did not have dreadful losses was SC. TN and KY - huge swings from solid wins to pitiful losses.

 

[ed4ourgirls]

If you ask the question: which 1 seed has the toughest road to the final four, and
use the rankings from the OP for the 2, 3, and 4 seeds only, you get:

Lincoln 41
South Bend 46
Louisville 56
Stanford 46

So, on that basis UConn has the easiest path and Tennessee the toughest,
which is probably what most people would have subjectively supposed.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

If you ask the question: which 1 seed has the toughest road to the final four, and
use the rankings from the OP for the 2, 3, and 4 seeds only, you get:

Lincoln 41
South Bend 46
Louisville 56
Stanford 46

So, on that basis UConn has the easiest path and Tennessee the toughest,
which is probably what most people would have subjectively supposed.

Excellent point. I think the OP was slightly flawed in that, for the #1 seed, the toughest regional wouldn't include their own rating. Also, as you note, not every team's value affects the toughness of the region for any specific team, as some of the folks won't be played.

One of the more valid comments might be that there are more good teams in a given bracket, but what that means is, again, problematical, depending on how they are seeded.

 

[DobbsRover2]

If you ask the question: which 1 seed has the toughest road to the final four, and
use the rankings from the OP for the 2, 3, and 4 seeds only, you get:

Lincoln 41
South Bend 46
Louisville 56
Stanford 46

So, on that basis UConn has the easiest path and Tennessee the toughest,
which is probably what most people would have subjectively supposed.

Um, yeah but the #1 seed should be factored in to discussions, don't you think? The committee is trying to even out the brackets for strength, and discounting the #1 seeds when you have a #2 type seed UTenn at the top spot and a maybe #3 seed type USCar in another just doesn't work. You do need to consider all four or (or five) top seedings in a region, and the Lincoln ranges from the third to the first toughest region depending on what ranking or rating system you use.

I know we tend to think only of UConn, but there are 345 other teams out there, and none of the fans of those teams that have a brain think of the Lincoln as the "easy" region. It's just some ESPN pundits that spent too much time in that bar that Geno mentioned that think that the Lincoln is easy. And they should look at the numbers, but that may be asking too much of them.

 

[Vowelguy]

The selection process needs to be changed. When a team with a losing record, like Prairie View, gets a bid instead of USF, there is something wrong. USF played Louisville and Maryland down to the wire. They also played UConn twice. If USF played Prairie View, who do you think would win? USF and it wouldn't be close. As long as there are tournaments for small conferences, you will always have teams who deserved a bid sitting on the outside looking in.

Automatic bids for all conferences is the hallmark of the tournament. Ending that would be a terrible idea.
South Florida had its chances, and it lost to Clemson and Charleston. and to maryland by 50.

 

[UcMiami]

Um, yeah but the #1 seed should be factored in to discussions, don't you think? The committee is trying to even out the brackets for strength, and discounting the #1 seeds when you have a #2 type seed UTenn at the top spot and a maybe #3 seed type USCar in another just doesn't work. You do need to consider all four or (or five) top seedings in a region, and the Lincoln ranges from the third to the first toughest region depending on what ranking or rating system you use.

I know we tend to think only of UConn, but there are 345 other teams out there, and none of the fans of those teams that have a brain think of the Lincoln as the "easy" region. It's just some ESPN pundits that spent too much time in that bar that Geno mentioned that think that the Lincoln is easy. And they should look at the numbers, but that may be asking too much of them.

Good points - and part of what I was saying is the strength of a bracket changes depending on where in the bracketing you fall. If you are a one seed, you biggest interest and your impression of the bracket is based on the #2, #4, and #3 in that order. If you are a 2 seed you are evaluating based on the #3, #1, and #4 in that order. And if you are a mid-level seed then you are worried about5 everybody.
Up until the announcement the top teams in the country (those that seriously think they can make it to Nashville) other than Uconn and ND had two hopes: #1 - don't put me in whatever regional Uconn is in; followed by #2 don't send me to South Bend. (Stanford, Louisville, and Nebraska all only had to worry about #1.) As long as those two criteria were met, they figured they had an easier path to the FF.

 

[DobbsRover2]

Automatic bids for all conferences is the hallmark of the tournament. Ending that would be a terrible idea.
South Florida had its chances, and it lost to Clemson and Charleston. and to maryland by 50.

So tell me how losing to the #225 team in the country (FL) earns you a place in tourney? Or having a bunch of teams lose to a Mississippi St team that played absolutely nobody in the OOC and only gets any kind of rating because it beat some puffballs in its own conference?

If you keep shoveling that stuff about the AAC teams, you could at least mention who you're pimping for.

 

[VAMike23]

Um, yeah but the #1 seed should be factored in to discussions, don't you think? The committee is trying to even out the brackets for strength, and discounting the #1 seeds when you have a #2 type seed UTenn at the top spot and a maybe #3 seed type USCar in another just doesn't work. You do need to consider all four or (or five) top seedings in a region, and the Lincoln ranges from the third to the first toughest region depending on what ranking or rating system you use.

I know we tend to think only of UConn, but there are 345 other teams out there, and none of the fans of those teams that have a brain think of the Lincoln as the "easy" region. It's just some ESPN pundits that spent too much time in that bar that Geno mentioned that think that the Lincoln is easy. And they should look at the numbers, but that may be asking too much of them.

The question was "which #1 seed has the easiest road to the final four", not "which region is the easiest or toughest." Those are two different questions.

The first question is more specific as it takes the POV of the #1 seeds. From that angle, why should the #1 seed's ranking be factored into the discussion? Will UCONN have to play UCONN to get to the Final Four? Or UTenn vs. UTenn? The road each faces consists of the other teams in that region. So for the particular question ed4ourgirls raises, taking the #1's rankings out of the equation is the right thing to do.

The second question is more general and seems to look at each region from the POV of a hypothetical team, or no particular team at all, using the average rankings of all the teams or something similar. The question of what rankings to use, what kind of points system to use, etc., is obviously an interesting set of variables and we see lots of different methods.

 

[RegisteredUconn]

If you ask the question: which 1 seed has the toughest road to the final four, and
use the rankings from the OP for the 2, 3, and 4 seeds only, you get:

Lincoln 41
South Bend 46
Louisville 56
Stanford 46

So, on that basis UConn has the easiest path and Tennessee the toughest,
which is probably what most people would have subjectively supposed.

Excellent point Ed, and something I didn't account for as I polluted my original objective, assessing the selection and placement of teams, by introducing a competing one, the difficulty of a specific seed reaching the final four.

 

[RegisteredUconn]

Let me start off by applauding your time, research, efforts, and information you compiled and presented.

It's always nice to meet a fellow erudite. More seriously, thanks for the great feedback.

 

[NickyNewark]

Automatic bids for all conferences is the hallmark of the tournament. Ending that would be a terrible idea.
South Florida had its chances, and it lost to Clemson and Charleston. and to maryland by 50.

I certainly think both RU AND USF deservered a bid but I'm OK THIS year with the snub due to the last few yrs and RU's bad earl season loss. I agree the tourney NEEDS the Davids and Goliath's.....it's why its(the dance) so interesting to the masses.Can't leave out the smaller school's or everyone should just watch the pro's.

 

[DobbsRover2]

The question was "which #1 seed has the easiest road to the final four", not "which region is the easiest or toughest." Those are two different questions.

The first question is more specific as it takes the POV of the #1 seeds. From that angle, why should the #1 seed's ranking be factored into the discussion? Will UCONN have to play UCONN to get to the Final Four? Or UTenn vs. UTenn? The road each faces consists of the other teams in that region. So for the particular question ed4ourgirls raises, taking the #1's rankings out of the equation is the right thing to do.

The second question is more general and seems to look at each region from the POV of a hypothetical team, or no particular team at all, using the average rankings of all the teams or something similar. The question of what rankings to use, what kind of points system to use, etc., is obviously an interesting set of variables and we see lots of different methods.

"How well did the Selection Committee do in choosing and seeding teams for this year's tournament? Were the seedings fair? Are the regions well balanced? Which region, if any, is the toughest?"

There were a lot of questions asked in the OP, and most of them revolved around whether the regions were balanced and whether the committee did a good job in maintaining an equitable share of the power all around. Not sure why you are just focusing on which #1 has the toughest road, which in any case involves a far more complex set of evaluations since a #1 seed is only facing two to three teams of the top half of its region.

In any case, it's silly to evaluate the committee on how well it produced a region for UConn or ND or any other specific team. Their job is to try to cobble together fairly balanced regions under the constraints of a hodge-podge of often differing objectives, and it is not to give the top seed the supposed easiest path.

 

[VAMike23]

There were a lot of questions asked in the OP and most of them revolved around whether the regions were balanced and whether the committee did a good job in maintaining an equitable share of the power all around. Not sure why you are just focusing on which #1 has the toughest road which in any case involves a far more complex set of evaluations since a #1 seed is only facing two to three teams of the top half of its region.

In any case, it's silly to evaluate the committee on how well it produced a region for UConn or ND or any other specific team. Their job is to try to cobble together fairly balanced regions under the constraints of a hodge-podge of often differing objectives, and it is not to give the top seed the supposed easiest path.

I was referencing ed4ourgirls' post, which you had quoted directly. Ed was simply adding to the discussion by posing a more specific question about #1 seeds and their road to the FF. Since he was after that specific answer, his method made sense. Your reply brought the OP's questions into the mix, rather than the one ed4ourgirls raised.

 

[CamrnCrz1974]

So if using AP is problematic and even Sagarin as in your OK example, what can we use to do an evaluation? I hope you're not suggesting just wins and losses like in the OK example, because that just seems like brain-dead RPI. I would suggest Massey, but I know that's a nonstarter since Lville is #3 and Duke is #4, and you've already discounted their strengths. So perhaps we're left in a muddle.

But we could take issue with your view on "much tougher" schedules, which perhaps comes from RPI or Sagarin adherence, and both of those SOS systems are based on bad to laughable formulas. Massey's SOS is nicely balanced, and Louisville comes in there at #12, while OK St. is at #18. Duke's SOS was great wherever you look. So if you want to use the brain-dead SOS for your points, that's fine I guess, but it would help if you identified that you are using the brain-dead SOS.

DobbsRover2, you made my point for me, though you said more succintly and more clearly than I did.

With every service/rating/ranking used, there will be problems. Nothing is full-proof. There will always be arguments either way.

 

[DobbsRover2]

DobbsRover2, you made my point for me, though you said more succintly and more clearly than I did.

With every service/rating/ranking used, there will be problems. Nothing is full-proof. There will always be arguments either way.

Well maybe except for who's the weakest team in the tourney this year. I think it's the Panther team, and UConn gets to play them.

 

[ed4ourgirls]

. . . the Lincoln ranges from the third to the first toughest region depending on what ranking or rating system you use . . .

Um, toughest for whom?

Obviously, for any team not named UConn, the region with UConn in it will be the toughest
path to the final four.

I was looking at it from the standpoint of the top seeded team in each regional. Forget the
numbers. A simple eye test would suggest that UConn has the easiest path. Georgia?, Nebraska?,
and your choice of A&M or a critically wounded Duke team? Please. They might as well
just skip Lincoln and go straight to Nashville.

Don't you think Tennessee, South Carolina, or Notre Dame would switch places with us
in a heartbeat?