NCAA tournament seeding - facts and myths

[Vowelguy]

That is not 100% UConn's fault. It says more about the rest of the BE than what it says about the strength of UConn's team. Is it fair and righteous to punish UConn because the rest of the BE sucks and can't get into Quad 1?

Which is why the committee makes a big deal out of your non conference schedule, because you have control over that.

 

[JoePgh]

In my observation, Charlie Creme's final bracket before Selection Sunday every year is usually a reliable predictor of what the actual bracket would look like IF the NCAA followed its own rules / guidelines. The reason why Charlie never gets it quite right is that the NCAA never does follow its own rules, and thereby deviates from what Charlie has predicted.

Regarding the 2001 UConn-Notre Dame situation that was mentioned earlier in this thread, I do not recall all the details, but I am quite sure of the following:

UConn and Notre Dame tied for the regular season Big East title, with each of them winning one game against the other. UConn did win the Big East Tournament final game against ND on Sue Bird's buzzer-beater. A normal person would expect those facts to result in a higher seed for UConn than for Notre Dame. However, the Committee chose not to see it that way, and when asked by reporters to explain its decision, the spokesperson said that "Notre Dame won the regular season Big East title". That was not true -- the two teams tied for the regular season title. But even if it were true, shouldn't the tournament outcome (which also resulted in a 2-1 advantage for UConn in the season series) be the obvious tiebreaker?

 

[Vowelguy]

Regarding the 2001 UConn-Notre Dame situation that was mentioned earlier in this thread, I do not recall all the details, but I am quite sure of the following:

UConn and Notre Dame tied for the regular season Big East title, with each of them winning one game against the other.

No they did not.

Uconn - ND played once during the season. ND won.

ND lost to Rutgers, so yes they were ‘tied’, but ND got the top seed in the BET because of the head to head win.

 

[SandrasGuy]

I don’t know anything about seeding, so I am loving the discussion. But I do know condescension when I read it.

 

[BBallF]

Oldude, I agree with you and disagree with HuskyNan. Not just one big game, but a blowout big game; an out-of-conference big game against a (currently) #1 seeded opponent big game; on the opponent's home court in front of 18,000 people big game;
and in a nationally televised, College Game Day big game.

This is precisely the kind of big game that can/should/will impact seeding. To imply this win will not move the Huskies higher than their current #7 overall seed is simply incorrect for the criteria you stated. Will they move up to become one of the four #1 seeds? Probably not, but still possible. Other things need to fall into place.

Here's the bottom line: the selection committee has a bit of a "situation" on their hands given what just happened on national television surrounding their initial reveal. Presuming the Huskies win out the rest of their regular season games, either the committee moves UConn up to an overall #6, #5 or even #4 at the end of the month for the second reveal, or they risk being discredited in the eyes of everyone who follows WCBB.

Can the NCAA selection committees as a whole be anymore discredited in the eyes of everyone who follows college basketball, not just the women? Last year's men's selection was farce, a chair who knew nothing about basketball, a clear bias in favor of a certain western conference who never had that number of teams in the tourney before (almost all lost in the first round), and a clear bias against the Big East, best shown by the exclusion of Seton Hall, who went 20-12 in the regular season, 13-7 in the conference and beat UCONN, the eventual national champion. By the way, Seton Hall won the NIT as well.

The committee, despite any guidelines, consists of human beings, replete with preconceived ideas, confirmation biases, and their own experiences. They are not full time members and can vanish into anonymity no matter what they do. They are held accountable for a few hours, nothing more, and that is a major defect in the system. These are not jurors in any sense and the idea of having supposedly objective, but not necessarily knowledgeable people make these decisions is always imperfect and at times, disgraceful.