One thing I would change about Tournament Selection

[nelsonmuntz]

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.

The problem with this board is posters like you. You can't just disagree without attacking someone.

As for your argument, why do you have to misrepresent what I say to make your point? I am talking about the low majors, not the OBE or any of the P5 or even the near majors like the MWC, A10 or AAC.

There is not a lot of parity in those leagues by the way. There are huge disparities in financial commitment and fan interest from program to program. Vermont has been good for over a dozen years. BU has consistently been one of the top programs in whatever league they are in since Jarvis was coaching.

If you think the Cal Poly's and Mt St. Mary's are a key part of the March Madness experience, then you are welcome to that opinion. It seems like several of the conferences themselves disagree, and have worked to stack the deck against the bottom tier schools in the conference tournament.

 

[pepband99]

The problem with this board is posters like you. You can't just disagree without attacking someone.

Sweet jesus pot/kettle. Astounding.

 

[whaler11]

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.

I wasn't talking about the players.

And no the goal isn't to give passes to high seeds, but that's been the outcome and most people like Cinderella for one round, clearly they want the powers by the second weekend.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I wasn't talking about the players.

And no the goal isn't to give passes to high seeds, but that's been the outcome and most people like Cinderella for one round, clearly they want the powers by the second weekend.

Clearly? Is anyone complaining that Dayton is still playing? The "people want the basketball powers in the second weekend" argument is used to justify games like Kentucky/Wichita State, where Kentucky got a foul call on almost every miss the last 12 minutes of the game.

I think you are arguing that we should make the bottom of the field worse so that the powers are more likely to skate through until later rounds. Is that right?

 

[DarthGrumpy]

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.

Not to mention the spike in applications, i.e. the Flutie Effect, that many mid-major programs get if they have a solid NCAA run. Florida Gulf Coast's applications went up 34% for 2013 after last year's NCAA run.

http://in.princetonreview.com/in/20...y-receives-record-number-of-applications.html

 

[whaler11]

Clearly? Is anyone complaining that Dayton is still playing? The "people want the basketball powers in the second weekend" argument is used to justify games like Kentucky/Wichita State, where Kentucky got a foul call on almost every miss the last 12 minutes of the game.

I think you are arguing that we should make the bottom of the field worse so that the powers are more likely to skate through until later rounds. Is that right?

Do you actually read anything anyplace else?

I'm not talking about powers. I'm talking about fans. Fans want Michigan State and Virginia in the sweet 16. Not Dayton and Stanford. This is what causes the committee to stack the deck against Wichita State because they know schools like Mason and VCU are bad for Final Four ratings.

I'm not arguing to make the bottom of the field worse. I'm pointing out that the small conferences don't exist to give you exactly what you want. They have decided to run their conferences in the best way they see fit for themselves.

Nothing is stopping anyone from moving to the Ivy model - yet nobody does.

Your proposal would put better teams in the bottom of the bracket. It would also end the season for 150 schools before it even starts. So sorry if those schools want a reason to play and it doesn't give you the matchups you want in a handful of games in March.

 

[BlueHen]

If a team with a weak record gets hot for three days and wins its conference tourney have them play in one of the "play-in" games. I think that 's what happens now, so I'm not sure that I'm suggesting a change here; but that is how I would do it.

My understanding is that margin of victory (mov) is not one of the metrics that the selection committee uses when selecting and seeding teams, they don't want teams running up the score. If that is the case then I would change that. The indicators that use mov tend to be more accurate predictors than the ones that do not. The RPI does not use mov. If the NCAA is worried about running up the score they can have a cut off at a certain number so that any more points don't help.

If my understanding about mov is wrong, well then, never mind.