The lack of upsets, and way to fix the tournament | Page 3 | The Boneyard

The lack of upsets, and way to fix the tournament

Looking at the actual teams who lost their championship game, the tourney only lost one Q2 team.
Yale (68 NET) was replaced by Penn (139) - the only Q2 team replaced by a Q3.
Belmont (63) was replaced by UNI (72)
Utah Valley (85) was replaced by Cal Baptist (98)

Other regular season winners who lost their championship:
St. Thomas (103) replaced by ND State (114) in Summit
Liberty (106) replaced by Kennesaw St. (155) in CUSA
Navy (137) replaced by Lehigh (275) in Patriot
ETSU (140) replaced by Furman (186) in SoCon
Bethune Cookman (261) replaced by Prairie View (300) in SWAC

Liberty and St. Thomas barely missed the Q2 cutoff. And the SWAC probably should look at leaving D1 hoops.

It's not as bad as it feels. If you simply put in the regular season champs instead of championship game winners, there's already an improvement in quality.
 
I didn’t read all of these but what I hate the most is that you see these kids on these mid major or even lower tier teams and there Always one player who carries them. The kid on Furman is a great example. As a fan of that team, you gotta be watching knowing to enjoy it for one last time because that player isn’t coming back. It’s sad. I know the players probably (hopefully) don’t see it this way, but it’s almost like a job interview without the words. I feel it as a neutral when I watch these games. Players deserve to get paid but it’s just depressing as a neutral fan
 
Travelman6 said:
Not so sure I fully agree. Not yet anyway.

Oral Roberts (2021), Saint Peter's (2022), and Princeton (2023) are all 15-seeded teams that recently made the Sweet 16. SP made the elite 8, in fact. Robert Morris lost by just 9 last year over 2 Alabama and 5 guys from....checks notes**...Siena nearly beat 1 seeded Duke before losing by 6. And we don't need to talk about Furman, do we? 14-seed Oakland beat Kentucky in 2024, and in the same year, 13-seeded Yale beat Auburn. 5 12 seeds have won since 2024.

Most of all, we just saw the second-ever 16-seed win in 2023.

Let's see what happens in 2027, 28, and 29 before making any serious claims.
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There wasn’t $21 million revenue sharing in 2023.

There wasn’t unmonitored, unlimited NIL in 2023.

It’s been three years since 2023. We don’t need to wait until 2029 to figure out what’s going on.

It’s already a fact for the last three years that the Power conferences are taking the best players from the mid major and low major conferences.

The answer already is in. No one needs to wait until 2029 to know that Cinderella is dead.

That is unless you want to redefine Cinderella as being a 500 team from a Power conference.
 
RuffRuff said:
Maybe so, but the ceiling for the A10 and MWC is round of 32. They'll be capped at exactly what this year was, an 8-9 game and potentially one win. So yeah, the best team/teams from those two can maybe win a game against a low seed from a P4. Not exactly what I would call an exciting outcome.

I would be shocked if the S16 going forward is not made up of entirely P4 and 1 or maybe 2 BE teams max.
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We have heard your "Everyone will succeed but the Big East" theory about a million times.
 
Scoe said:
I guess your seed matters now more than ever so the regular season matters now. People complained about the regular season being meaningless and people complained about UNC having St Peters in the elite 8 there’s never going to be a perfect system.

It’s a 364 team tournament on March 1 a mid majors season is always going to end in a loss regardless.
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It is not that the seed matters. The low major champs are getting seeded appropriately. The issue is that the lower seeds, which are low majors, are essentially playing a different sport from the Top 100. There is no way for them to compete with even the middle of the pack mid-majors.
 
This tournament is exhibit A in the case of why the tournament doesn't need to change and why there doesn't need to be an expansion. No "deserving teams' were omitted. The better teams are better than they used to be and the lesser teams are lesser than they used to be. No tinkering is going to change that.
 
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ec33 said:
This tournament is exhibit A in the case of why the tournament doesn't need to change and why there doesn't need to be an expansion. No "deserving teams' were omitted. The better teams are better than they used to be and the lesser teams are lesser than they used to be. No tinkering is going to change that.
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If you like watching boring blowouts, this is the tournament for you.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
If you like watching boring blowouts, this is the tournament for you.
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Yup - chalk.

It may pay off in the later rounds, but these early rounds are a total bore.

Texas is giving the Zags a run here, but would just kill another MM.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
It is not that the seed matters. The low major champs are getting seeded appropriately. The issue is that the lower seeds, which are low majors, are essentially playing a different sport from the Top 100. There is no way for them to compete with even the middle of the pack mid-majors.
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Oh well that's the way it goes.
 
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ec33 said:
Texas potentially pulling off the big upset getting your engine revved?
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All the "upsets" or near upsets, except for High Point over Wisconsin, have involved significant injuries with the favorite.

I am not sure why you are getting angry about this. I watch sports because I want to see exciting events with uncertain outcomes. You sound like the kind of guy that likes to root for the favorite and watch them win easily. Different strokes I guess.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
All the "upsets" or near upsets, except for High Point over Wisconsin, have involved significant injuries with the favorite.

I am not sure why you are getting angry about this. I watch sports because I want to see exciting events with uncertain outcomes. You sound like the kind of guy that likes to root for the favorite and watch them win easily. Different strokes I guess.
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You want more P4 teams in the tournament. This "bubble" this year -- with every candidate consistently trying to not make the tournament by making their cases for inclusion worse -- was a prime example of not expanded P4 inclusion in this tournament.

The fun is small schools doing something special, not mediocre financial powerhouses lucking their way into the sweet 16 (although seeing an undeserving SEC team knock out everyone's favorite mid-major was pretty funny).
 
ec33 said:
You want more P4 teams in the tournament. This "bubble" this year -- with every candidate consistently trying to not make the tournament by making their cases for inclusion worse -- was a prime example of not expanded P4 inclusion in this tournament.

The fun is small schools doing something special, not mediocre financial powerhouses lucking their way into the sweet 16 (although seeing an undeserving SEC team knock out everyone's favorite mid-major was pretty funny).
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I wish the reality of college basketball was different and there was not so much talent consolidation, but it is what it is. One low major made the second round, and it is not making the Sweet 16. Almost all of the rest of them got killed. This many blowouts in the first round are bad for college basketball.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
If you like watching boring blowouts, this is the tournament for you.
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That would be the NFL playoffs and the CFP playoffs. Im sure you enjoyed those.

It’s the best sports event we have. Try not to bring everyone down about it
 
ValleyGuy said:
That would be the NFL playoffs and the CFP playoffs. Im sure you enjoyed those.

It’s the best sports event we have. Try not to bring everyone down about it
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I want to keep it a great event. When there are 20 games in the first round that are snoozers, it is bad for the sport.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
I want to keep it a great event. When there are 20 games in the first round that are snoozers, it is bad for the sport.
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I agree with everyone who has posted on this kind of sad thread. Sad because the reality is the old tournament is history. Done. Before long it will morph into something like the college football playoffs with only the best teams from the power 4/5. Power 4.5. This will happen when the ratings take a significant ( $ ) drop and advertisers refuse to pony up for the first round. They’ll try to come up with solutions to include the entire “NCAA” field. But the blueprint for the solution is already staring us in the face: CFP. You can regret it all you want, but nobody, meaning nobody, is going to give up their share of the spoils much longer. It won’t surprise when they start paying the top 10 or the top 25 an extra incentive because they draw more eyeballs. Probably already doing it.
 
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