St. Mary’s was 28-5 this year before Selection Sunday.  But thanks to a semi-final loss in the West Coast Conference tournament, St. Mary’s ended up going to the NIT despite being ranked in the top 25 going into that week.  The problem for St. Mary’s was schedule – their only quadrant one victories were a road game against Gonzaga and a road game against BYU, and their only quadrant two victories were home games against New Mexico State and BYU.

So, the West Coast Conference tired that St. Mary’s was snubbed once again, and that Gonzaga ended up being a 4 seed despite being ranked in the top 10, decided it was time to change their scheduling rules.  Now, they will play a 16 game conference regular season instead of the full 18 game round robin, they need to play more home games than road games, they must play a multi-team tournament, they can not play more than two non-division I teams, and all guarantee games (where the WCC school gets paid for playing a road game typically at a major conference school) has to be approved by the league.

None of this will work.  Here’s the problem.   St. Mary’s played more home games than road games – the most notable teams out of conference they could get to come to their place to play were New Mexico State (RPI 35), UC-Irvine (119), UNC-Asheville (130), CSU Fullerton (131), and Dayton (147).  Adding more home games won’t help if they can’t convince a major conference team to play them.  They played in a multi-team tournament – the Wooden Classic.  Unfortunately for them, they lost to Washington State and Georgia.  If they had reduced the conference schedule by two games, one of those might have been Gonzaga or BYU – the better teams from the league.  St. Mary’s didn’t play any non-division I teams – and unfortunately for them, the only major conference team they played on the road was California – who was awful this year.

In the current system, the only way a team like St. Mary’s stands a chance is if they become road warriors.  They need to go to the UCLA’s, Arizona’s, and Kansas’s of the world and say, “Sure, we would love to come to your place to play – no, we don’t need a home game in return.”   Maybe they can get lucky and get it to be a “guarantee” game where they get paid for coming to town.  But unless the NCAA steps in, you are not going to see the blue bloods offering to go to a traditionally dangerous mid-major team and play them on the road.  Lets face it – Gonzaga is traditionally the biggest mid-major team.  The only major conference team they could convince to play them at their home was Creighton.  They had to go on the road (or to neutral courts) to get their games against Villanova, Ohio State, Florida, Washington and Texas.  St. Mary’s problem is they didn’t go on the road to get these types of games.

It is understandable – teams are more likely to win games on their home court.  It is hard enough to beat a team like Villanova as it is – doing it at their home court is nearly impossible.  So, how do we give mid-major teams a chance to earn some wins.  The NCAA has to force it.   We have to be realistic – the major conference teams aren’t going to agree to losing 4-5 home games, so we have to do this in a special way.

First, we will make the season 2 weeks longer.  The first two weeks will be three pre-season tournaments of 32 teams (all games count in their record, but are exempt from the maximum number of games they are allowed to play).  The teams that get invited will be anyone in the NCAA and NIT (minus the last 4 major conference teams based on overall record).  Teams will be placed on geography to reduce travel and every effort will be made to set up the tournament so a mid-major conference team plays a major conference team – whenever this happens, the mid-major team hosts the game.  It will be a single elimination tournament with one exception – all teams that lose their first round game will play a consolation second game – same case where any mid-major teams would host.   This should get successful mid-major conference teams the chance to host at least one (if not two or three) major conference teams that were tournament teams.

Second, the NCAA will mandate that each major conference team (we will declare that as the 75 teams from the ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big 10, Pac 12 and SEC) has to play a road game at a mid-major team.  The eligible mid-major teams will be chosen by their conferences, so that presumably, the best teams are being given this opportunity.  To make scheduling easier, we could set up agreements amongst the conferences – for example, we could say that the 15 Big 10 teams are responsible for playing the road games against the American, Missouri Valley, Horizon, MAC, and Ohio Valley.

Finally, we are going to fix the bracket busters concept.  Bracket busters failed because at the end of the day, the Selection Committee simply didn’t care if the best team from the Missouri Valley beat the best team from the Colonial.  It would slightly bump up those teams RPI – but the committee was still looking for wins against major conference teams.  So, here is what will happen.  No team is allowed to schedule a game for the weekend 2 weeks before Selection Sunday – this is going to be set up for a special weekend of basketball.  The Selection Committee is going to set up 24 pods of 4 teams – where each team will play two games – winners will play each other and losers will play each other in the second game.  Every mid-major conference current regular season leader (ties broken by RPI) is invited.  Then, the field will be filled based on RPI (or some other ranking by the Selection Committee).  The pods will be hosted by the best ranked mid-major school in the pod – or if there is enough TV money, we could host the games at neutral sites.   If you think about it, the at-large teams are normally selected from the top 80 RPI teams.  This will essentially create an opportunity to match all the potential tournament teams in a two game tournament to give them a chance to beat a fellow tournament team, and it will make sure that all the mid-major teams have a chance to show they can beat those teams as well.

If this had been in place, St. Mary’s would have had at least 4 additional games against likely tournament teams (and probably at least 2 of them at their home court).  Maybe they would have lost all 4 of them and they would be rightfully in the NIT.  But they would have the opportunity to get those major conference wins the committee is looking for.  And maybe, then we would be able to correctly seed teams like Gonzaga and Loyola-Chicago, and some of these other mid-major teams would earn their way into the tournament as at-large teams.  We would also be able to seed those 9-9 and 8-10 major conference bubble teams better.  And everyone has to admit – we would love to watch these games.   The NCAA could easily market them to make it profitable enough that the major conference teams would go along.