This will never happen.  But if I was the czar of college basketball, I would have a rule that you can not play in the NCAA tournament if you don’t have a winning record in your conference.  My fear is that other power conference teams would get invites instead, but it should open the door for a few more non-power conference teams to make the tournament.  Wouldn’t it have been fun to see a team like North Texas (2nd place in Conference USA) or Utah Valley (WAC regular season champion) who ended up winning the NIT and losing in the NIT semi-finals get a chance over a struggling power-conference team.

I think the difficulty becomes that some of these conferences are better so it is too be expected a slightly worse conference record.  So, setting the arbitrary rule would be unpopular.  But lets go past what I would do and list out all the teams that had the worst conference records and see how they did.  I will include the conference tournament games – since they are included in my team standings that I put on the site.

• 9 – West Virginia (Big 12 – 8-12) – Lost to Maryland
• 11 – First Four – Mississippi State (SEC – 9-11) – Lost to Pitt
• 8 – Arkansas (SEC – 9-11) – Beat Illinois and Kansas, Lost to UConn.
• 6 – Iowa State (Big 12 – 10-10) – Lost to Pitt
• 6 – TCU (Big 12 – 10-10) – Beat Arizona State, Lost to Gonzaga
• 9 – Illinois (Big 10 – 11-10) – Lost to Arkansas
• 8 – Iowa (Big 10 – 11-10) – Lost to Auburn
• 9 – Auburn (SEC – 10-9) – Beat Iowa, Lost to Houston

The first thing here that fascinates me is that of these 8 teams, only Mississippi State was in the First Four.  Everyone else was safely in.  And two of them were 6 seeds.  Why would a team like Pitt who went 14-6 in the ACC be in the First Four, and a team like West Virginia who went 8-12 in the Big 12 be the 9 seed?  That makes absolutely no sense to me.  Of course, Pitt ended up proving how wrong that was by beating two of the 8 teams on this list.

To be fair to TCU, they were still ranked in the polls at 22nd.  But note both TCU and Iowa State at 10-10 in the Big 12 were ranked ahead of Texas A&M who was 17-4 in the SEC (one of the two conferences with the most tournament teams).

Only Arkansas, TCU, and Auburn won their first round game, and part of that is because Arkansas and Auburn played other teams on the list.  And TCU’s victory was against one of the First Four teams that was in the play-in game.  Only Arkansas had a victory that was significant – when they knocked off #1 seed Kansas.

If you made a rule that if you have a record that isn’t more than 1 game over 500, you can not get an at-large bid unless the polls have you as a Top 25 team, we would be able to open up 7 spots in the dance – and we would have only missed out on Arkansas’ upset.  I’d have to believe if we gave these opportunities to teams like non-power conference teams like North Texas or power conference teams that did better in the standings like Vanderbilt or Clemson, we would be pleasantly surprised.

It doesn’t change much.  I could argue that teams like Vanderbilt and Clemson couldn’t even get through the NIT – so they certainly weren’t going to win the NCAA Tournament.  I am not sure that NIT performance is the fairest thing – several teams end up having a huge let down and get upset in the NIT because they aren’t ready to play.  I am not trying to say that North Texas, Utah Valley, Clemson or Vanderbilt would have won the NCAA Tournament if given the chance.

But I do think two things.  The seeding matters – if you can’t have a winning record in your conference, you certainly should not be an 8 or 9 seed over a 14-6 power conference team.  And I think having a few more spots for a team like North Texas would benefit the tournament.