The Lunatic has to admit, he is struggling a little bit. He is having a hard time trying to figure out what to blog about. Whenever he handicaps the games, he seems to be wrong. He tries to get excited about blogging about the Final Four, and then Michigan blows out Arizona and makes it not that exciting to write about. While I have to admit that I was extremely impressed with how dominating that UConn and Michigan, it doesn’t lead to a lot of blogging content.

Normally I have an article about grading the selection committee and grading the conferences – so that gives me at least something to try to finish. And then I realize, any criticism of the selection committee would be a criticism of myself.

This is the closest that I have got to matching the bracket of the Selection Committee. There were only 10 teams that I did not match the seed – which is crazy accurate for me. But as I looked at it further, I realized it was a lot closer.

I matched up my rankings to the committee’s S-curve. 47 of our 68 teams were within 1 place of each curve, including our top 10 matching exactly. How am I supposed to criticize the Selection Committee when they came up with literally the same ranking as I did.

There were only 3 teams that were more than 4 teams from each other in the S-curves. And interestingly, they were always teams I thought should be better ranked than they were.

• St. John’s (5th seed vs 3rd seed – 18 vs 12 on the S-curve) – the Red Storm outperformed their seed by making the Sweet 16, and giving Duke a challenge in that game.
• Texas A&M (10th seed vs 9th seed – 40 vs 34 on the S-curve) – the Aggies upset St. Mary’s and were the only 10 seed to win their game.
• UMBC (16th seed vs 15th seed – 66 vs 62 on the S-curve) – UMBC lost in the play-in game to Howard.

So, in 2 of the 3 cases, the Lunatic might have been right that the team should be seeded better than they were.

If we get more aggressive and look at the teams that were differences. There were 4 teams the Lunatic felt should be seeded better, and there were 6 teams the Committee seeded better.

LUNATIC’S RANKINGS (2 games above expectations based on Selection Committee seed). I would argue that I was correct twice and wrong twice.

• St. John’s (2 wins vs expected 1) – only 5 seed to get to the Sweet 16
• Texas A&M (1 win vs expected 0) – beat St. Mary’s before losing to Houston – only 10 seed to advance.
• North Dakota St – lost by 25 to Michigan St
• UMBC – lost to Howard

SELECTION COMMITTEE (1 game below expectations) – I would argue they were correct on St. Louis and wrong on Gonzaga and SMU.

• Gonzaga (1 win vs expected 2) – lost to Texas in the 2nd round.
• Kansas (1 win vs expected 2) – first 4 seed to lose (although to be fair it was a 2 point loss to St. John’s)
• St. Louis (1 win vs expected 0) – Beat Georgia before losing to Michigan
• SMU – lost to Miami OH
• Troy – lost by 29 to Nebraska (worst of the 13 seeds)
• Queens – lost by 33 to Purdue (although to be fair, only Furman of the 15 seeds lost by less than 30 points)

All this to say that basically they could have seeded St. John’s and Texas A&M better and Gonzaga worse. And I could say that SMU probably shouldn’t have been in the tournament – but to be fair, Oklahoma, Auburn, San Diego State or Indiana also might have lost to Miami OH in the First Four game – after all, the Redhawks were 31-1 entering the tournament.

In fact, the biggest gripe (other than St. John’s) is probably geographic. While I am sure that some of the bracketing rules have been relaxed thanks to the mega-conferences, I still liked the rule that a conference champion should not have to play anyone from their conference unless there are 8 teams.

The biggest breaking of this rule was for the Big East – where UConn and St. John’s were both put in the East and if Duke hadn’t beat the Red Storm they would have played each other for the Regional Final. With the Big East only having three teams, it feels like the top two teams from the conference could have been split up.

The other weird matchup that felt unfair was that Florida was the number one seed in the South, got put at a geographic disadvantage in the Sweet 16 against Houston, the 2 seed, and then had the 4th placed SEC team, Vanderbilt (the team that upset them in the SEC tournament) in their path for the Sweet 16. Of course, the Big 10 made sure that didn’t matter as Iowa upset Florida and Nebraska upset Vanderbilt – but it seemed like the committee stacked things against the Gators.

If I am going to get nit-picky, I could also say that they stacked Duke’s region, if you look at UConn, Michigan State, Kansas, and St. John’s all waiting for them. But other than St. John’s being in the same region as UConn, the other teams might have been the right teams based on closest geography and other conference bracketing conflicts. For example, Michigan was in the Midwest and Purdue was sent West – so with Illinois and Michigan State being on the 3 line, they were supposed to be placed if possible in the East and South (which they were).

So, the Selection Committee did incredible. I could maybe argue that SMU didn’t deserve to be in the tournament, but I am not sure I can say that any of the other teams they were considering deserved it more. I could argue about St. John’s, but they still were able to make the Sweet 16. I could argue about geography, but at the end of the day, if the best team is from your conference, you were eventually going to have to beat them to get to the championship game.

So, the Selection Committee gets an A+. I can nit-pick the bracket but at the end of the day, I think everything was fairly seeded and with conferences getting 8-10 teams in, it can be really difficult to put teams in the perfect region. They did an amazing job and we ended up with a fantastic tournament.