This is the day when you see all the articles about how well the Selection Committee did. You can go on any sports media page, and they will tell you which teams got snubbed and why they deserved to be in the tournament. They will tell you what the Committee got right and wrong.
Well, the Lunatic’s blog is no different – why would I not provide my insight into what mistakes that the Committee made and/or make comments about the media pundits.
And here is the first and most important comment of this post that is likely to get ridiculously long – the Selection Committee did a FANTASTIC job. If you ever try to create a bracket yourself and do it well – you will notice right away how hard it is to seed these teams. When you see pundits (or me) say things like Cincinnati should be a 6 seed instead of a 7 seed, that is the equivalent of saying that you believe Cincinnati is better than potentially only 1-2 teams than where the Committee places them – that is an awfully high bar to have.
That being said – here are my comments – both critcizing the committee and more importantly, my bracketology where it makes sense.
I love (to an extent) that the Committee put 3 ACC teams as #1 seeds (in fact, they put them as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd national seeds). When I seeded my teams, I thought the top three teams were Duke, Virginia and UNC – but I figured there was no way the committee would put 3 teams from the same conference – and so I bumped UNC down to the 2 seed line. I love the fact that if the committee felt that Duke, Virginia and UNC were the best three teams, they put them as the best three teams. So I give them all the credit in the world for that decision. My only dislike about this is that with all the media coverage, it is easy to get tunnel vision. The ACC is always considered the best conference in college basketball – and they have deserved that praise. But it takes a lot of talent to win conferences like the Big 10, SEC and Big 12. And when the top teams only play a couple of other major conference teams, it sets a dangerous precedent when you give all 3 of the ACC top teams a protected #1 draw and force the other conference’s top teams to play against what technically should be a tougher draw. In the end, I think the committee got the top 3 teams right – but it makes it seem like the only basketball they are watching happened on Tobacco Road.
Where they did get things wrong at the top of the bracket is with Michigan State. The Spartans battled injuries all year (which also was part of the reason that they lost two games in a row in early February to Indiana and Illinois). And yet, MSU was 14-3 against teams that were given a top 12 seed in the tournament. To put that in comparison, Duke was 12-4, Virginia was 10-3, North Carolina was 9-5 and Gonzaga was 4-3. You can make a very solid argument (especially when I hear that Gonzaga deserves credit because they are the only team that has beaten Duke at full-strength – if we are giving credit by removing 3 of Duke’s losses to injury – the two “bad” losses that MSU have to go away as well), that a team that battled injuries, still beat more tournament teams than all the other #1 contenders and won the 2nd best conference according to the rankings as well as that conference tournament, they probably deserve the 4th #1 seed.
But I get it – many had already given Gonzaga the #1 seed before their loss to St. Mary’s – and so it is hard to let the conference tournament take that away. I can support that people still believe that Gonzaga is better than Michigan State. But if you are going to put them on the 2 line – how do you put the Spartans in the East with Duke – the #1 overall seed in the tournament, and send the team that Spartans beat 3 times this season (Michigan) to the West regional to play against the 4th #1 seed in Gonzaga. I heard that it was unfair to send Michigan State all the way to Anaheim. So it is fair to give the #1 seed a much more difficult draw and Michigan State a much more difficult draw and still also fair to send another Michigan school all the way out to Anaheim. This makes absolutely no sense – the Spartans should be out West with Gonzaga – regardless of which order you would put those teams. And if you believe 100% in the seeding curve of the committee, the Spartans should be in the Midwest (the Big 10s natural region) against UNC….. This is probably the biggest mistake that the committee made (of which, probably easy to forgive unless you are a Spartan fan).
Lets take the edge of the 3 seeds / 4 seeds in LSU, Purdue, Kansas and Florida State. I think Florida State got the raw end of this deal. Lets look at Quadrant 1 (since it is too hard for me to keep picking out the tourney teams – sleep is drifting in) – FSU is 8-5, LSU is 9-3, Purdue is 7-7 and Kansas is 11-8). But unlike the others who had 2-3 games against teams ranked 4-8 by the Committee, the Seminoles had 5 games against Duke, Virginia and UNC – the top 3 seeds. Remove those, and the Seminoles are suddenly 7-1 in Quadrant 1. But if that is not enough to give you belief that they should be ahead, he is one more cherry-picked statistic. Two of those Quadrant 1 wins for Florida State are on a neutral court against LSU and at home against Purdue. It is just a couple teams difference – but I think Florida State should be ahead of Purdue and LSU. That would have also solved the geography problem that I will address next.
During the Selection Committee show, one of the announcers mentioned some interesting bad geographies that they thought the committee tried to avoid. One was Purdue and Villanova playing in Hartford, CT – giving Villanova a simulated home-field advantage, and then if Kansas and UNC make the Midwest Sweet 16 – they will play in Kansas City (which might as well be a home game for the Jayhawks). At first, I thought this was a fair criticism.
But if you look deeper (and you give the Selection Committee the benefit that their seeding is absolutely correct), they had little choice with their bracket principles. Lets take the bigger concern about the Midwest region first. There are three #1 seeds from the ACC – so they take up the East, South and Midwest regionals (especially since Gonzaga naturally belongs out West). The 3rd seed is the one made to travel the furthest to Kansas City. Now the problem becomes the make up of the 4 seeds (two ACC schools and two schools from the state of Kansas). You can put one of the ACC schools out West with Gonzaga to avoid having two ACC teams meet in the Sweet 16 – but at this point, you are stuck with either sticking UNC with an opponent they have already played or a school from Kansas that will have a home court advantage. There was nothing they could do. (Of course, if Florida State was a 3 seed instead of say Purdue, they could have sent the other ACC team VT out West, Purdue to the Midwest, and the geographic problem of home court would have been solved).
The Purdue / Villanova issue is also an unfair criticism. There are only 8 sites – once again if you believe the seeding is right, Each team in order is placed with a regional site based on geographic preference. Purdue was the 12th seed which meant by the time they got slotted, the choices were Hartford, CT, Salt Lake City, UT or San Jose CA – so you either send Purdue and Villanova out west, or you send them to Connecticut. They really didn’t have much of an option that worked out well geographically – not their fault (once again if you treat their seeds as correct). If they aren’t, Connecticut might not even be available by the time Purdue is slotted – but then the Boilers probably don’t play Villanova. EDITOR’S NOTE – as a Boilermaker fan, I am very happy with Purdue’s draw. Villanova and Tennessee are tough teams (and of course so is Virginia) – but would you rather go East to play Duke, Michigan State and Maryland. Or how about to the Midwest against UNC, Kentucky and Iowa State… Purdue got a reasonable draw for a 3 seed. Not saying that they will easily win their games – simply saying that I can not complain about who and where we play – it could be worse.
I think they need to stop playing Conference Tournament games on Sunday. And if they are, the games need to end at least 3 hours before the announcement. It feels like the American, Big 10 and SEC tournament games were ignored. The selection committee chair said Michigan State leaped over Kentucky since they won the Big 10 tournament. Yet, with as close as the 2 seeds are to each other in profiles, that win in combination with Tennessee’s blow-out loss to Auburn didn’t help the Spartans leap frog both SEC teams? And what about Cincinnati still being a 7 seed after beating Houston. But I will give you one last thought – leading to the MSU leap-frogged Kentucky comment. That suggests the committee had MSU at 7 and Michigan at 8. And about 1 1/2 hours from when the Selection Committee show would announce the teams, Michigan had a double digit lead over Michigan State. It certainly seems like the committee felt Michigan would win the game, they should swap the positions, and thus put MSU (who would be an 8 seed in that scenario) with Duke (the 1 seed). When MSU came back, can you imagine the headache of trying to switch the two schools with 30 minutes before the show – they didn’t have enough time. Obviously, I was not in the room so I do not know this – but that to me is the only plausible reason that they would have given a much harder road to MSU – they didn’t think the Spartans would come back.
If you are still reading this rant – lets get to the bubble. I got three teams wrong – picking NC State, TCU and Indiana instead of Temple, Belmont, and St. John’s. But in this case, I am thrilled. I actually said that my reasoning was the committee always seems to pick the major conference team with lots of Quadrant 1 wins over the mid-major like Temple, Memphis or Belmont. I would rather see the team that hasn’t lost 15 games play the game – that is just not past history. So, I am thrilled that they choose Temple and Belmont. I will gladly be wrong on the bubble if it means mid-majors get a shot.
One more interesting point that shows how good of a job that the Committee did with the bubble. Every year, there are discussions about which teams don’t deserve to be in the tournament and which teams got snubbed. This year, I read a few of those articles from ESPN, CBS and USA Today – and all of them talk about the teams that got snubbed, but there was one really interesting omission. There wasn’t any comments about what teams should have been not selected in order to make room for the snubbed team. One article pointed out that St. John’s was the last team in so it should be the team – but that is a cop-out. Normally, they pick 2 or 3 teams (not necessarily the last 2-3 teams) and complain. That is a great sign the Committee got the teams right.
But that being said, lets talk about some complaints.
The NET score seemed to complicate things at times – I feel bad for North Carolina State and Clemson who both finished 9-9 in the toughest conference in college basketball – who earned three #1 seeds, and yet their #33 and #35 NET rankings were not enough to get them in – while a 7-11 team from the Big 12 and 8-10 teams from the Big 10 and Big East are getting in. Clemson simply couldn’t beat the 11 best teams they played. They went 18-2 against the rest, but 1-10 against the top teams did them in – but lets be fair, how many teams are going to have better records against Duke, Virginia, UNC, Florida State and Virginia Tech. I can understand giving another team with more quality wins a shot – but it is tough when you have a higher rating.
As for NC State, it is clearly about Strength of Schedule. Their AD did something that is completely wrong and wrote this long statement about how the committee was wrong and they deserved to be in (if you are 9-9 in your conference and don’t get a bid, you simply thank the NIT for the invitation and play in their tournament – as an AD, you need to not complain like a fan – you were not wronged) – and mentioned that their SOS was 178th (implying that wasn’t that bad). Considering they played in the ACC, that is horrible. Their problem was that they had the 353rd non-conference SOS (and yes, there are only 353 teams in Division I basketball). So, according to the NCAA numbers they had the worst non-conference schedule of any team.
So, to be fair to the committee, based on that number, I agree that they should not be let in. The committee has the right to say – we understand they are ranked 33rd, but based on their SOS, we believe that ranking is inflated by them beating up on bad teams. But if you are going to choose one number over the other, you have to look at both fairly. North Carolina State had a road game against #5 seed Wisconsin, a home game against #5 seed Auburn, and what according to NET is a Quadrant 1 win on a neutral court against Penn State (to be fair, while they shouldn’t be Quadrant 1 – the Nittany Lions beat some good teams). There are multiple small conference schools that don’t have a single game against a Quadrant 1 team – NC State played 3. So how is it possible that they have the absolute worst non-conference schedule in college basketball. The committee should have evaluated both numbers – and realized they are both off. I am good if you want to lump them in with Clemson – their only wins against tourney teams would have been Auburn and Syracuse – but then we need to figure out how to clean these rankings up so they can account for this stuff instead of being insane by saying that a schedule playing Auburn and Wisconsin is the weakest in the country. Also, be consistent – Iowa had a NET of 43, a non-conference SOS of 303 (also awful), and the only victories against tourney teams was Michigan, Iowa State and Oregon (only because they won the automatic bid). How is that different from NC State and yet make the Hawkeyes a 10 seed……
That being said, what TCU’s coach said was ridiculous as well. Jamie Dixon’s quote complaint was this – “You look at the NET, there are six teams that had a lower NETs than us. They created a tool and talked about it and then there are six teams there that are lower than us that are in,” I get that he is upset – but NET is not the reason you didn’t make it – you were 7-11 in conference. But regardless, to his logic, because of the NET rating, his team should have been in over the last 6 at-large teams that had worst ratings. Of course, there is a fatal flaw to his logic. If the committee had listened to his logic, the last 6 teams would have been NC State, Clemson, Texas, Furman, Memphis and Nebraska. And Lipscomb and Penn State would have also been ahead of them. Under Dixon’s logic, TCU still didn’t make it in – they just would have been passed by 6 different teams. Instead of complaining about stats, he should be happy heading to the NIT with his team (and this is one of the teams I thought would get one of the last bid).
The last thing that I will ramble about is conference games have to matter. I get that you want to say nice things like the games in November and December matter – but so do the games in January and February. And so, I simply can not understand St. John’s getting the last bid in the tournament. Lets put this in perspective. The Big East sent their 1st place team (Villanova), 2nd place team (Marquette), tied for 3rd place team (Seton Hall) and 7th place team (St. John’s). We skipped over Creighton, Xavier and Georgetown – the other three teams tied with Seton Hall. Georgetown had a worse NET ranking and split with St. John’s – so I am actually good with that. Creighton had a NET ranking of 53 – but did get swept by St. John’s – so I can even potentially understand that. Xavier had a NET ranking of 67, and beat St. John’s by double digits both times they played. Xavier also played really well in the Big East tournament bowing out by 4 points to Villanova – while St. John’s got pummeled by Marquette on their home court. From those results within conference (especially since the Big East plays a balanced schedule where everyone plays each other twice), I would have to put Xavier ahead of St. John’s. Sure, Xavier has less wins against tournament teams, but against the same exact schedule, Xavier won more games – including the head to head. If you don’t think Xavier is tournament worthy because of its 15 losses, I support that – but you can’t put in St. John’s if the conference profile puts them behind.
Lets say you leapfrog them because of quality wins. St. John’s beat Marquette twice, Villanova, Seton Hall, and VCU. Indiana beat Michigan State twice, Marquette, Louisville, and Wisconsin, had a NET ranking 18 spots higher, and beat a Butler team that St. John’s only split against. If you are going to put a team in based on potential because of number of tournament wins – you have to pick the team with better wins, a higher ranking and less losses in Quadrant 3 and 4 (while Indiana had more losses – they were to the top part of their schedule). Personally, I would rather them just pick another mid-major.
OK – I have really ranted long enough. I could have taken all of that time, and picked or handicapped teams. I must be crazy!!!!
