Stomp The Lunatic

Enjoy what should be an outstanding Final Four – Loyola – Chicago tips off against Michigan first – followed by Villanova and Kansas.   Should be a great night of basketball.

Lots is being made about how corrupt the NCAA is.  They are locking these players in for “a education” while they are making millions of dollars on the product they produce on the court.

I won’t argue with the corruptness.  There is a difficulty between allowing athletes to make money on their own stardom vs. preventing boosters from coming in and offering large amounts of money and impact the balance of recruiting (although lets face it, Duke, UNC, Kentucky and Kansas are going to dominate recruiting every year….).

I can’t argue with the nonsense.   We live in a capitalistic world.  If a college coach can move from college to college to make more money, why shouldn’t the athletes be able to make some money on their success as well.

But I can argue with the comment about all the colleges are offering them is an education – when we know they are simply going there to play basketball.  And Oklahoma’s guard Trey Young is going to prove my point.

Trae Young was ranked somewhere between 14th and 21st in the recruiting classes, depending on which ranking you want to go with.  While he might have viewed himself as a one-and-done candidate, many projecting the NBA draft did not – as he was not listed as a likely first round candidate by many pre-season NBA mock drafts.

Then, Young led the NCAA in points and assists – bringing comparisons to Stephen Curry – as he led Oklahoma to the NCAA Tournament.   They even lost their first round game to Rhode Island, and yet, everyone got a chance to see how impressive he is.

Now, he is projected to be a lottery pick – ESPN has him as the 9th best prospect.  So, based on one year of college basketball, Young went from someone not likely to be drafted in the first round to a lottery pick looking at somewhere between $6 – $7 million over the next two years with more millions coming in the future.  That seems like that one year of college ended pretty good for him – even if he couldn’t make $10K over a weekend signing autographs or appearing in a local TV advertisement.

People talk about players should go to the NBA G league.  But notice that no one in the G league is projected to be a first round draft pick.  People are suggesting that they should go to the G league – where they will make there $20-26K salary for the year, but then they can get their endorsements.   12 of the G league teams play in arenas that hold no more than 5,000 fans.  Oklahoma’s court can have over 11,000 fans show up – although they normally have closer to 8-10K.   Oh, and I am sure we all are excited about the G League Play-offs that start…..  That’s right, I can’t tell you when the G League Play-offs are (I am sure I can look it up, but that is the point – everyone knows when college basketball plays their championship.

If Young had gone to the G league, he would have gotten far less exposure, likely would not have improved his draft stock, and would have had to play against professional players who are several years older (and physically stronger) than him trying to make sure that the new 18 year old doesn’t take away their last chance to make it to the NBA.   But I am sure he would make up the several million dollars that he is about to make through his endorsements playing for the Wisconsin Herd or the Fort Wayne Mad Ants.

This is becoming more interesting because Syracuse just had their recruit Darius Bazley decommit from school to play in the G league (assuming a team takes him).  We will see if the lure of playing for money and endorsements at 18 works out for him.  Maybe he will pave the way to make the G league a viable path.

But at the end of the day, when people say all the NCAA offers is an education, think about the fact that the exposure that Trae Young has received from being an Oklahoma Sooner has likely made him a minimum of 6 million dollars, it is hard for me to go along with the argument that all these college athletes are being offered is an education.   He might not be able to make any money this year on his skills, but the NCAA has given him a stage that has allowed him to put himself in a position to become one of the next NBA stars – and even if it doesn’t work out, he will have earned over 6 million dollars.  Seems like that value gets forgotten as we try to get college athletes a few thousand dollars in endorsements.

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.

For the most part, I think the Selection Committee set up a great tournament – as they always do.   It is also important to note at this point that the only teams left in the tournament are the conference tournament champions.   None of the fringe at-large teams made the Final Four, and none of the teams that I think should have been invited in their place would have made it either.   But it is my job to rant – and so rant I will.

There were 5 teams that went 8-10 in the regular season in their conference that were invited to the Big Dance.   It is also pretty interesting what happened.  One of those teams (Alabama) won multiple games in their conference tournament – including a couple against other tourney teams, and thus, got in – and they rewarded the committee with a victory.  Two of those teams won their first conference tournament game and lost their next game against a tourney team.  Syracuse rewarded that generosity with a run to the Sweet 16 while Texas lost a close game to a Nevada team that made the Sweet 16.  Two of those teams lost their first conference tournament game to teams that didn’t make the tournament (Oklahoma and Arizona State) – both of those teams then lost their first round game.

The Selection Committee is very predictable in this case – they reward teams that have had a few impressive victories instead of teams that win lots of games but don’t win their toughest game of the season.   I would like to see at some point some of these teams like Nebraska, USC, St. Mary’s and Middle Tennessee State which might not have had that marquee victory but they won the games they were supposed to win.  None of these teams are going to win the National Championship, but why not reward teams that don’t lose very many games instead of rewarding teams with a couple of amazing upsets.

My only other complaint comes to the treatment of mid-major champions.  It happens every single year, but this year, one team went further than usual.  Loyola-Chicago never should have been an 11 seed.  They were 28-5 – with the majority of those losses coming with at least one of their starters out due to injury.  But because they are from the Missouri Valley, they get seeded as the top team after all the at-large teams are placed.   Loyola had an RPI of 22 and a KenPom ranking of 42 (which would have likely been better if you removed the games they were missing starters).   You could make arguments before the tournament that they were better than at least some if not all of the 10 seeds (Oklahoma’s RPI = 49 KP = 47, Texas RPI=51 KP = 39, Butler RPI= 41 KP=25, Providence RPI = 32 KP = 63).   And I am sure I could find some 7,8, and 9 seeds that had worse profiles according to the statistical rankings.

The Selection Committee made it very clear by where they ranked Loyola-Chicago.  They were not in the tournament if it wasn’t for the fact that they won their conference tournament.  The Ramblers have demonstrated that their 28-5 record was not a fluke and they deserved a better seed.  Every year, we are surprised by how often a 5 seed or 6 seed loses to a 11 or 12 seed.   But the reality is when they are playing the top mid-major conference champions, they are playing a team that probably should have been seeded much better.

Thankfully, the Ramblers won their conference tournament.  If they had not, one of the best Cinderella stories of college basketball never would have happened.  And that is a big mistake that the Selection Committee makes every year.

And heartbreak becomes deja vu for the Connecticut Huskies.   Obviously, UConn has been for a long time continued the elite program in women’s college basketball, but having this happen in back to back season is rough.

For those that don’t remember, last year, the dominating Huskies had a 111 game winning streak going into the Final Four – where they faced Mississippi State.  Surprisingly, the game ended up going to overtime.  But then the dagger hit when Morgan William hit a jumper at the buzzer in overtime to give the Bulldogs a 66-64 win.

Since that moment, all the Huskies did was create a new winning streak.   They were 36-0 coming into last night’s Final Four game against Notre Dame.   And while the team was different, the outcome was the same.  Connecticut made an amazing 5 point comeback with 21 seconds left to force overtime, but their painful memories from last year were renewed as the Irish got the ball in a tie game with 29 seconds left in overtime, and with the clock running down, Arike Ogunbowale hit a jumper to give the Irish a 91-89 victory.

Notre Dame will play for the championship against Mississippi State (who also won their Final Four game in overtime against Louisville).   And for the second year in a row, UConn is left wondering how their undefeated season was ended in overtime in the Final Four.

While I was ranting, Penn State beat Utah 82-66 to become the 2018 NIT Champion.  Congratulations to the Nittany Lions for doing such a great job during their post-season.  They were able to beat Utah, Mississippi State, Marquette, Notre Dame and Temple to claim the title – which while these are all teams in the NIT, it is still a pretty impressive run.

While we are at it, the two other post-season tournaments will decide their champions tomorrow night.  San Francisco will play at North Texas for the CBI title (this is the third game in the CBI’s interesting best of 3 championship format).   And University of Illinois – Chicago will head to Northern Colorado for the CIT title.   Just in case you are so desperate to get any last chance to watch college basketball knowing there are only 5 games left for the season.

Great job, Nittany Lions!!!!!