For the most part, I think the Selection Committee set up a great tournament – as they always do.\u00a0 \u00a0It is also important to note at this point that the only teams left in the tournament are the conference tournament champions.\u00a0 \u00a0None 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.\u00a0 \u00a0But it is my job to rant – and so rant I will.<\/p>\n
There were 5 teams that went 8-10 in the regular season in their conference that were invited to the Big Dance.\u00a0 \u00a0It is also pretty interesting what happened.\u00a0\u00a0One 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.\u00a0 Two of those teams won their first conference tournament game and lost their next game against a tourney team.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 \u00a0I 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
My only other complaint comes to the treatment of mid-major champions.\u00a0\u00a0It happens every single year, but this year, one team went further than usual.\u00a0 Loyola-Chicago never should have been an 11 seed.\u00a0 They were 28-5 – with the majority of those losses coming with at least one of their starters out due to injury.\u00a0 But because they are from the Missouri Valley, they get seeded as the top team after all the at-large teams are placed.\u00a0 \u00a0Loyola 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).\u00a0 \u00a0You 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).\u00a0 \u00a0And I am sure I could find some 7,8, and 9 seeds that had worse profiles according to the statistical rankings.<\/p>\n
The Selection Committee made it very clear by where they ranked Loyola-Chicago.\u00a0 They were not in the tournament if it wasn’t for the fact that they won their conference tournament.\u00a0 The Ramblers have demonstrated that their 28-5 record was not a fluke and they deserved a better seed.\u00a0 Every year, we are surprised by how often a 5 seed or 6 seed loses to a 11 or 12 seed.\u00a0 \u00a0But 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.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, the Ramblers won their conference tournament.\u00a0 If they had not, one of the best Cinderella stories of college basketball never would have happened.\u00a0 And that is a big mistake that the Selection Committee makes every year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For the most part, I think the Selection Committee set up a great tournament – as they always do.\u00a0 \u00a0It is also important to note at this point that the only teams left in the tournament are the conference tournament champions.\u00a0 \u00a0None of the fringe at-large teams made the Final Four, and none of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1365,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions\/1365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}