It is so exciting – the Final 4 games are just a few hours away.\u00a0\u00a0 So, as I am crazy excited about the games tonight, I figured I would go ahead and do some of my normal ranting.<\/p>\n
With only 3 games left, I figured I would look at each conference and give them a grade based on their performance vs. expected wins based on seed.<\/p>\n
Big 10 (Grade = A+, Exp Value = +3) – Many have called this a down year for the Big 10, and yet, going into tonight, the Big 10 has the most teams remaining.\u00a0 Everyone expected Wisconsin to be where they are, but the Spartans totally crashed the party.\u00a0 Both Big 10 teams are underdogs tonight, and beating Kentucky and Duke will be really tough – but it will not shock me if the Big 10 continues to win in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n
Pac 12 (Grade = A, Exp Value = +3) – The only reason this isn’t an A+ is because there is no Final 4 team.\u00a0 While that might be unfair since seeds said they weren’t supposed to have one, it doesn’t feel right to give them an A+.\u00a0 That being said, Arizona did what they were supposed to do, Utah upset Georgetown and kept things close against Duke, and UCLA was said by many that they shouldn’t have even been in the tournament – and they went to the Sweet 16 as well.\u00a0 This was a great showing for the West Coast!<\/p>\n
ACC (Grade = A, Exp Value = +1) – The ACC would have easily been an A+ and the highest ranked conference had it not been for Michigan State’s upset of Virginia.\u00a0 While only Duke made it to the Final 4, the ACC had both Louisville and Notre Dame unexpectedly make the Elite 8, North Carolina State had one of the biggest upsets of the tourney by taking out Villanova to get to the Sweet 16, and UNC also played well to get to the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n
Missouri Valley (Grade = B+, Exp Value = +1) – Wichita State upset Kansas to make the Sweet 16, and Northern Iowa played well to win their first game.\u00a0 I think you need to at least get an Elite 8 team to get an A – but this is a great showing for a smaller conference.<\/p>\n
SEC (Grade = B, Exp Value = 0) – I struggled with this.\u00a0\u00a0 On one hand, Kentucky got to the Final 4, which is a huge win for what is considered sometimes only a football conference.\u00a0 But lets be fair, Kentucky is supposed to be here – they are 38-0 for a reason.\u00a0 The only other win for the conference in the final 64 was Arkansas’ victory over Wofford (guess you can say Ole Miss beating BYU in the Tuesday game – but that feels weak).\u00a0 I bumped them up a little because of having a Final 4 team, but this really just feels average.<\/p>\n
Big East (Grade = D, Exp Value = -4) – Villanova being the first #1 seed to be knocked out was a huge blow for the conference.\u00a0\u00a0 Georgetown and Providence both lost a round earlier than they were supposed to, and the only team that went further than they were supposed to was Xavier – and while they played well, they were aided by only have to beat an 11 seed and 14 seed to get to the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n
Big 12 (Grade = F, Exp Value = -5) – This was the season that the Big 12 was ranked better than both the ACC and Big 10 – and they were rewarded with 5 protected seeds that were expected to all be playing after the first weekend.\u00a0 Instead, Baylor and Iowa State both lost to 14 seeds, and #2 seed Kansas lost in the second round.\u00a0 The only team to make it further than they were supposed to was West Virginia – and their reward was losing by 39 points to Kentucky.<\/p>\n
Special Note:\u00a0 Didn’t really call out any of the smaller conferences outside the Missouri Valley.\u00a0 But they were an interesting group if you combine them together.\u00a0 First, Gonzaga got to the Elite 8 – which while they were supposed to – is still a big victory for a mid-major conference.\u00a0 And Sun Belt champions Georgia State along with Conf USA champions UAB both pulled off the crazy rare upset as a 14 seed.\u00a0 However, the other classically strong non power conferences like the Atlantic 10, American, and Mountain West all fizzled out with none of them making the Sweet 16.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And not a single 12 or 13 seed won a tournament game this year.\u00a0\u00a0 So it was a really spiky tournament for the smaller conferences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is so exciting – the Final 4 games are just a few hours away.\u00a0\u00a0 So, as I am crazy excited about the games tonight, I figured I would go ahead and do some of my normal ranting. With only 3 games left, I figured I would look at each conference and give them a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2015-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787","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=787"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":790,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions\/790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}