In the NCAA Basketball Tournament, each league gets an automatic bid. This is usually the winner of the league tournament, but if they don’t have one, then it’s the first place team in the league. Now there are some leagues which wouldn’t be represented at all if not for the automatic bid. Other leagues may get an extra bid, since the best team(s) did not win the league tourney. For the purposes of this question, we’ll call these undeserved bids.
My question is, about how many undeserved bids are there in the typical NCAA BB Tourney? In any one tornament, you can get a rough idea of how many there are, since the undeserved teams will be seeded below all the at-large teams. But not all of those will necessarily be undeserved, so to be accurate, one would need to do a bit of research. Does anyone know of a site that attempts to track undeserved bids?
Undeserved bids is a matter of opinion. No 16 seed has ever won a game but 15 seeds have beaten 2 seeds more than a few times. I think 16 seeds have come close a few times but many times they are blown out. There is probably a site somewhere they has the winning pct. for each seed in each round.
I don’t understand how winning your conference’s tournament is “undeserving”. Each conference determines how it allots its bid - if that’s the way they want to do it, what’s wrong with that?
Every pro sport has all conference or division winners in the playoffs, it’s a normal thing to do. Many people say the NCAA tourney is so popular due to the possible big upsets in early rounds.
Hampton 58, Iowa St. 57 2001
Coppin St. 78, S. Carolina 65 1997
Santa Clara 64, Arizona 61 1993
Richmond 73, Syracuse 69 1991
ETA : in 2001, I picked - wait for it - Iowa State to win it all :smack:
It’s inevitable that a 16 will beat a 1, SOMEday.
A question for the OP : If, in the Big East, Connecticut is the best team, but Pittsburgh wins its tournament, and the conference receives, say, 7 bids, are ANY of the bids “undeserved bids?” I don’t think I’m clear on the concept.
OR, are you specifically thinking ONLY of small conferences, like the West Coast Conference? If Gonzaga loses its tourney, and USF wins, USF gets an undeserved bid, right? (Leaving St. Mary’s out of the discussion because they lost their star a few weeks ago - assume they do NOT get an at-large bid).
Add one more game and 124 teams would be in. That would include whole conferences and many so called undeserves. It would also allow some who narrowly miss to make a run.
I’m pretty sure I have an opinion on this but I’m not sure what the OP is asking. Hopefully he’ll come back and clarify.
Going to take a shot in the dark here…
If you’re talking about the conferences outside of the Big Six (ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East, SEC, and Pac-10), only a few teams would have the resume for an at-large bid if they lost their conference tournament. Xavier, Memphis, Butler, Utah, and Gonzaga.
So that’s five. I imagine that number is pretty consistent throughout the years but I don’t have time to crunch the numbers.
I think I get it now, you’re saying that some automatic bids are lower than the at-large bids from other teams in their own conference.
Let’s say UConn is the best team in the Big East, but Georgetown (by some miracle) wins the conference tournament. G’town get’s an automatic bid, but would be seeded low, like 12th, while UConn (and all the other Big East teams getting at large bids) are seeded higher. G’Town is considered “undeserved”.
That happened last year in the SEC. Georgia won the SEC tournament (after going 4-12 in conference) and ended up as a 14 seed in the bracket below Tennessee, Arkansas, Vanderbilt, Mississippi St., and Kentucky.
The entire purpose of the conference tournament is to allow more teams from that conference to get into the NCAAs.
Tournaments used to be rare. Usually the winner of the regular season championship (best W-L record) went to the NCAAs. The only tournament was the SEC.
Several times, the SEC regular season champ lost the tournament, but they’d be invited to the NCAAs. Other conferences saw that a tournament meant that more teams got invited and started using tournaments to determine the champ.
I think the regular season is a better guide – it doesn’t depend on one team suddenly getting hot, or the best team having one off night. But that’s not going to happen.
I think that is a factor, but the real reason is cold hard cash. Attendance and television money for conference tourneys are significant for the major conferences.
Actually, 64 more games. But I think gonzo meant “one more game per team.”
I wouldn’t mind the NCAAs including regular-season winners and tournament winners, plus enough at-large teams to make about 72-80 teams in total. In the MAAC, for example, it’s crazy that Siena (RPI: 29) absolutely must win its conference tournament to make it to the NCAAs. This is a team the bracketologists have as a 10 or 11 seed, but if they lose the MAAC final against Niagara (RPI: 57, so not a shabby foe at all), they’re out. Meanwhile Big Six Conference teams with so-so conference records and RPIs in the 40’s and 50’s are being mooted as bubble teams that “just have to make their conference semi-final” to get in. I’m a Penn State grad but it would be a crime against basketball if PSU limped in and Siena were shut out; having seen both teams play, IMHO Siena would beat Penn State four times out of five on a neutral court.
I realize the conference tournaments aren’t going to go away. They make too much money for the conferences, and they all but bankroll the mid-major conferences (for all sports). But if the NCAAs are going to reward conference tourney winners they should also do the same for regular-season winners.