OK, so I just watched the NCAA Selection Show on CBS. Is it me or is this year’s bracket really screwed-up?
My complaints:
BC wins the Big East East, with a 10-6 record in the conference, and they don’t go?
Alabama gets in & Texas Tech is out, both with identical records, but isn’t the Big 12 a tougher conference than the SEC? So why doesn’t TT get in?
Florida a 2-seed? Didn’t they lose like 3 out of their last 4?
Illinois a 4-seed? Didn’t they just win the Big 12 tourney today & ranked #13 just a week ago (and should of moved up since many other teams higher ranked lost in their tourneys)?
Seton Hall out? (OK, I could agree with this)
Kentucky gets a 1 seed in the MIDWEST, arguably the best team in the country right now, over the SOUTH – and that goes to Texas, a team that lost early in it’s conference tourney?
Speaking of which, why is Texas a #1 over Kansas?
AZ & Kentucky, the two best teams in the country this year, are paired-up so that they would meet in the SEMI-finals, NOT the finals. Why the hell wouldn’t everyone want to see the best two teams in the country potentially play in the final?
BYU? B-Y-U?
Tennessee out of the SEC (a tough conference) at 19-8 doesn’t get in?
OK, so this is a mild rant, but did anyone else think this year’s bracket looks a little whacky? Anyone?
Since my move to the US, college sports fans (esp. football and basketball) have completely amazed me. Instead of complaining about a selection system that is subjective, sometimes bordering on the arbitrary, they complain about the particular subjective and arbitrary decisions made by the powers that be. Instead of complaining about the symptoms, why not prevent the disease in the first place?
Just a correction, Illinois is in the Big 10, not Big 12.
My gripe? If Indiana and Michigan St. are 7 seeds, then Purdue should be, too. That’s it. Not big, since we’re going to kick LSU around anyway (probably not, but I can hope)
I just got back from the Big East tourney and saw my 'Cuse lose to UConn. They didn’t look good. However, got tix to the first two rounds in Boston, and I’m psyched that the Orange are here, eventhough many consider it to be unfair (Boston & Albany would be like 4 “home” games to Syracuse). I like their team this year.
JimSox5, that was definitely a misprint, but really if you think about it, isn’t it the Big 11 (or Big 10 + Northwestern)?
And mhendo, thanks for the input. Part of the fun of the NCAA selection show is discussing who did & did not make it. This forum is less of a whine & more about (what I thought) was a strange bracket that was put together. It’s obvious that you don’t follow the intricacies of college basketball, but for those of us who do, it is an interesting topic of debate. I don’t have a problem with the “system” as in years past I have agreed with what the selection committee has decided (more-or-less), but this year’s bracket seems odd.
But that might not be obvious to someone who is not a fan of the game. The OP is meant for them.
By diku “I can’t belive Alabama got in, but Tennessee didn’t. Just insane.”
I can’t figure that one either. Tennessee’s record:19-8. Alabama’s:17-11. Plus 'Bama’s penchant for futility anywhere except Tuscaloosa.
I saw one of the committee questioned about this, and he said that “Alabama was promised if they scheduled better, they’d be in”.
What the hell? If you schedule all tough teams and go 2-28, are you in?
It appears the committee used the Auburn/Tennessee game as an elimination game for the NCAA’s, and Alabama was going no matter what. The fact that 'Bama lost to Vandy by 13 points doesn’t seem to matter. Meh!
BTW: Next fall when everybody insists that a 16 team playoff will answer all the questions in college football, remember all the unresolved issues with a 65 team basketball tournament.
Ah, but you are mistaken. I am a fan of the game, and it is perfectly obvious to me what the purpose of your OP was.
But even the worst, most illogical system will get it right sometimes. The fact that you are happy with the results some years, and not happy with them in other years, indicates that the system itself is flawed. A logical system would be one in which subjectivity - for example, personal evaluations over “strong” and “weak” divisions, etc. - did not play a part. Whether you intend it or not, a critique of the committee’s bracketing is a critique of the system itself.
Okay, I’ll admit to a certain disinterest in all this, mainly because Hawaii always gets killed on the rare occasions they get invited to this thing.
Still, there’s one thing that I just gotta have answered…what’s the big frickin’ deal over seedings? If your team didn’t get in, I understand your frustration. If it’s numbered a few spaces higher or lower than whatever, where’s the harm? We’ve seen far more than enough evidence that the only numbers that mean jack are the ones on the scoreboards. Look at all the 12s that have beaten 5s. I can’t believe some dolt announcers still call this an “upset”. Let’s be perfectly clear; seven spots is NOTHING, let alone two or three.
About the only way I can see a team being screwed by a bad seeding (barring such aberrations, which never happen, of course, like two favorites meeting in the first or second round) is if someone meets a strong favorite before the quarterfinal round, thus being denied a chance at the “semifinal eight” or, of course, the Final Four. (Please don’t bring up this “sweet sixteen” garbage…there’s too much stupid political correctness in our society as it is.) And frankly, I say BFD. In a sport where the NIT champion is widely regarded as the 66th best team in the sport, and there are jerks who will positively bellow about this, who the frag cares about the number of quarterfinal appearances a team has had? Anyone who brags about this is the biggest loser in the universe. Bottom line, you gotta beat the best if you want any chance at the CHAMPIONSHIP no matter where you begin.
John Carter - Of course a football playoff won’t “solve everything”. The Division I-AA, II, and III playoffs have never solved everything. That’s not the point. You need a playoff to have a legitimate champon, period. Who cares about true rankings or placements or whatnot; as long as everyone who has at least a reasonable chance of winning it all is in it (easy with 65), the champ’s legit. Either have a playoff or don’t have a championship, that’s what I say.
I will save my whine for later. My Duke Bluedevils won the ACC Tourney today, 5 straight years in a row. Maryland didn’t make it through. A surprise for sure.
The commitee fucked up royal with BYU, and their solution is even more fucked up.
The way BYU is seeded, if they advance to the Elite Eight, they will play on Sunday, which is against school policy (BYU being a Mormon run university). Mistake 1.
An even bigger mistake is saying “Oh, well, if that comes up, we’ll just move you to another region, and switch you with another team, so you’ll play on Saturday.”
Not only does that screw up the tournament, it shoots all the office pools all to shit. Naturally, if BYU loses before hand, it becomes a non-issue, and the selection committee saves face.
Problem with the BYU thing is that there is at least a non-negligible possibility that they could win those first two. Historically, 12 seeds do pretty well. Now I think UConn will take 'em down in the first round, but if BYU snuck by and made it to the second round they’d face either a #13 seed or perennial underperformer Stanford. It’s not that ludicrous to suppose BYU could do it, and pretty much EVERYONE’S bracket pools would be destroyed by the switch.
It may have been stupid to seed them that way, but IMHO it’s equally stupid that BYU gets to dictate the terms of their participation in a way that inconveniences all the other teams. Don’t wanna play on Sunday? Then forfeit the game. You get invited to the NCAA tourney, they don’t owe you anything. All the other schools in Utah play on Sundays, Utah does, Utah St. does, Weber St. does. If they’re gonna stand on principle, that’s fine, but it’s silly that everyone else has to bend over backwards to accomodate BYU.
Currently & in the past, the selection committee has used mathematical rankings such as the Sagarin rating & the RPI to determine how good a team is, as well as the conference that they play in. These ratings are based upon strength of schedule, overall record, record at home & away, plus the number of quality wins a team has. There are also the AP & ESPN/USA Today polls which use sportwriters and head coaches to rank the top 25 teams. Therefore the selection committee has many tools at their disposal, and they should have a pretty good idea how good a team is before the bracket selection is made.
I know there are other rules which may make the placement of teams in the bracket difficult (like no two teams from the same conference can meet until the quarterfinals, or no team can play on it’s (actual) home court, or inserting the 34 conference champions), but while no system is perfect, I have generally found the selection of teams to the tournament to be sound (but not without some controversy every year, due to one or two teams not being elected to participate). Yes, there were specific examples in the past I didn’t agree with (like S.U. in 2002 not being invited), but like Seton Hall this year, I was surprised not to see them, but I could understand the committee’s reasoning for not selecting them.
However, this year, I started reviewing the brackets and was amazed at the number of questions about the placement & seedings of specific teams. So I have to wonder if this new 2-year-old “pod system” of selecting teams to play closer to their geographic home has confused, or tainted, the members’ selections. It seems the emphasis now is making sure that the big-draw teams like Kentucky, Syracuse, Notre Dame and Florida are placed where they can draw the most fans and therefore the most revenue by selling-out the arenas they are playing in. TIn my opinion, the only reason Kentucky wasn’t a #1 seed in the South is because they’re first round games in the Midwest are actually closer to Lexington than where the #1 seed would play in the South. That’s why I believe Texas became a #1 seed.
So, you’re right, there is some subjectivity to selecting teams (especially in choosing the last 2 or 3 teams to make the tournament), but before the pod system, changes to the bracket weren’t made to accomodate a team’s fan base. I think the committee should abandon the emphasis on teams playing closer to home and seed/select according to the RPI/Sagarin ranking. It would probably be the most accurate and fair way to determine if a team deserves to qualify for the tourney.
I enjoyed reading that the first time, and I just wanted to see it again…
KY went to the Midwest because the first and second round games in the Midwest for the 1-seed play in Nashville, a quick 220 miles from Lexington, as opposed to the relatively distant Birmingham. (I’ve never considered Tennessee the “midwest”, but no one asked me.) Of course, it seems that some of the early round games in the South are also in Nashville, according to my bracket…how’s that work?
It seems like the teams down in the bottom seeds are just about pulled out of a hat. UNC-Asheville, at 14-16, gets a shot (via the pointless “play-in” game), but Tennessee doesn’t?
What would be cool is if the top 32 teams got in via conference titles, etc., and the next 64 teams had to play for their shot in 32 different “play-in” games. It would probably be a lot of good basketball.
Despite every damn thing I could do for NC State.
(What can I say? I do love to see Duke lose. I will continue to do so until Christian Laettner holds a press conference to say, “You know, they really should have ejected me from that game when I stomped on Aminu Timberlake.” Not that I’m bitter.)
I agree. The ACC was a tough conference this year, though. I think that if the ten teams in a given conference are among the best 64 teams in the country, they should all go to the tournament, but no one asked me.
It pains me to say it, as a Missouri fan, but Kansas really did get snubbed with that seeding. It’s absolutely inexplicable. KU beat Texas head-to-head, won the BigXII regular season title outright, advanced one round further than Texas did in the BigXII tournament, and yet Texas gets the one seed and a comparatively easy region? Now I agree that one spot in seedings isn’t life or death, but Kansas not only got bumped down to a 2 seed but they got stuck in the hardest regional by far. Zona, KU, Duke, and Illinois all in that region, that Sweet Sixteen will look a final four.
Apparently, having 'Zona and UK meet before the title game was a SNAFU, along with the BYU fiasco. According to an espn.com article, they put UK in Nashville thinking that was a South regional site, because historically it had been. This year, however, Nashville feeds into the Midwest regionals. The committee apparently overlooked that. Pretty incompetent. If they’d thought about it, they could have done it right, but they just weren’t paying attention to which region the pods feed into, and clearly the pod system is still confusing the committee almost as much as it confuses the fans.
Aight, my problem with this whole thing is the complete lack of respect for Pitt.
They win the Big East, they’ve done well all damn season, and do they get a 1 seed? Hell no. They get no respect at all. Brandin Knight was right that it’d be Arizona, Kentucky and ‘two Big 12 teams’ getting the 1 seeds. But the worst part is that the fuckin press is already reporting as if Pitt’s lost their game with Kentucky because all the freaking stories are about Kentucky facing Arizona.
What is all this freaking bitching about Tennessee? Seriously. They didn’t deserve to be in there. Texas Tech deserved a spot before Tennessee. The Vols had a 17-11 record and only played 8 ranked opponents. Tech had an 18-12 record and played 10 ranked opponents. So let’s stop whining about Tennessee. They deserve their spot in the NIT. Texas Tech doesn’t. I do agree that Alabama probably doesn’t deserve it.
And UNC-Asheville gets to dance because they won their conference tourney. Tennessee didn’t. There you go.
Going into last week’s league tournaments, Pitt was ranked 5th in the nation in both polls. The only team that won their own tournament ahead of Pitt was Kentucky, and if a poll was taken this week, Pitt should be ranked no lower than 3rd (perhaps Oklahoma would squeak into the 2 spot.) Therefore, they should have had a number one seed somewhere.
I know it doesn’t really matter, but hey… it’s a whine-fest!
