It's probably not a good idea to follow the work of 20 or so bracketologists, find one who states that Dayton might be in trouble of missing the field, and then use this to support your tiresome arguments about midmajors getting screwed time and again.  Dayton went 5-4 over it's last 9 A10 games (including its lone game in the conference tournament) and still managed to receive a 7 seed.  Translation:  Dayton wasn't anywhere close to missing the Dance as an at-large.

It's probably not a good idea to post that Western Kentucky has a 10 point lead over Marquette but then fail to mention that Marquette won that game by 18.  But there's Shaka yet again, in the Sweet 16.  Pretty clear he's forgotten how to coach since he left VCU.

It's probably not a good idea to sing Greg Gard's praises during the regular season only to blast him once he loses in the tournament.  Or for that matter, to post his failures in the tournament since 2018, conveniently omitting that he reached the Sweet 16 in each of his first two seasons (obviously with Bo's players).  This speaks to a lack of credibility and can also be construed as disingenuous.

It's probably not a good idea to draw conclusions about any two teams based on the outcome of a single game.

 

Yale, James Madison, Grand Canyon...all automatic qualifiers.

P6 school vs lesser conference, 1st round (skipping 1's vs 16's and 2's vs 15's):  Northwestern, Illinois, Washington State, Alabama, Clemson, Baylor, Duke, Kansas, Texas were all winners.

Wisconsin, Kentucky, BYU and TCU were all losers.

9-4.  69%.  Right around what one should expect.

Include the 1 and 2 seeds and it's 17-4.  81%.

No evidence to suggest that Indiana State, Princeton, VCU or any other midmajor would have had any success at this year's tournament. 
 

It might have been nice to give the A10 another bid, since we went 2-0 in the first round, but that extra bid probably should have come at the expense of the Mountain West, which went a disappointing 2-3 (3-5 if you include the play in games), including some blowout losses.

I meant to post this earlier ... I always chuckle at the annual outrage over which teams are selected and which ones are excluded. The NCAA Committee knows what it is doing. And by that, I don't mean that they always get the right 68. What I mean is that they consistently put on a March Madness tournament that thrills and grows interest every year. Other than a few holier than thou nerds and the aggrieved fans of a few schools that believe they were slighted, does anyone really think that anyone watching the end of the Houston-Texas A&M game the other night thought to themselves: "That was a great game but it was diminished by the fact that the Big East was screwed with only three teams." LOL.

The bottom-line is that "no one cares" and if the tournament is entertaining like it always is, the overwhelming number of fans move on the minute the tournament tips. There will always be complaints no matter where you draw the line and you can't make a process completely objective that is by its nature is subjective since all teams don't play each other.

Last edited by GWRising (3/26/2024 11:35 am)

Tennessee Colonial wrote:

 Just looking at schools we played when I was on campus. The days before the A10. Pitt (H) , Brown(H) , Virginia Tech,(A) Maryland (A), West Virginia,(A) Penn State,(A) Miami (Fl)(H), Cincinnati(H), Georgetown,(H) UMass(N) MSG, Marshall;(H) Next year Maryland (H), Marshall (A), Pitt (A), Texas A&M (H), Virginia (A), Temple (H), West Virginia (H), Cincinnati (A), Syracuse (A) Georgetown (A). After 1982 Georgetown stopped playing us. From 1916-1982 we played every year. Too bad the younger members on this board never experienced this annual event. The walk to and from GU was fairly easy. After a quick stop at The Tombs. With Thompson gone when are we going to start playing Georgetown again?

Very good question.
Answer is: When they stop cowering and get a spine.

Let's just break this down the way it ought to be broken down.  The vast majority of people love to see midmajors and lower level conference schools go head to head against P6 schools.  One thing the committee has almost consistently gotten wrong (though this year has been a bit of an exception)  is limiting these matchups. pitting P6 vs P6 and midmajor vs midmajor when possible.  People enjoy seeing the little guy pull off the upset.  They love having that in their bracket.  Make this an exclusive P6 tournament and this event will lose much of its appeal.

However, the committee must decide which of the 36 at larges have the best chance to win the national championship, even if practically all of them do not.  That's what they are charged with.  And, by week 2 of the tournament, the little guys are only valued by fans/alum/students of their school and anyone who has them going a bit further in their bracket.  By the time the Final 4 is reached, there is little public appetite for the mid-majors as is evidenced by the poor television ratings whenever a mid-major reaches the final Saturday or Monday.

As for Lunardi's comment, three of those 4 schools were AQ's which a strong enough mid-major needs to be able to be.  The 4th, Indiana State, went 1-4 in Q1 games.  Normally, I'm empathetic to the school that's like 0-1 in Q1 games because it's clear that they have problems getting better teams to play them.  But when you have 5 chances to prove you belong in the Dance and you lose at Alabama, lose at Michigan State, and go 1-2 against Drake, sorry but that's just not good enough.
 

DC Native wrote:

Interesting article by John Feinstein on tournament expansion, which touches on many of the arguments in this thread.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/03/25/ncaa-tournament-expansion/
 

All for tournament expansion.  The question is how do you do it without it just becoming another way to stuff in more and more middling power teams?


The two Grand canyon games were great theater, hard to get too worked up about Mississippi State versus Michigan State

The Cinderella stories are what have always made the tournament great, that's a lot of what the NCAA markets if you look at the advertisements and yet we have basically none of those teams in the tournament anymore.   Don't we want to see how Indiana state would do?


I think we could do without the 8th place team in the SEC.  An easy fix for this would be a requirement that you have to go at least 500 in your own conference to make the tournament as an at large. That would save at least a few spots for the very best non-power teams

The more we expand the more spots there would be in that criteria

The Feinstein conversation with Gary Williams perfectly summarizes this.  Gary favored expansion, not just because it provides more job security to coaches but also because players so desperately want to play in the tournament.  And John's response was that the reason why it's so important to players is because it's so HARD to do (make the tournament).  Expand the field and the event automatically becomes less exclusive and subsequently, less special.  I've been critical opf Feinstein in the past but on this point, he's spot-on.

Free Quebec wrote:

Tourney expansion makes it harder for the average fan to fill out a bracket. And brackets are what make the tourney so successful - tens of millions of people, most with little to no interest in college basketball during the season have a vested interest in each and every game because of their brackets. If you kill the brackets, or wildly reduce the number of people who fill them out because they get too complicated, then you’ll ruin the whole thing.

Why would it make it more difficult to fill out eight or 16 more teams?  That would wildly reduce the number of people who fill out brackets?  You would also have 8 or 16 more universities of alumni who are now in the tournament not to mention a much larger universe of schools that are on the bubble.

In the current situation you have the same middling power 5 schools every year and virtually nobody else. Indiana State fans I'm sure we're on pins and needles but that's very limited to anybody outside of bubble power 5 teams. We could change that with expansion and a rule limiting how easy it is for powerschools to get a bid a 500 requirement or something like that

Gwmayhem wrote:

Except that you wouldn't.  If you let 96 schools in, the 97th-100th teams are going to feel ripped off.  Plus, you're still going to whine and whine about P6 schools getting in ahead of mid-majors.  Your .500 or better rule?  Do you really think that's ever going to happen?    Let's see, the NET was created and that allows an even bigger advantage to P6 schools.  The NCAA just changed the NIT so that regular season conference winners (i.e. mid-majors and smaller conference schools) who do not make the Dance no longer receive automatic entry into the NIT, which provides an advantage to P6 schools.  Do you really think that the NCAA is going to adopt a rule that would have prohibited Ohio State from making a 96 team field because it went 9-11 in its conference games this season?

Seriously, what planet are you on?
 

Gwmayhem, unless you like arguing with a wall that repeats itself early and often, you are just going to have to declare victory and move on. He doesn't understand much about the sport and likely never will.