NCAA Tourney Selection change
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I am so glad to hear board rats beginning to talk realistically about the March Carney. It appears to have been reduced to a joke, but it’s the only joke we have, till TPTB see the value of a legitimate tournament; one instituted, seeded, located, refereed, AND enforced as one.
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@jaybate-1.0 You’re wrong, I’m right, discussion over!
No harm, some malice!
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This actually will hurt mid majors quite a bit because any conference loss is probably giving them a Category 2 or 3 loss.
Here are the current Non P5 schools in the top 75 at KenPom:
Villanova - Big East (1), Gonzaga - WCC (6), Cincinnati - American (7), Wichita State - American (15), St. Mary’s - WCC (19), Nevada - MWC (20), SMU - American (32), Seton Hall - Big East (34), Marquette - Big East (41), Butler - Big East (42), Houston - American (44), Western Kentucky - CUSA (47), Boise St. - MWC (50), BYU - WCC (52), Middle Tennessee - CUSA (53), New Mexico St - WAC (54), San Diego St. - MWC (55), Providence - Big East (57), East Tennessee - Southern (59), St. Bonaventure - A10 (64), Murray St. - OVC (65), Davidson - A10 (66), Missouri St - MVC (69), Northern Kentucky - Horizon (70), Louisiana Lafayette - Sun Belt (73), Vermont - America East (74), Old Dominion - CUSA (75)
Now look back at that list. If you’re Villanova, you’re okay because you could drop a road game to any one of several conference opponents and be okay, because four other conference teams are in the top 75. The American is also okay because four schools there are in the top 75. The WCC has three. Mountain West has three. Conference USA has three.
But if you’re New Mexico State, East Tennessee State, Missouri State, or any of those other schools with no other top 75 school in their conference, you basically have to go undefeated in conference to protect your seed, regardless of your noncon schedule, because any conference loss is a category 2 loss, and a conference loss at home is a category 3 or category 4 loss. That’s pretty demanding to say you have to be unbeaten in conference, or at least unbeaten at home with no more than maybe one or two conference losses total.
This is why so many middling P5 teams make the tournament as bubble teams. They get higher value losses because getting blown out by a top conference team is worth more than losing a tough road game for most mid majors. I would rather see the NCAA committee require a .500 conference record to qualify for NCAA consideration. That way a weaker P5 conference team can’t load up on cupcakes, then sneak into the tournament because they went 1-4 on the road against top 75 teams, while a mid major team went 0-1.
Either that, or design a true bracket buster weekend where top mid majors get a shot on a neutral court against mid level P5 team. The winners of those games would separate themselves from the losers for NCAA bids.
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It certainly hurts the mid-major programs where there’s only 1 good team in the conference and they are so reliant on minimizing bad losses.
I didn’t have a chance to dive into detail how this would affect everyone. At first glance it seemed it would expose those P5 teams that play so many home games against lower D-1 schools especially in non-conference play (Some Big-12 teams were guilty of this).
When looking at how this affected KU it certainly would seem to benefit them the way things are going. To date KU has only played 3 teams in C4 but has 6 wins in C1 already with at least 5-6 more chances coming up. I know the consensus was our non-conference schedule wasn’t that hard however it looks like KU is still well positioned for a #1 seed if it continues to win.
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@wissox I’m not arguing whether or not we should have won games. Completely different argument.
My point is just that you can blatantly see matchups the NCAA creates year in and year out to drive TV ratings. They will flip a 2 and a 3 or a 4 and a 5 just so that they can get a certain matchup. Which is fine, but let’s just not pretend that this isn’t a thing.
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@Kcmatt7 your point, the way I read your post was the NCAA will screw KU in the seedings. I think I agree that they do try to set up TV worthy matchups, but it’s not screwing KU.
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@wissox The Notre Dame part was mainly out of frustration.
The last two seasons we have played Michigan State and UCONN as our second game. And we were 1 seeds. Blue-bloods playing near blue-bloods as a 1-8 matchup is good for TV. Terrible for KU fans.
I mean, could you imagine a KU vs. UK game in the 2nd round. UK will probably fall to be a borderline top 25 team on Monday. So it is possible.
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But to think it singles out KU is my beef. Last year 1 seed Villanova had to play 8 seed Wisconsin. Wisconsin was horribly underseeded, and proved by knocking them out in their customary 2nd round exit. Time doesn’t permit me to go back and see who else has had a tough 2nd round even though they’re a top seed, but it happens to a lot of teams.
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SIU Head Coach, and former KU Staffer, Barry Hinson, and others, if I recall correctly, have already indicated the Carney seeding is significantly entertainment driven.
The train has apparently already left the station on this issue. One’s choice appears to be does one want to advocate for the current apparently significantly entertainment-driven Carney, or for one that is more merit-based.
In some ways, this situation appears not so different from the DNC rigging the California primary to make Hilary the winner over Bernie. A court reputedly found this alleged rigging to have occurred, but then also reputedly indicated the law did not require the DNC to run a primary where the DNC did not bias the outcome to Hilary.
Private not for profits reputedly have more leeway to stage their events, as they wish, than does the public apparently grasp.
For example, the Red Cross was apparently not legally bound to use all donations apparently made to help Haiti to recover, in fact, to help fund Haitian recovery. Similarly, contributions to the Clinton Foundation apparently did not have to be entirely, or perhaps even mostly, spent on charitable activities the foundation prided itself to be about.
I’m only a layman and a fan, but I suspect the NCAA likely has some legal right to pick the winner of its reputed tournament largely as it wishes, so long as it violates no laws doing so.
The question of course is do the laws set ANY limits on how entertainment driven it can become?
Even the traditional seeding of tournaments is an act of biasing outcomes explicitly. It’s apparently legal. Thus, this seems one of those grey areas where a lot can happen.
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wissox said:
But to think it singles out KU is my beef. Last year 1 seed Villanova had to play 8 seed Wisconsin. Wisconsin was horribly underseeded, and proved by knocking them out in their customary 2nd round exit. Time doesn’t permit me to go back and see who else has had a tough 2nd round even though they’re a top seed, but it happens to a lot of teams.
The beef is: the system appears to discriminate too much against any schools it is profitable “singles out” and that appears to change some year to year.
IMHO, the point is: watching a tournament is more interesting than watching a Carney.
If I were given a choice between a D1 tourney and a D1 Carney, I would choose the D1 Tourney.
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@wissox And you don’t think that had anything to do with TV profitability? I do understand Nova is in Philly and Philly is a big city. But there are a lot of schools in Philly. And Nova is a small school. So attempting to knock them out early with an underseeded Wisconsin team doesn’t make you wonder?
The question is, how many matchups are based on potential TV ratings?
UK has been screwed twice. Having to play a underseeded UCLA team last season and an Indiana team that won the Big 10 but was seeded as a 5 seed.
It happens to everyone. I just hate that it is clearly based on TV ratings and nothing else.
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wissox said:
@jaybate-1.0 You’re wrong, I’m right, discussion over!
No harm, some malice.
We will have to both agree the other is wrong with some malice!!!
Rock Chalk!
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Most recent ESPN bracket has KU playing MU in Wichita the 2nd game and then Wichita St. the 3rd game in Omaha…
You can’t make this stuff up.
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I don’t put to much credence into ESPN Lunardi’s brackets, he is a middle of the pack bracketologist at best.
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@JayHawkFanToo I checked the others, but they weren’t updated yet.
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Maybe you can answer me this…
The focus is on ranked opponents. But we see how teams ranking can move considerably during the season.
So… If we beat a team that is ranked #5 in November… and then that team screws up and falls out of the rankings. What counts in the selection? The early #5 ranking or non-ranking?
To me, it seems like the ranking at the time of the game is what should count. Teams level of play is going to change during the year as other teams learn their tendencies, injuries occur, etc etc etc. But what should count is our opponents’ strength level at the time we play them!
Is that the way it works? I really know NOTHING about the selection process. I do know how to complain though!
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Only ESPN seems to be fixated with brackets this early. Last night 5 top 25 teams lost to unranked teams, by the end of the season rankings could be quite different so why predict brackets now when they are really meaningless?
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@JayHawkFanToo I think it is nice to have a snapshot at different points in the season. And, top 25 rankings really mean nothing. What really matters is what seed level you are going to be at the end of the season right? This is a way to measure where you stack based on seeding instead of AP votes.
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@Kcmatt7 MU is Marquette?
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@jaybate-1.0 That happens here on occasion, but not too much. @drgnslayr, love your line about us knowing how to complain even though we don’t really know what we’re complaining about! That’s social media in a nutshell!!!
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@Kcmatt7 Agree with you completely. We all know that numbers can’t lie; unless the NCAA is using them to justify their seedings.
One example: Why did XYZU get in and BOOU not with a much better record? Answer: The committee felt like the last 10 games was the best indication of value.
Don’t ask . “They can justify any selection or seeding.”
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I’m guilty as hell of this!
I never intentionally try to BS anyone. But I confess that I will make a strong comment sometimes based on ZERO anything!
Sorry everyone!
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I’m not sure the selection Committee purposely screws us, I honestly don’t believe there is an “easy road” , different teams match differently and any team good enough to make the sweet 16 is good enough to make the final four. Do I think match ups are purposely predetermined or try to be for viewship? Yes, money drives this whole thing and people always want more money from the beggars to the CEOs. The 2 years I had the most issue with KUs road was 2010 and 2015. In 2010 UNI was ranked #24 heading into the tournament, I don’t believe they were ranked worse than 30th in any rating system that I saw. There was no reason for them to be a 9 seed, 5 or 6 should have been their bottom, but to say that they were not only a 9 seed but the worst 9 seed because we were the #1 overall seed was ludicrous IMO. We all know the story of 2015 were a team that was ranked all stinking year for the most part and a top 15 kenpom and RPI was a 7 seed, that was a seed to get viewership. Little brother vs big brother in a game that Self said he didn’t want to play because nothing was to gain. We lost both these games by being out hustled and that is on us, to be the best you must beat the best.
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Here is some interesting reading to keep you busy…
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@Kcmatt7 ESPN brackets always try to create headliner matchups. But they control nothing.
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@drgnslayr I think when teams crow about beating a #1 team, that lasts forever for puposes of talking about the team’s record against #1 teams.
But for evaluation purposes, like the committee, they use updated rankings and statistical rankings, not the level at the time of the contest. That is the same for football, too, which is why teams that beat a preseason #1 get upset when that team never recovers and falls out of the top 25.
But if a team’s performance has changed drastically to to an injury, I think they consider those things, too.
I think not using the latest ranks would be an analytical nightmare. Using the latest means using a much larger sample size and lots more data for all teams, avoiding the wide swings that can occur early in the season.
I.e., why should team A get super credit in the second game of the year for beating a team that scored 100 in its first game, rising to a top 5 spot in RPI based solely on that offensive performance but then goes on to have a miserable rest of the year? If it is a horrible team, one good game should not benefit a bad team’s opponent that happened to play them early.
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The computer models warn that the numbers at the beginning of the season are not reliable and they get better as the season progresses and by end of the season they are pretty consistent and reliable. They are now programmed to update the information immediately after new scores are added and you can see that as they update they indicate how many games on that day are included.
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Regarding the article on BPI that puts the Pac12 as #7 conference (lowest of the power conferences) and projects 3 teams invited to the NCAA Tourney: Don’t look now but Stanford is 5-1, tied for first after beating Ariz. St. this week.
I don’t think the Pac12 is so awful, but if the pundits deem the teams bad, then it could have an impact on KU and even the Big12 given our 1-2 record against Washington, Arizona State and Stanford.
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drgnslayr said:
Maybe you can answer me this…
The focus is on ranked opponents. But we see how teams ranking can move considerably during the season.
So… If we beat a team that is ranked #5 in November… and then that team screws up and falls out of the rankings. What counts in the selection? The early #5 ranking or non-ranking?
To me, it seems like the ranking at the time of the game is what should count. Teams level of play is going to change during the year as other teams learn their tendencies, injuries occur, etc etc etc. But what should count is our opponents’ strength level at the time we play them!
Is that the way it works? I really know NOTHING about the selection process. I do know how to complain though!
Some good questions.
I think the Selection committee has done a better job of evaluating games in the context of which they are played. However I do believe its human nature to place bias on how a team is perceived to them when the committee gets to looking at selecting teams. I’m sure they are evaluating games all season, taking notes, noticing shifts in teams play, injuries etc. I do agree that when you play a team, the strength of the game should be based on that.
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Let’s remember that geography is a factor when determining where to send teams. As a result, KU being in the same region as Wichita State or Missouri isn’t that surprising because they aren’t in the same conference (so no conference restriction), but are in the same general geographic area. Given the geography, all other things being equal, it would not be surprising to see KU end up in matchups with WSU, Creighton, Mizzou, Tulsa, Oral Roberts, Nebraska, UMKC or St. Louis if those schools were to make the tournament simply because geography would dictate that those schools stay close to their home, which would usually result in being in the same location as KU, particularly if those schools were not the “host” school as Wichita State is in Wichita, or as Creighton and Omaha are in Omaha.
If KU ends up on the 2 line and MU ends up on the 7 line or 10 line, its almost certain they end up in the same place. Same for WSU if they end up seeded opposite KU. The only way to separate is if the seedings don’t match.
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@justanotherfan Some teams are shipped from one coast to the other.
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Some are. That’s the disadvantage of having only one P5 conference on the west coast. There simply aren’t that many higher seeds to send out west.
Look at the top 20 right now (basically a proxy for the top 5 seeds).
The teams furthest west geographically (in order) are Gonzaga (13), Arizona State (16), Arizona (14), Texas Tech ( 8 ), Oklahoma (4), Wichita State (7), Kansas (10) Purdue (3), Auburn (17), Cincinnati/Xavier (11/12), Kentucky (18).
So if Oklahoma or Purdue is currently the 1, Wichita State is the 2 out west, Gonzaga is the 3?, then ASU or AU is the 4 and Auburn or UK is the 5. That’s the geography of it. If they stick to the hard curve, Oklahoma is the 1, but Duke becomes the 2 in the snake.
They also have to fill 1st and 2nd round games in San Diego and Boise. That’s 16 total teams that have to go out there, or four higher seeds. Again, who goes out there? Gonzaga, Arizona State and Arizona, obviously. But who beyond that? Wichita State? Oklahoma? Purdue? KU? Kentucky? Texas Tech? Who is the fourth?
That’s the challenge for the NCAA. There just aren’t enough schools further west that grab high seeds. You have Gonzaga and usually a couple of Pac-12 schools and that’s it.
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@justanotherfan In addition, as I have posted previously, just about half of Div 1 teams are Eastern time zone, so it always will seem that there is a bias in selection toward the East coast.
