1. #36
    LT Profits
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    I don't believe NC State knocked SMU out of tournament. If committee wanted Wolfpack in, should have bumped BYU.

  2. #37
    The Madcap
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    Quote Originally Posted by LT Profits View Post
    I don't believe NC State knocked SMU out of tournament. If committee wanted Wolfpack in, should have bumped BYU.

    You don't believe NC State's inclusion is what knocked SMU out, or you don't believe their inclusion should have knocked SMU out?




    (I agree with BYU point totally)

  3. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Madcap View Post
    You don't believe NC State's inclusion is what knocked SMU out, or you don't believe their inclusion should have knocked SMU out?




    (I agree with BYU point totally)
    I guess I have a bigger problem with SMU being out than with NC State being in. My feeling is SMU should have been safely in with NC State and BYU fighting for last spot.

  4. #39
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    Quote Originally Posted by LT Profits View Post
    I guess I have a bigger problem with SMU being out than with NC State being in. My feeling is SMU should have been safely in with NC State and BYU fighting for last spot.

    I hear ya. I honestly think the whole reason SMU got left out was due to their weak non-conf schedule. The selection committee has emphasized this point over and over again the last several years and while I can't say for certain, I'm pretty sure the rationale is to prevent teams in weaker conferences (like SMU) from deliberately trying to inflate their win-loss record with a bunch of non-conf cupcakes so that they don't put the committee in a tough spot if they happen to squeeze out 1-2 wins at home against the top 2-3 teams in their conference. It's hard to deny a team like that a bid because they have so many wins, at the same time historically the committee has struggled with what to do with these teams seeding wise and they end up busting out early in the tournament without being competitive and it makes the committee look stupid. Demanding these teams schedule stiffer opponents is the committee's way of trying to get a better gauge of where these teams actually are in relation to the other bubble squads. They're trying to protect the integrity (and competitive balance) of the tournament by ensuring that every at large team that gets in really/truly can compete and belongs there. They hate nothing more than taking a bunch of 27-5 teams from weaker conferences and watching them get blown out by weaker seeds. If they schedule more difficult non-conf opponents then they will either win those games and solidify their case, or lose them and give the committee a clearer justification/more leeway for leaving them out. It's hard to know how good a 25 win team is if the only games they've won that mean anything are at home in conference. Are they really that good, or did they just catch a truly deserving squad on an off night?



    I think it simply boils down to the committee doing their best to put the onus of selection on the teams themselves so that determining who's to be included and where to seed them isn't such an agonizing drawn out nightmare every year.



    Incidently, here's what the committee chair Ron Wellman had to say about State/SMU:


    SMU is the first team out. Could you share who the last team in was? Can you talk about the case for NC State.
    RON WELLMAN: Well, you just identified the last team in. The four teams that were the last teams in were Tennessee, Iowa, Xavier and North Carolina State. Those are the at‑large teams advancing to the First Four.

    NC State, as I said earlier, we try to identify differentiators, things that are either very positive or negative about certain teams. The positive factor for NC State was that they had three wins against top‑50 teams away from home. Not only did they beat those top‑50 teams but they did it on the road.

    Road wins against top‑50 teams are really, really impressive to the Committee. So that probably was the one factor that was most prominent in terms of NC State. They beat Syracuse and they beat Pitt and Tennessee all on the road or at a neutral site, the neutral site being the Syracuse win in the ACC tournament.

  5. #40
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    Quote Originally Posted by LT Profits View Post
    I guess I have a bigger problem with SMU being out than with NC State being in. My feeling is SMU should have been safely in with NC State and BYU fighting for last spot.
    SMU's SOS was soft.

    Their out of conference SOS was ranked 295th.

    That is ridiculous.

    If SMU wants to bark, schedule better.

  6. #41
    InTheDrink
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    Can anyone show me any consistent history of the committee "looking stupid" because they included any certain type of team?

    Vcu was one of these types of teams two years ago and won five games in the tournament.

    As for this low man on the totem pole having to play on the road nonsense if you think top power conference teams will EVER face mid majors at their house then you have no idea how the ncaa works. How many home games did Butler host against top teams when they were winning tournament games consistently? Closest thing that a mid major has come to hosting any top teams is probably zaga on neutral floor in Seattle or butler in Indy. Only team who ever consistently did was unlv but those teams in Thomas and Mack was on a different level.

  7. #42
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    Quote Originally Posted by InTheDrink View Post
    Can anyone show me any consistent history of the committee "looking stupid" because they included any certain type of team?

    Vcu was one of these types of teams two years ago and won five games in the tournament.

    As for this low man on the totem pole having to play on the road nonsense if you think top power conference teams will EVER face mid majors at their house then you have no idea how the ncaa works. How many home games did Butler host against top teams when they were winning tournament games consistently? Closest thing that a mid major has come to hosting any top teams is probably zaga on neutral floor in Seattle or butler in Indy. Only team who ever consistently did was unlv but those teams in Thomas and Mack was on a different level.

    Tiny little Jacksonville hosted Florida this year.
    Wisconsin-Green Bay hosted Virginia/Wisconsin.
    San Diego State hosted Arizona.
    St. Joe's hosted Villanova
    FIU hosted Louisville
    UAB hosted North Carolina



    And again, the mid-majors still get plenty of invites to pre-season tournaments and have been able to set-up neutral site games on the regular. The problem with the mid majors is that the bottom halves of their conferences usually suck donkey balls.

  8. #43
    The Madcap
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    Quote Originally Posted by InTheDrink View Post
    Can anyone show me any consistent history of the committee "looking stupid" because they included any certain type of team?


    It's not as simple as who they include, but how they seed who they include. Take last year,



    -They gave mid major St Louis a 4 seed and 12 seeded Oregon waxed em by 20 in the round of 32.

    -They gave mid major Gonzaga a 1 seed and they went down to 9 seed Wichita State in the round of 32.

    -They gave mid major New Mexico a 3 seed and they went down to 14th seeded Harvard out of the Ivy League in their opening game.


    The selection committee likes upsets, but they like upsets that are truly big upsets, not simply "seeding" upsets. They also like chalk to a certain degree as well because they want heavy-hitter match-ups in the Final Four. Remember that the point of this tournament is to determine the champion, and it's their job to put on the most exciting/competitive/fair tournament they can while also ensuring the integrity of the "championship." This means giving the better seeds to the best teams that deserve to be rewarded with the best seeds so that they aren't screwing those teams that earned the best shot at the title during the regular season out of their rightful shot at winning the championship by overloading their regions. It also means they can't simply ignore the mid majors at all times in favor of the power conferences, but it doesn't sit well with them when they throw the mid majors a bone only to watch them choke on it.




    Seeding the midmajors is a painstakingly difficult process for them, and all they want is for the power teams/quality midmajors to play each other more often. And they have been more and more in recent years. Maybe not a home/home series, but they do schedule neutral site games all the time. Duke plays Davidson almost every year. VCU played several power conference teams this year. As did UMASS. That helps the committee more precisely seed the teams to create the fairest tournament possible. Teams with resumes like SMU's throw the calibration out of whack because they don't play anybody outside their conference. And the more teams they reward for not playing better teams OOC then the more teams will do it and the harder it will be for them to judge who belongs where. What the committee wants is the marquee power conference teams to start scheduling more games against each other as well as a couple of the mid majors to help them better calibrate where everybody stands. When teams in decent conferences like the AAC almost exclusively schedule bottom tier D-I non-conf opponents it makes it harder for the committee to figure out how to rate those conferences and therefore how to determine which bubble teams should or shouldn't get it based on their conference record. Is an 11-5 record in the SoCon as strong as a 9-9 record in the ACC? No. But that's easy. Is a 9-9 record in the ACC better than a 12-6 record in the AAC? That's a little harder to judge and why the committee tells teams to schedule harder. Giving a bid to SMU over a team whose non-conf SOS is significantly tougher will only encourage teams to schedule lighter, and the more teams that schedule lighter the harder it is for the committee to evaluate teams/conferences. The harder it is for them to evaluate the more likely they hand out an at large bid to a team that doesn't deserve it while leaving home one that did.

  9. #44
    jtoler
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    Dont think you can call seeding incorrect just because a game resulted in a blowout.

  10. #45
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Madcap View Post
    Oh, and Wilfred, to answer your specific question about why I think State deserved to be in over some of the A-10 teams, just look at what State did vs George Washinton:



    -GW's best nonconf wins were against Miami (who State beat), Maryland (who State not only beat, but beat without their best player), Georgia (who got clobbered @ Tennessee who State beat) and Creighton. So the only non-conf win GW has to put them ahead of State is Creighton, who's vastly overrated anyway.


    -GW's best conference wins are VCU and UMASS (both of whom lost to FSU who lost to State) while State's best two conference wins are Syracuse/Pitt, which is clearly a more impressive combination.



    -GW's worse conference loss came @ LaSalle who didn't beat anybody else worth a damn all year, while State's worse conference loss came @ Wake Forest who also beat both Duke/UNC.



    Add all that up and State's resume is every bit as good, if not better, than GW's. So if GW is a "lock" how in the hell isn't State? And if GW is clearly more deserving of a bid than Dayton/St. Joe's, then wouldn't so to be State?
    Attack Dayton with that, but when it comes to George Washington, absolutely not. You gotta admit you are getting a bit reckless with these comparisons. Their best win was VCU, but VCU lost to Florida State, who NC State beat. Really? How about I say George Washington beat VCU, who Beat Virgina on the road, who crushed NC State at their place by 31.

    I'll even post this to defend George Washingtons honor http://www.cbssports.com/collegebask...son/GWASH/NCST

    In the end NC State gets in, lets seem what they do with it. And after all this discussion, I don't think there will even be an A10 team in the sweet 16. Brutal draw for every single one of them haha.

  11. #46
    InTheDrink
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Madcap View Post
    Tiny little Jacksonville hosted Florida this year.
    Wisconsin-Green Bay hosted Virginia/Wisconsin.
    San Diego State hosted Arizona.
    St. Joe's hosted Villanova
    FIU hosted Louisville
    UAB hosted North Carolina



    And again, the mid-majors still get plenty of invites to pre-season tournaments and have been able to set-up neutral site games on the regular. The problem with the mid majors is that the bottom halves of their conferences usually suck donkey balls.

    nearly every one of those is played because of extenuating circumstances except sdsu...so kudos to sean miller for being the one coach willing to play a decent mid major on the road

    fiu hosted louisville because of father/son
    uab hosted unc because of jerod haase
    jax hosts the gators about once a decade and always gets pummeled...who cares
    st joes/nova is big 5....which is definitely great tradition...i suppose nova could back out but theyd get buried in philly if they ever did
    tony bennett is from gb
    wisc has played gb since dick bennett became coach at wisc and this was the last year of the series

    so lets not try to act like big schools are willing to take on mid majors just to play a tough game

  12. #47
    InTheDrink
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    Quote Originally Posted by jtoler View Post
    Dont think you can call seeding incorrect just because a game resulted in a blowout.
    it really is a stupid premise....even if gonzaga was a 2 theyd have still been embarrassed and no one could have argued that they didnt deserve a 2 seed

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    Quote Originally Posted by jtoler View Post
    Dont think you can call seeding incorrect just because a game resulted in a blowout.

    Of course not. That in and of itself doesn't mean shit. Take Duke losing to Lehigh a couple years ago. Maybe Duke shouldn't have been as high as a 2 seed, and maybe Lehigh was more deserving of a 15 seed, but certainly nothing closer together than a 4-13 matchup. Just because the seeds don't hold does not make them incorrect. I completely agree. However, the mid majors have a troubling history of blowing it when being rewarded with a higher seed. I can promise you New Mexico going down as a 3 seed in the first round last year had a lot to do with why they only got a 7 seed this year. A couple years ago San Diego State was an up and coming mid major, got a 6 seed, and then promptly lost to 11 seed NC State in their first game. 7th seeded St. Mary's went down to 10th seed Purdue. The committee likes a certain number of "upsets" but not so many that the seeding starts bordering on irrelevance. They want more chalk. A lack of chalk undermines the entire process to a certain degree and cheapens the real upsets when they actually happen.

  14. #49
    InTheDrink
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    gonzaga has shit the bed in the tourney for over 10 years and they were given a questionable number one seed last year

    madcap is looking for something that's not there

    with a whole lot of typing

  15. #50
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    Quote Originally Posted by InTheDrink View Post
    nearly every one of those is played because of extenuating circumstances except sdsu...so kudos to sean miller for being the one coach willing to play a decent mid major on the road

    fiu hosted louisville because of father/son
    uab hosted unc because of jerod haase
    jax hosts the gators about once a decade and always gets pummeled...who cares
    st joes/nova is big 5....which is definitely great tradition...i suppose nova could back out but theyd get buried in philly if they ever did
    tony bennett is from gb
    wisc has played gb since dick bennett became coach at wisc and this was the last year of the series

    so lets not try to act like big schools are willing to take on mid majors just to play a tough game

    Did not know Pitino's kid coached FIU. Thought he was the coach at Minnesota?
    Knew about the UNC-UAB/UVA-UWGB connections, but just because they scheduled those games doesn't mean they wouldn't have scheduled a mid major somewhere else. Coach K talks in interviews all the time about how he likes to schedule mid majors early in the season to prep for who they might face in the first/2nd round on the NCAA's. And yeah, maybe 80% of those games are played in Cameron, but again, that's what Duke gets for having won four national titles. They don't need to prove anything. The mid majors do. If they don't like it then they can start winning the preseason NIT/going Final Fours on a regular basis like the Duke's of the world do. Gonzaga has built up a considerable rep as one of the best mid major programs, but they've never been to the Final Four. I think they've only been to one elite 8 under Mark Few. Why would the top power conference schools regularly agree to go play on the road at the mid majors instead of a neutral court site? What the hell is in it for them? If they win, well they should have, if they lose it gives that much more potential for people to overrate the midmajors and screw the power conference teams out of bids. Why in the hell would they do that? Should the power conference schools just start feeling bad for the mid majors out of the goodness of their hearts? Is this commie Russia all of a sudden? If the mid majors want more respect, hey, they can earn it. And honestly, they have. But they have to back it up. EVERY YEAR. They can't just have a good 2-3 year stretch and then drop back to mediocrity. And that's usually what happens because mid majors usually only ever get any good because they have a great coach and as soon as that coach gets hired away the program sinks back to obscurity. Butler/George Mason were a couple recent cinderella final four mid major heroes, and now that Stevens/Larranaga have moved on they suck again. Building up credibility/respect is a process, and one the mid majors are getting better at, but it's BS to think they deserve some sort of scheduling hand out because they aren't on top yet.

  16. #51
    The Madcap
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    Quote Originally Posted by InTheDrink View Post
    gonzaga has shit the bed in the tourney for over 10 years and they were given a questionable number one seed last year

    madcap is looking for something that's not there

    with a whole lot of typing

    This is my point exactly actually.

  17. #52
    InTheDrink
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    youre all over the place bro

    im out

  18. #53
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    Quote Originally Posted by InTheDrink View Post
    youre all over the place bro

    im out

    What I think and what the committee thinks are two separate things entirely. They're fighting every year against people saying the seeding is rigged vs trying to be fair to midmajor teams with large win totals who don't have a lot of strong OOC wins. It's impossible to please everybody. If they don't give the better mid majors some of the higher seeds people bitch, but if they give the mid majors those higher seeds and they crap the bed then it undermines the integrity of the tournament. The whole point in them asking teams to schedule harder games is to make that process more precise so they can alleviate as much bitching as possible to stop people from calling into question how they do things. The more matchups there are between the top teams of the power conferences vs each other/the quality mid majors vs the power conferences the more evidence they have to justify their selections and the harder it is for people to bitch and complain that shit is rigged/or unfair.

  19. #54
    LT Profits
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    OK, debates are over. NC State plays tonight as the Madness begins. Let's Dance.

  20. #55
    Da Manster!
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    I mentioned this in another thread but RLM on Xavier!...the sharps are pounding the X-Men!...why?!.......Lined opened up at Xavier (-1.5) and now is at Xavier (-3.5)....Vegas and offshore books really need the Wolfpack to come through for them and cover...

  21. #56
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    I lean Xavier but not enough. Now I wish I bet them when it was -2. They should dominate the offensive glass and almost a home game for them.

  22. #57
    InTheDrink
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    Ras is on xavier

    Only reason for the move


    Assist: LKid1 (37)

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