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Post by ptctitan on Mar 23, 2021 6:30:24 GMT -5
This year's NCAA has exposed a serious flaw in the selection committee's process. The most obvious error was selecting 9 teams from the Big 14 (I mean Big Ten) conference. The most likely culprit is the conference strength of schedule formula that ends up elevating the rankings of mediocre power conference teams merely because they may win a few home games against an allegedly stronger opponent. For example, we knew from early in the season that MSU was not its usually strong team because we gave them a battle on their home court right down to the final 90 seconds when AD was in his 3 point shooting slump. And Oakland also gave them trouble for a large part of their game. Strength of Schedule (SoS) formulae merely become numerical rationalizations for the old argument, "We beat so and so; therefore, we are as good or better than X." SoS becomes quasi-incestuous because it widens the adjusted differentials in KenPom and plays an undisclosed role in the NET.
The Big Ten will receive at least 16 game shares from this tournament with a record no worse than any other mid-major school could have attained. How many mid-major conferences could have benefited much more from those extra game checks if SoS were not used to relegate them to one-bid leagues. Would Wright State have performed any worse than MSU if it had received that play-in at large bid rather than MSU? Or Belmont? Or another team from the Summit? Or from a western mid-major conference? The smaller conferences could have used this money more.
Aside: one of the best trivial tidbits about ORU's advance to the Sweet 16 is that it beat in succession the last two universities at which Urban Meyer coached football, Ohio State and Florida. Utah and Bowling Green can breathe easy.
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Post by dtowntitan on Mar 23, 2021 7:56:00 GMT -5
Great points PTC.
Another thing I noticed about this years tournament in particular, which I think the NCAA will quickly revert back to, is that in years passed the committee seemed to make it a point to match non-Power5 schools in the first round, so you might see an on fire St. Joes team who has won 30 games playing against a 28 win Belmont in the first round, automatically eliminating the opportunity for 1. more upsets of Power 5 teams and 2. more money going to non-Power5 schools. This year it seems that that occurrence didnt take place, but I am pretty positive that approach will be taken again with next years committee.
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Post by motorcitysam on Mar 23, 2021 12:45:19 GMT -5
Hindsight is 20/20. While the Big Ten has not performed up to their seeding, it's hard to make a case that those seedings weren't appropriate based on the regular season . Lots of people are saying the PAC 12 didn't get fair seeding because all four teams have advanced. Should UCLA have been seeded higher than Michigan State? UCLA lost their last four games of the regular season and lost to San Diego State and Ohio State in the non-con. Their best non-con win was Marquette, who had a losing record this season. They didn't beat a ranked team all year. Oregon State lost 12 games and wouldn't have made the tourney had they not gotten hot in time for the P12 tournament. They didn't beat a ranked team until they beat #23 Colorado in the conference tourney final. Oregon lost to Mizzou in the non-conference, and their best non-conference win was Seton Hall. They also didn't beat a ranked team all season. Colorado's best non-con win was Grand Canyon, although they beat two conference rivals who were ranked #23 and #24 at the time.
No question that the Big Ten has been disappointing. Whether they deserved those high seeds and that number of teams is another question entirely.
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Post by upbasketballfan on Mar 23, 2021 13:36:45 GMT -5
Hindsight is 20/20. While the Big Ten has not performed up to their seeding, it's hard to make a case that those seedings weren't appropriate based on the regular season . Lots of people are saying the PAC 12 didn't get fair seeding because all four teams have advanced. Should UCLA have been seeded higher than Michigan State? UCLA lost their last four games of the regular season and lost to San Diego State and Ohio State in the non-con. Their best non-con win was Marquette, who had a losing record this season. They didn't beat a ranked team all year. Oregon State lost 12 games and wouldn't have made the tourney had they not gotten hot in time for the P12 tournament. They didn't beat a ranked team until they beat #23 Colorado in the conference tourney final. Oregon lost to Mizzou in the non-conference, and their best non-conference win was Seton Hall. They also didn't beat a ranked team all season. Colorado's best non-con win was Grand Canyon, although they beat two conference rivals who were ranked #23 and #24 at the time. No question that the Big Ten has been disappointing. Whether they deserved those high seeds and that number of teams is another question entirely. Sam I think some of the argument comes from the fallacy of the big ten being the best conference in the country. They won a few outside games and lost a few and then for a majority of the season they played each other knocking off supposed ranked teams. Teams like Northwestern, Minnesota, Penn State, Maryland, Rutgers and Indiana were ranked during the season and never should have been. So the other conference teams picked up points for beating ranked teams sort of an incest thing. Northwestern was ranked and ended up 5-19. MSU at one time was #2 or #3 in the country and was not even close. When we played State we were without Waterman and Brandon and the rest of the team did not have an opportunity to gell. Illinois with their lofty rankings lost to Mizzo and one of their early big wins was Duke and Chicago State. They lost to Baylor at home by 13 and beat Ohio at home by 2 and if you watched the game Ohio was the more impressive team. They lost 7 games and received a #1 seat with 2 of the best players on the planet surrounded by a very good supporting cast. This is according to the announcers. Reminds me of the announcer yesterday talking about the team that was ranked #2 in the NCAA in floaters made. I guess I didn't know they kept track of floaters I always thought that was something that got flushed down the toilet. You shouldn't go to the the national championship on a talent assessment but on merit. I didn't get the sound turned off fast enough yesterday. Looking forward to listening to Earl next year.
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Post by Rogobob77 on Mar 23, 2021 17:04:03 GMT -5
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Post by Commissioner on Mar 23, 2021 21:21:10 GMT -5
Top Non-Conference Winning percentages during this past year:
1. Big 10: 83% 2. Big 12: 79% 3. Patriot: 75% (8 games total) 4. Big East: 74% 5. PAC 12: 73% 6. SEC: 73% 7. ACC: 73% 8. AAC: 72% 9. WCC: 67% 10. MWC: 61% 11. Southern: 60% 12. CUSA 57% 13. A10: 56% 14. MVC: 54% 15: Sunbelt: 47% Others range from 14% (SWAC) to 44% (MAC). Horizon at 32%.
It is true that the big conferences get to play virtually all their games at home, but those are still pretty big numbers. I agree that there is some prejudice in favor of the big conferences in seeding and ranking, but let's not get carried away. They are better. They win the vast majority of their non-conference games, including the relatively rare road/neutral games against mid-majors. They routinely get the lion's share and more of the most highly rated high-school recruits. The best players leave mid-majors for high majors--the reverse is virtually never true. I can recall no incident of an all-conference player from a P6 school transferring to a non-P6 school. The "eye test"--at least as applied by the polls--would have had the same top 8 seeds, three of the same four #3 seeds (the pollsters would have dropped West Virginia from the #3 to the #4 line, to be replaced by Oklahoma State.
These non-conference sample sizes are much larger than tournament sample sizes. In the tournament, the B10 had 3 teams lose in OT, a 4th lose in the final seconds. So the Big 10 is 7-8, but is 5 points away from being 11-4 (plus whatever would have happened in the next round for 3 of those teams). This year the smaller conferences are doing a bit better than usual. Yet the best conference overall--after the Summit, which is 2-0 with Oral Roberts--is a P6 conference, the PAC 12, at 9-1. The MVC is 3-1, thanks to Loyola and a play-in win by Drake over a non-P6 team. Then you've got the WCC and AAC each at 2-1. But their wins are not from upsets-they are from #1 seed Gonzaga and #2 seed Houston (which barely beat a #10 seed Big 10 team). Then come the Big East, SEC, and Big 12. So even with the small sample sizes, the bigs do OK. The Big 10 and ACC are both down--the ACC is doing worse than the B10 in the tournament--but I think it's foolish to draw too much from that.
I agree that major conference teams are more likely to be a bit overseeded. But this may a Committee problem more than a problem with the NET formula. Teams that overseeded their NET by more than 2 spaces were Clemson (upset first round) and Oklahoma State (upset 2nd round) (both overseeded by 4 spots); Texas (upset first round), and West Virginia (upset second round) (each overseeded 3 spots). Only two teams were underseeded by 3 or more spots compared to NET: Colgate (a straight NET seeding would have had them a 3 seed) and Loyola (seeded 11th, vs a straight NET-based seed of 6). So NET actually looks pretty good compared to the committee. But I think it's hard to argue that other mid-majors were underseeded, at least by much.
The only other mid-major underseeded by two or more spots compared to their NET rank was Saint Bonaventure. The Bonnies were underseeded by 2 spots compared to their NET, but I'm not sure being a 7th instead of a 9th seed would have changed much for them. Would you have put the Bonnies on a 4, 5, or 6 line? LSU, their opening round opponent, was the first P6 team they played, and they lost by 15 on a neutral court. San Diego State was seeded 6th (one below their NET seeding) played Syracuse, and 11th seed, in the first round, and lost by 16 on a neutral court (they did beat UCLA at home and Arizona State on the road during the season). How high would you have seeded them?
Mid-majors can be seeded well, and are. Just one example: A couple years ago Wofford went 29-4 and got a #7 seed. During the season they played 5 P6 teams. They beat a very average (16-16 at year end) South Carolina team by 20 on the road. But they lost by double digits on the road to Mississippi State, Kansas (by 25), and Oklahoma, and at home to North Carolina. So they were 1-4 against P6 teams, all the losses by double digits, including a home game. Three non-P6 teams were seeded ahead of Wofford--Gonzaga (#1), Houston (#3) and Buffalo (#6). Should Wofford have been seeded higher, ahead of a bunch of P6 teams? I don't think so. They in fact beat #10 Seton Hall in the opening round, then lost to #2 seed Kentucky in the second round. Seems about right.
I also agree with the comment that the Committee seems to like to pit good mid-majors against one another early. I don't know if this is really true, but my impression is that it happens disproportionately. And personally, I wish there were a cap on the # of teams from a conference. This would reduce the incentive for top conferences to keep growing. I'm not sure you'd get better teams. I don't know, for example, that Belmont is a better team than Michigan State, or Boise State better than Missouri, but I'd rather see a 2nd or 3rd place team--or regular season champ--from some of these mid-majors than watch a 7th or 8th or 9th place team from a P6 conference.
Let me boil all these musings down: 1. I agree that mid-majors get shafted a bit in seeding, and in first round match-ups. But I think this is relatively minimal. 2. Don't put too much stock in one tournament, let alone one conference's performance in one tournament--as evidence of anything about the overall quality of play in the conference. The sample sizes are too small. Over many years, however, we may start to see something, and the fact is, what we see is that all of the P6 conferences win the vast majority of their tournament games against non-P6 schools. 3. The P6 schools win the vast majority of their games against mid-majors, not only during the tournament, but during the season. This is helped by home court scheduling during the season, and possibly by seeding during the post-season, but the numbers so heavily favor the P6 that it's hard not to believe that they are simply superior and, in most cases, deserving of their higher seeds. 4. Really good mid-majors--say Gonzaga every year, Houston the last couple years, etc--can and do get very good seeds. We tend to forget that sometimes. Gonzaga is a mid-major, and the WCC a mid-major conference. And nobody thinks Gonzaga is treated unfairly. 5. Recruitments and transfers also suggest that the P6 teams are more talented. Does anyone here think North Texas beats Purdue in a 7 game series?
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Post by ptctitan on Mar 24, 2021 7:34:14 GMT -5
I'm not criticizing the seedings as much as I am criticizing the actual selections of mediocre power conference teams over mid-majors with much better W-L records. IMO, the Big Ten's performance proved that it wasn't as deep of a conference as the "experts" had evaluated it. The depth allegedly comes from its strength of schedule; but the strength of schedule comes from the weaker conference teams playing 40-60% of its schedule against stronger in-conference opponents. So, it's a circular data point rather than an objective measure. The results this year don't prove the Big Ten teams were bad; but they do prove that they aren't any better than many of the excluded mid-majors. In a COVID year when mid-major universities and conferences were feeling the economic impacts harder than many power conference schools, taking 5 game shares from the Big Ten and giving them to deserving mid-major teams likely would not have changed the current Sweet 16, but would have helped the smaller leagues cope.
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Post by Commissioner on Mar 24, 2021 8:23:13 GMT -5
I'm not criticizing the seedings as much as I am criticizing the actual selections of mediocre power conference teams over mid-majors with much better W-L records. IMO, the Big Ten's performance proved that it wasn't as deep of a conference as the "experts" had evaluated it. The depth allegedly comes from its strength of schedule; but the strength of schedule comes from the weaker conference teams playing 40-60% of its schedule against stronger in-conference opponents. So, it's a circular data point rather than an objective measure. The results this year don't prove the Big Ten teams were bad; but they do prove that they aren't any better than many of the excluded mid-majors. In a COVID year when mid-major universities and conferences were feeling the economic impacts harder than many power conference schools, taking 5 game shares from the Big Ten and giving them to deserving mid-major teams likely would not have changed the current Sweet 16, but would have helped the smaller leagues cope. The weaker B10 teams--the "depth"-- did pretty well. Wisconsin, Maryland, and Rutgers all defeated higher seeded teams in the first round, before losing to even higher seeded teams in the second. And MSU lost in overtime to UCLA--hardly an indictment of the conference's "depth." The reason the Big 10 is considered disappointment in this year's tournament is due to the losses of Iowa, Ohio State, Purdue, and Illinois, the top of the conference. As I said earlier, I personally have relatively little interest in watching the 7th and 8th place teams from the Big 10 and ACC (and SEC and Big 12--it's not just the B10) rather than mid-majors such as Belmont, Southern Utah, or UAB. But I don't think that changes the fact that the P6 conferences are the best, and that in fact, usually the 7th and 8th place teams from those conferences are as good as the top mid-majors left out of the tournament. My reasoning is basically that I know the 8th place team from the ACC isn't that good, and I've seen them; let's see what someone else can do.
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Post by calihanmole on Mar 24, 2021 8:47:02 GMT -5
Comes down to money. An 8th place team in the B1G or ACC has a huge alumni and fan base that is on average more engaged with athletics than the alumni base from a mid major. More TV viewers and more tickets/hotel rooms sold in a normal year.
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Post by Commissioner on Mar 24, 2021 10:23:06 GMT -5
Comes down to money. An 8th place team in the B1G or ACC has a huge alumni and fan base that is on average more engaged with athletics than the alumni base from a mid major. More TV viewers and more tickets/hotel rooms sold in a normal year. Yup. And yet oddly, it's the presence of mid-majors and the chances for their upsets that seems to draw most interest in the early rounds.
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Post by motorcitysam on Mar 25, 2021 14:19:17 GMT -5
Hindsight is 20/20. While the Big Ten has not performed up to their seeding, it's hard to make a case that those seedings weren't appropriate based on the regular season . Lots of people are saying the PAC 12 didn't get fair seeding because all four teams have advanced. Should UCLA have been seeded higher than Michigan State? UCLA lost their last four games of the regular season and lost to San Diego State and Ohio State in the non-con. Their best non-con win was Marquette, who had a losing record this season. They didn't beat a ranked team all year. Oregon State lost 12 games and wouldn't have made the tourney had they not gotten hot in time for the P12 tournament. They didn't beat a ranked team until they beat #23 Colorado in the conference tourney final. Oregon lost to Mizzou in the non-conference, and their best non-conference win was Seton Hall. They also didn't beat a ranked team all season. Colorado's best non-con win was Grand Canyon, although they beat two conference rivals who were ranked #23 and #24 at the time. No question that the Big Ten has been disappointing. Whether they deserved those high seeds and that number of teams is another question entirely. Sam I think some of the argument comes from the fallacy of the big ten being the best conference in the country. They won a few outside games and lost a few and then for a majority of the season they played each other knocking off supposed ranked teams. Teams like Northwestern, Minnesota, Penn State, Maryland, Rutgers and Indiana were ranked during the season and never should have been. So the other conference teams picked up points for beating ranked teams sort of an incest thing. Northwestern was ranked and ended up 5-19. MSU at one time was #2 or #3 in the country and was not even close. When we played State we were without Waterman and Brandon and the rest of the team did not have an opportunity to gell. Illinois with their lofty rankings lost to Mizzo and one of their early big wins was Duke and Chicago State. They lost to Baylor at home by 13 and beat Ohio at home by 2 and if you watched the game Ohio was the more impressive team. They lost 7 games and received a #1 seat with 2 of the best players on the planet surrounded by a very good supporting cast. This is according to the announcers. Reminds me of the announcer yesterday talking about the team that was ranked #2 in the NCAA in floaters made. I guess I didn't know they kept track of floaters I always thought that was something that got flushed down the toilet. You shouldn't go to the the national championship on a talent assessment but on merit. I didn't get the sound turned off fast enough yesterday. Looking forward to listening to Earl next year. The Big Ten might not have been the best conference in the country during the regular season, although I think that case can be made. But the real issue is no other conference did anything else to make that claim. You can pick apart most conferences the way you did the Big Ten and the way I did the PAC 12. Take the ACC: Virginia won the regular season ACC title, but got beat early in the season by an San Fran team that finished under .500. Florida State lost by 12 at home to UCF. Georgia Tech started the season by losing to two mid majors. Virginia Tech lost by 20 to a bad Penn State team. Those were the top four teams in the ACC standings. With the abbreviated non-con season, it was hard for any team to pick up ranked wins in non league play. At the end of this weird year, the Big Ten had a better claim than anyone, which is why there wasn't much complaining on Selection Sunday about the number of teams that got invited.
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Post by Commissioner on Mar 31, 2021 8:31:45 GMT -5
I think the two teams with the talent and style of play that might have made them most likely to beat Gonzaga--that is Michigan, and Florida State -- have fallen by the wayside. I still think Baylor can beat Gonzaga, but more and more it looks to me like we're likely to see an unbeaten national champion for the first time since 1976.
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Post by motorcitysam on Mar 31, 2021 15:44:18 GMT -5
It should be noted how well Michigan has been playing without Livers. That's a testament to the rest of the team. They probably should have beaten UCLA, but it's hard to get a win with Wagner shooting 1-10 and Mike Smith shooting 1-7.
I'm expecting Baylor to beat Houston and Gonzaga to beat UCLA. The title game should be a good one.
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