NCAA Selection Committee Issues
The field of 65 teams is all set, and as usual, there is a lot of debate. The selection committee was not going to have an easy job this year even if some there weren’t some of the upsets in conference tournaments over the last week. It’s been a wide-open season and a wide-open tournament is ahead, and the committee came up with a lot of question marks for seeds.
First, we’ll look at the top seeds. Kentucky was an easy choice, and Duke was despite losing the ACC championship game. But the Blue Devils somehow stayed ahead of Stanford, which lost once all season and won its conference tournament. St. Joseph’s got the top seed it deserved, although committee chair Bob Bowlsby said that the Big 12 championship game did not weigh into its final seeds, meaning Oklahoma State was not going to get a No. 1 regardless – and the Cowboys certainly have a good case for one.
Looking at the No. 2 seeds, there isn’t much to argue except for Connecticut getting one over Pittsburgh. Up through Saturday, the Panthers looked like they had a good shot at getting one of the top seeds, and now their loss to the Huskies did more than keep that from happening – now they’re a No. 3 seed. In addition, the Panthers have to travel to Milwaukee and may place Wisconsin in the second round, essentially a home game for the lower-seeded team. (More on that later.) It’s hard to argue when Connecticut has a higher RPI and won two of three meetings between the two teams, but it is interesting how Pittsburgh went from being a possible No. 1 to a No. 3 in less than 24 hours.
How did Maryland get a No. 4 seed? Yes, the Terrapins finished up playing very well, including a run through the ACC Tournament that included three ranked teams. But just a week or so ago, the Terrapins were a bubble team. How does a team go from bubble to one of the top 16 seeds in barely one week?
Speaking of going from the bubble to a good seed, how about Washington? The Huskies enter the NCAA Tournament as one of the nation’s hottest teams, as they weren’t even in the discussion before winning 14 of 17 games, including two wins over Arizona and ending Stanford’s hopes of a perfect regular season.
The questions could go on. Wisconsin wins the Big Ten title, yet wins up with a lower seed (albeit in a different region) than the team it beat, Illinois? The Badgers and Illini were basically a draw during the season if you had to pick the better team, but Wisconsin blitzed the Illini in the championship game. Bowlsby said that this championship game, like the Big 12 title game, did not weigh into the final seeds because of how close it was to the selection show – and that’s a major problem.
After all of this, there are the snubs. Last year, it was about the Big East; this year, it’s about Utah State, which is about the only real glaring omission. The Aggies went 25-3, have been nationally ranked for most of the last two months, yet they’re going to the NIT. They have the fewest losses ever for a team excluded from the NCAA Tournament. Only LSU has a higher RPI than the Aggies (Utah State’s is 43; LSU’s is 39), but the Tigers played themselves into the NIT by losing six of their last seven games, including a 21-point loss to South Carolina in the SEC Tournament. They proved that they could not win consistently without Jamie Lloreda.
For the most part, other bubble teams don’t have much of a complaint for not getting in. Teams like Georgia, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and Missouri had their chances to get quality wins and did not. They had their chances to improve their NCAA resumes in their conference tournaments and did not. Utah State is the only team whose omission is a clear injustice.
Aside from the issue of seeds, the NCAA needs to do away with the pods. Started in 2002, the pods have never made much sense and that remains the case this year. It has done nothing but reward lower seeds and slightly higher seeds more than it has rewarded top seeds. For example, look at the home/vicinity advantages this year:
• Kansas, a No. 4 seed, plays in Kansas City and may face No. 5 Providence in the second round.
• Wake Forest, also a No. 4 seed, plays in Raleigh, and may face No. 5 Florida in the second round.
• Wisconsin, a No. 6 seed, plays in Milwaukee. Who else is in that bracket, you ask? No. 3 Pittsburgh. The higher-seeded Panthers are rewarded for their excellent season with a trip to the Midwest and essentially a road game if both favorites win in the first round. The committee may be trying to make up the low seed for the Badgers, but they’ve done it at the expense of a team that had a real chance to be a No. 1 seed before losing in the Big East title game.
• Cincinnati, a No. 4 seed, plays in Columbus, and might play No. 5 Illinois in the second round. That isn’t so bad since Illinois won’t be traveling very far either, so the advantage to the Bearcats is very slight.
• Teams playing in Denver include Air Force – a No. 11 seed – and higher seeds Texas and North Carolina having to travel out there. Also playing there is Brigham Young, a No. 12 seed – with higher seeds Syracuse (5) and Maryland (4) having to travel from the east coast.
The pods have to go. The idea of rewarding better teams was nice, but it’s not one that can easily be done, and all too often it has rewarded teams in the middle of the top seeds instead of the very top seeds. Additionally, teams are selected for and seeded in the tournament based on, among other things, how they have played on the road and at neutral sites, because the NCAA Tournament is about winning regardless of where the games are played.
The seeds and pod placements leave a lot of questions, but perhaps that’s only fitting since the tournament begins with there being no clear picture of who the favorites are. A case can be made for all of the top seeds going all the way, and many of the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds as well. It’s a wide-open tournament, and in the end the committee may prove to have done a better job than it appears right now.
