NCAA To Smaller Conferences: Season Doesn’t Matter
When it comes to postseason play, it now seems painfully clear that the NCAA just wants to shill for the six power conferences. It wasn’t enough that they dropped the ball a couple of times with the NCAA Tournament; they were even worse with the NIT.
Is the NCAA trying to tell teams outside the power conferences to just not bother playing the season? It certainly looks that way, based on the teams selected to the NIT. Sure, they changed to automatically include teams who won their conference in the regular season but did not get a bid to the NCAA Tournament; seven teams took advantage of it. But let’s be honest: most of those teams would probably get there anyway, given past history.
Look at some of the teams from power conferences that are in the NIT:
- Miami (Fla.): 16-15 record, tied for seventh place in the ACC
- Virginia: 15-14 record, tied for seventh place in the ACC
- Wake Forest: 17-16 record, last place in the ACC
- Oklahoma State: 17-15 record, tied for seventh place in the Big 12
- Louisville: 18-12 record, tied for 11th place in the Big East
- Notre Dame: 15-13 record, tied for 11th place in the Big East
- Penn State: 15-14 record, tied for eighth place in the Big Ten
- Minnesota: 15-14 record, tenth place in the Big Ten
- Stanford: 15-13 record, tied for fourth place in the Pac-10
Notice the finish of several teams in their conference, in addition to each team being no more than two games over .500 overall. Each team had a losing record in their conference save for Stanford, which was 11-7 in Pac-10 play. Minnesota finished tenth in the Big Ten – that means only one team was below them. Louisville and Notre Dame tied for 11th in the Big East – that means they were the last two teams to make the conference tournament. Granted, the Irish lost a lot of very close games this year – but the reality is that they lost those games. The worst of all was Wake Forest, which finished last in the ACC – in a down year from last year for the ACC – and still made the NIT. The Demon Deacons entered the ACC Tournament with a .500 overall record.
Additionally, of those teams, only Penn State, Stanford and Virginia have to play opening round games – home games for the first two teams, no less. (Virginia plays at Stanford.) That brings us to another point – many of these teams played mostly home games during non-conference play. The grand-daddy of them all is Louisville, which never left the state of Kentucky until New Year’s Eve, playing just two road games in non-conference play and only one “true” road game.
Now, let’s look at some notable snubs from the NIT field (RPI ratings are from the NCAA’s official site as of Tuesday, March 7):
- La Salle: 18-10 record, tied for third place in the Atlantic 10 (10-6), 92 RPI
- Northeastern: 19-11 record, fifth place in the Colonial (12-6), 95 RPI
- VCU: 19-10 record, sixth place in the Colonial (11-7), 80 RPI
- Marist: 19-10 record, third place in the MAAC (12-6), 106 RPI
- IUPUI: 19-10 record, second place in the Mid-Continent (13-3), 154 RPI
- Samford: 20-11 record, second place in the Ohio Valley (14-7), 108 RPI
- Holy Cross: 20-12 record, second place in the Patriot League (11-3), 115 RPI
- Sam Houston State: 22-9 record, second place in the Southland (11-5), 121 RPI
Notice that the only teams who finished outside of the top three in their conference have two of the three lowest RPI ratings. Northeastern and VCU had solid records in the nation’s 10th-best conference in RPI. Each team had a winning percentage of at least .667 (or two wins in every three conference games) save for VCU. The RPI ratings are included to establish that none of these teams played cupcakes from start to finish, as well as the fact that they won games – which is most important.
All of these teams are done playing basketball for the season. Against this backdrop, the move to automatically include regular season champions who don’t advance to the NCAA Tournament looks like nothing more than clever political window-dressing. It seems that they just wanted to give the appearance of being all-inclusive and the tournament being at least somewhat merit-based. But in the end, all that is really being said is that your team has to play in the right conference.
Reasonable people can debate about just how good the conferences are and thus how good the competition is that these records were amassed against, but that’s not the point here. Sure, the Big East is a juggernaut, but that doesn’t matter; 11th place is 11th place. Louisville played one of the weakest non-conference schedules in America (14 of their 18 wins came against teams with RPI ratings outside the top 100), then struggled to win in the Big East – and is rewarded with a No. 1 seed in the NIT, meaning they won’t have to go on the road at all until New York if they reach the semifinals. Wake Forest finished in last place in their conference, and got rewarded with an opening round bye. Meanwhile, several teams won close to or over 20 games and finished high in their conference, and are done for the season.
The NCAA has to stop rewarding mediocrity and just plain bad basketball. With all due respect to some of these programs, finishing near the bottom of your conference is bad basketball, period. A team that finishes last or near the bottom in its league has no business being in postseason play unless it earned its way there by way of an automatic bid.
It’s bad enough that the NCAA Tournament’s move to 65 teams just means that when we’re down to 64 teams, one team from a smaller conference that earned an automatic bid is already long gone from losing the play-in game. (No. 16 seeds are never at-large teams, as the last at-large selections are usually around the 11-13 range.) Why couldn’t they make the play-in game matchup consist of the last two at-large teams selected instead?
All of this makes the NCAA look like it is merely catering to teams from power conferences, which is exactly what fans, players and coaches from outside those conferences have been talking about for years. Hofstra head coach Tom Pecora, who probably has the biggest gripe this year, stated a lot of these feelings very well after his team lost to UNC-Wilmington in the CAA championship game last Monday night. His team not only was not selected to the NCAA Tournament – while a team they beat twice, including in the semifinals of the CAA Tournament, made it – but they are a No. 3 seed in the NIT and might have to go on the road after the first round.
“It’s business, I’ve been doing this long enough to understand it’s business,” said Pecora, whose team is 24-6 and has an RPI in the top 30.
If teams that perform poorly in their conference are going to continue to be rewarded like this merely because they play in the Big East, Big Ten or ACC, the message being sent needs to be made clear from the powers-that-be. Tell schools outside the power conferences to just hold a four-day, winner-take-all tournament, and forget the rest of the season. Clearly, the rest of the season is meaningless – and all that does is make college basketball look more like a joke than like the sport we should all be excited about at this time of the year.
When the NCAA took control of the NIT, there was hope that some things might change. Instead, an old cliché applies, as the more things change, the more they stay the same. The NIT may have new management, but it’s still a show for power conference schools and an event that sends the message to schools outside of those conferences that the season doesn’t matter.
