During the next few days, you’ll likely hear plenty of complaints about the inclusion of California in the NCAA Tournament. There’s good reason to be unhappy with the Golden Bears’ at-large bid because it means that teams don’t actually need to beat their toughest opponents. They just need to schedule enough of them to inflate the RPI and strength of schedule.
California deserves credit for taking on Syracuse, Ohio State, New Mexico, Kansas, Murray State and Santa Barbara, all of which are NCAA Tournament teams. However, the Bears went 2-4 against those teams, with the two wins coming against Murray State and Santa Barbara at home.
NCAA Tournament at-large teams should have to prove that they can beat other tournament teams, especially ones ranked among the top four seeds. Teams need to earn an invitation by winning, not just playing great teams. That’s especially true for teams that hail from conferences that don’t have at least one or two high-quality teams.
The Pac-10 was undoubtedly down this season, with traditional powerhouses like UCLA and Arizona rebuilding. Arizona State and Washington were the toughest teams not named California, and if Washington had not won the conference’s automatic bid, it’s possible that neither of those teams would have joined the Bears in the Big Dance. Based on RPI rankings, the Pac-10 was the No. 8 conference, ranked lower than the Atlantic 10 and Mountain West and just ahead of the Missouri Valley and WAC.
The WAC champion, Utah State, also earned an at-large bid. However, the Aggies were seeded No. 11 compared to the Bears’ No. 8 seed. And Utah State has a marquee win against BYU and 10 wins against the RPI top 100. In contrast, California has no wins against the RPI top 25 and only six wins against the top 100. Why is there such a big difference in the teams’ seeding? Does strength of schedule really matter that much? If so, teams could realistically conclude that they should schedule as many power conference favorites as possible without worrying about winning or losing the games.
If that’s the message that power conference teams interpret from Cal’s inclusion, they likely will seek to schedule more games against one another, which hurts mid-major teams. Despite perennial success, Missouri Valley and CAA teams continue to find it difficult to schedule high-quality opponents from major conferences. They would struggle even more to line up top-notch opponents if the major conference squads want to play only one another.
Let’s hope Cal’s strong strength of schedule doesn’t lead to a caste system in which the top teams don’t want to mingle with mid-major opponents for fear of hurting their computer ratings.
