Sometimes when one has been in the dark, some light at end of the tunnel is good enough for the short term. Sometimes a hit for extra bases is just fine in the absence of a home run to get a rally started.
Sometimes improvement is more important than getting everything one wants all at once. The selection committee for the 2019 NCAA Tournament accomplished it, and the sport of college basketball is better for it.
After the disappointment with the work by respective NCAA Tournament selection committees the past few years, the 2019 tourney’s selections have to be regarded as a solid step in the right direction. That’s a good thing for the quality and legitimacy of the tourney, and also for restoring faith in the process that puts together this event.
That faith was tested heavily in recent years. Following the selection process for 30 years, from here it genuinely felt like the work done by committees the previous five years was poor. We know that no committee is trying to do a ‘bad’ job, of course. But it was more than clear in that time that the committee had a bad slant towards schools and conferences that already have more than enough slanted in their favor, and it was shortchanging the vast majority of NCAA Division I schools. Most importantly, the result of that was doing harm to this great event.
In a small way, this year’s field feels like validation of that. It reminds us that, as it has shown in the past, the selection committee can do very good work. It also shows that those thoughts in the last handful of years weren’t just recency bias.
It’s hard to state how important this development is. The NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee for all intents and purposes sets the agenda for the sport. If the committee doesn’t respect teams from outside the top 6-7 conferences, those in leagues who hold the most power in scheduling aren’t going to play them in the regular season, either.
Money talks in Division I athletics, of course, and the allocation of NCAA Tournament bids can and will affect behavior by schools in scheduling. When the top leagues are allowed to hoard at-large bids with their teams still regularly losing 14, 15 games, the committee is essentially sanctioning the divide in the regular season that has the top couple conferences colluding in scheduling, and everyone else at a severe disadvantage.
This year was progress. The committee did an improved job in its selections and was much more fair to teams outside the top handful of conferences. It also gave us an abundance of outstanding first-round games. After the frustrations of recent years, this was a very encouraging turnaround for the event many of us love so much.
First off, the committee got it absolutely right putting Belmont in the field. The Bruins had a terrific season: a 26-5 record, a sparkling 12-3 road record, and going 2-2 against Quadrant 1 and 3-1 against Quadrant 2. With numbers like those, it’s pretty easy to imagine that if Belmont had played, say, 14 Quadrant 1 games instead of four, they could’ve done better than the 4-10 mark so many majors posted in those games.
It doesn’t take efficiency calculations to tell one that the Bruins didn’t just beat teams, they dominated many of them. They were rolling until the Ohio Valley Conference tournament final, and it’s possible Belmont would’ve won the automatic bid if freshman all-conference center Nick Muszynski hadn’t been injured in the game before the league tourney final against Murray State. As it is, the OVC has two bids to the NCAAs for the first time since 1987, a worthy reward for a league that had a really good league race this season.
More than that, though, the seeds of Buffalo (6), Wofford (7) and VCU (8) also indicated that this committee was seeing teams from outside TV’s chosen leagues in a much better light. All three were seeded very fairly, maybe even generously in the case of the Rams, who appeared could’ve been in some trouble. VCU dominated the Atlantic 10, though, and rightly wasn’t punished much for a league tourney loss where its top player was injured.
Moreover, this year’s field has 11 multi-bid conferences, up from just nine the previous three years. That’s even above the average of 10.7 multi-bid leagues since 1997, the cut-off point over the years for when the number dropped considerably after being much healthier (13.3 per year) in the first 12 seasons of a 64-team field. It still can get better, and some of it undoubtedly was the result of surprise tourney winners in leagues like the WCC and Atlantic 10, but this was a positive step nonetheless.
Just as much as getting it right with some teams that got in, the committee was correct in some it didn’t choose. Alabama, Indiana and Texas had 15, 15 and 16 losses and were a combined five games over .500. Selection committee chair Bernard Muir even seemed to say on CBS’s selection special that this was a consideration of the committee, and rightfully so.
The committee also nailed it with North Carolina State, not rewarding a team that played what ranked as the very worst non-conference schedule in the country and ran up big scores against it to pump up its NET ranking. The Wolfpack played a ton of buy games and chose poorly with them. If only State had played and beaten, oh…maybe a team like UNC Greensboro, who they did play a year earlier (and lost to), they would’ve had a much better case for inclusion. The committee avoided setting some dangerous precedents of putting in a .500 team (Texas) or allowing a team to manipulate a power ranking by running up the score, something people should’ve known would be a danger of efficiency ranks anyway.
All of these developments are nothing but positives for those wanting a more national, inclusive tourney that emphasizes winning and is not embracing mediocrity.
That doesn’t mean there still isn’t room for improvement. The selection committee got it wrong putting in Florida and Ohio State, a pair of Division I athletics behemoths who slid in-and didn’t even have to go through play-in games-while teams like Furman and UNC Greensboro were out.
The Gators’ overall record of 19-15 tells a lot of the story; their poor 25% conversion rate in 16 Quadrant 1 chances (a 4-12 record) tells even more. With no other high-quality wins, Florida got in essentially because it beat LSU twice, the second time this past week when the Tigers played without their coach. For a team with a very mediocre resume, that’s a whole lot of importance-an outsized one, some might say-placed on a win over a clearly wounded team. Even a squad like TCU-which beat Florida, it should be noted-would’ve been a better selection.
The Buckeyes also have a middling record (19-14), and other than a win at Cincinnati in both teams’ season opener-a time when the Bearcats were breaking in three new starters and a lot of young players-there’s not a lot of substance. Ohio State was 4-11 against teams inside the NET top 50, and one of those wins was over No. 50 Penn State, whose ranking there is a farce with the Nittany Lions’ whole 14-18 record. (The Nittany Lions also are a chief reminder that the NCAA’s NET needs work in finding the balance between the RPI, which weighed scheduling too heavily, and efficiency metrics, which put way too much weight on blowing teams out in victory or playing close in losses.) The Buckeyes’ resume screamed NIT.
There also should be some concern that a team like Indiana with its weak 17-15 record was cited by the NCAA as one of its first four teams out. The inclusion of Belmont and the strong seeds for teams like Buffalo and VCU showed that, this year, winning mattered more to this committee than others in the recent past. It still needs to matter even more.
(It should be noted: if the committee was using the RPI this year instead of the NET, it’s quite likely that neither team would’ve gotten in, and Indiana’s candidacy would’ve been ended earlier too. Florida would’ve been 3-12 against quad 1 and 5-13 vs. the top two quadrants; Ohio State would’ve been 2-10 vs. Quadrant 1 and 7-12 against the top two. Others such as the excellent TV analyst Mark Adams have noted that the NET overall has favored teams from leagues like these two draw from, and it certainly helped both get in with questionable resumes.)
It also was a miss that Oregon winning the Pac-12 tourney final Saturday night knocked UNC Greensboro out of the field. It’s a real punch in the gut that a league that has had such a notably poor year (the Pac-12) somehow benefits from an upset in its conference tournament. Meanwhile, a league that had a historically exceptional year in the Southern Conference is the one on the wrong end of said underachieving league’s fortune.
Now, it’s well-known that the committee doesn’t ration out bids by conference, but Arizona State was a team that could’ve been very easily left out of the tourney, with its big wins over Kansas, Mississippi State and Utah State essentially cancelled out by bad losses to Princeton and Washington State at home and decisively at SEC cellar-dweller Vanderbilt.
This was a case where sometimes the committee should understand that what it is doing is not rocket science. Much of this is splitting hairs, and cases can be made for a number of teams on the fence. This tourney would not have been worse off without Arizona State, but it definitely would’ve been better to add one more multi-bid conference.
UNC Greensboro and Furman had the strongest cases for inclusion from this view. It’s acknowledged that both squads did not have the quantity of big wins many expect of a team to get picked, and in that regard it’s not surprising that they were left out. (In fact, UNCG being as close as they were to getting in is another positive sign of respect from the selection committee for teams like it).
UNCG was 2-6 against Quadrant 1; Furman was 1-5. The problem is: the two combined to play exactly two of those combined 13 top quadrant games at home, while ten were on the road. Considering the two were a combined 45-2 against quadrants 2-4 (including UNCG a perfect 24-0), it stands to reason both were victimized by lack of high-end opportunity as much as anything.
Neither team had four Quadrant 1 games at home like Florida or Ohio State. This continues to emphasize the importance of the selection committee giving teams like these the benefit of the doubt; because when they don’t get as many opportunities, the committee is naturally going to have a harder time getting a full read on them.
Despite that, this year’s committee deserves considerable credit, especially for navigating a tricky season. The influence of the NET was fairly negligible: it was used as a sorting tool, just like the committee said it would be. Anyone who was expecting the NCAA to just tick down the NET’s list of teams clearly wasn’t listening.
The committee also has put together all kinds of attractive first round games. Marquette against Murray State features Markus Howard against Ja Morant. Kansas State/UC Irvine and Auburn/New Mexico State are among some juicy upset possibilities. LSU against Yale features a school that could be in hot water with the NCAA very soon against an Ivy League team, and one that will have some athletes to match the Tigers’ many.
Louisville meeting Minnesota matches Richard Pitino against his father’s former school. Cincinnati against Iowa features two strong coaching personalities and what should be a fun contrast of styles. Syracuse and Baylor pairs two leading purveyors of zone defenses in recent years.
From where the selection process has been in recent years, this year was a definite tick upward. The 2019 tournament field is more balanced than we’ve seen in some time, and as a result the selection committee has created a much better product.
When the selection committee chooses teams like Belmont for at-large bids, when it gives respect to teams like Buffalo and Wofford in seeding, it legitimizes what those teams and leagues are doing. Top programs are less likely to avoid a Buffalo or VCU or Belmont if they know they’re taking on a team held in high regard at NCAA tourney time.
That’s a win for those teams, the tourney, and the entire sport.
More thoughts on the field:
Overseeded: Louisville, Marquette, Mississippi, Syracuse.
The closeness of teams on seed lines from about 7 through 10 meant that someone had to be seeded higher than maybe expected. Still, the Cardinals as a 7 seed is tough to buy for a team with 13 losses and just a 4-11 mark vs. Quadrant 1. Marquette slumped badly at the end of the season and finished behind Villanova in the Big East in both the regular season and tournament, yet somehow was ahead of the Wildcats. Ole Miss is a team we mentioned on Selection Sunday as having a thinner resume than its season reputation indicated, and 4-10 vs. Q1 and 7-12 against the top two quadrants don’t suggest an 8 seed. The same goes for Syracuse, whose actual resume is much less than an 8 seed. Apparently the Cuse got extra credit for winning at Duke when the Blue Devils were missing several players due to injury.
Underseeded: Iowa, Minnesota, Seton Hall. Again, the 8-through-10 lines were going to leave some debatable seeds, but to us Seton Hall was more deserving of a 7 seed than Louisville. We might say the same of Minnesota, which has a better resume than an Ole Miss. Iowa could easily make a case that it should’ve been ahead of a Baylor or Washington.
Final bids: Among others to just get into the field, we’re thrilled to see Temple in and for Fran Dunphy to get one more chance in the NCAA Tournament in his last year with the Owls. There truly will be no sentimental favorite in the Temple/Belmont play-in game, because both fill that role. As far as St. John’s being the last team in, you won’t find an argument here. The Johnnies’ NET was indeed poor, but notable given how heavy this is to the criteria now it seems, they also were 5-7 against Quadrant 1 and 10-10 against the top two quadrants. Two wins over Marquette, another over Villanova and a (disputed) one over VCU is a pretty good base of victories. The non-conference schedule was very weak, and could’ve easily been punished, but for our money SJU still had a better case than several other teams seeded ahead of it.
Top seeds: If it were us, we would’ve put Michigan State on the first line-but ahead of North Carolina, not Gonzaga as many suggested. The Spartans as Big Ten regular season and tournament champions certainly were worthy of the top seed in the Midwest regional. No doubt the two Quadrant 2 losses hurt to a degree, and we tend to subscribe to the theory that in most cases people spend way too much time worrying about the difference between a 1 and a 2 seed.
Annual pod system nonsense: This year’s tourney has South and West sub-regional games in Hartford, Conn, Midwest sub-regionals in Jacksonville, Fla., and East sub-regional games in San Jose, Calif.
Conference champions sent far away on road: Another reason why the pod system stinks is how it sends league winners far away, all in the desire to give higher seeds more advantages. Michigan didn’t win the Big Ten regular season or tournament titles, yet as a 2 seed in the West gets to play in Des Moines. Meanwhile, Montana-the westernmost of the 15 seeds and correctly placed in the West regional-has to go to Des Moines instead of playing in Salt Lake City or San Jose. Saint Louis also gets sent to San Jose as part of the East regional when it could easily be in the Midwest at a Midwestern site, and Murray State could’ve easily been in the South where it belonged, but instead gets shipped up to Hartford while in the West region. It’s all incredibly confusing. And unnecessary.
Best first round matchups:
- Kansas State/UC Irvine: Our favorite, and it’s not even close. The Anteaters are red-hot (do people know this team has already won 30 games?) and K-State has run hot and cold at times. The Wildcats’ defense may be the difference, but UCI is deep, tough inside and if Kansas State isn’t making shots, this could be woolly.
- Auburn/New Mexico State: The Aggies are a close cousin to UC Irvine in their play. NMSU is scorching-hot, excellent defensively and is maybe the deepest team in the country, with literally 13-14 players who could make an impact in the game. Of course, the Tigers also come in off the high of the SEC tourney title and could be around for a while.
- Villanova/Saint Mary’s: Another we absolutely love. Tough chore for the Gaels playing the defending champs, but SMC proved in its WCC final masterpiece against Gonzaga that it won’t fear playing one of the best.
- Utah State/Washington: Another Aggies, and this group is terrific shooting the three and wearing out a defense. The matchup with the Huskies’ zone should be outstanding.
- Marquette/Murray State: You’ll be hearing all week about Ja Morant going against Markus Howard. The Golden Eagles likely have better pieces around their star, but also have been on the skids coming into the tourney, and Morant just might be good enough to put the Racers on his back.
- VCU/Central Florida: Appealing matchup between two exceptional defensive teams.
- LSU/Yale: The Tigers have ‘dudes’, but believe it or not, the Bulldogs do, too. Yale also came out of a very tough Ivy League this year, and LSU’s consistency has been up and down even when it does have its coach.
- Cincinnati/Iowa: Terrific contrast between the down-and-dirty Bearcats and the offense-minded Hawkeyes, who are another team that struggled down the stretch. Location of this is also intriguing: it’s in Ohio, which would suggest a Cincy advantage, but also in diehard Big Ten country.
- Louisville/Minnesota: Yes, Richard Pitino goes against his dad’s former school.
- Purdue/Old Dominion: The Monarchs are better in quality than a 14 seed, and Conference USA teams have won each of the last four years from seeds of 12 or worse. If its tough defense can keep the wraps on Carsen Edwards, or just limit anyone else from doing heavy damage, ODU certainly could extend that streak.
Twitter: @HoopvilleAdam
