So looking back at this now... (assuming that nothing else would have changed in our season) them cancelling hurt both of us. They would have had a better SOS which would have helped their chances at an at large... and it would have helped our SOS which would have helped our seeding.

Well that sucks!

Same can be said for the other 49 schools that turned us down for a buyout game.

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Cigarboy sucks!

49? Is that the truth?

In a Trib article from mid-Feb (?), Porter talked about what he had to do after NC State canceled. He said he reached out to 50 schools for a buyout game and only Florida responded positively.

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Cigarboy sucks!

Yesterday,
NC state loses to Boston College, Yet they are predicted to be in the tourney with a higher seed than LU.
ND beats Virginia Tech and ND is a bubble team, yet VT is seeded higher than LU.
They are going 8 and 9 deep in three conferences, plus the four in for the play in to gain the 2 held #11 seeds.
Would it be a decent proposal to hold two of the #11 seed play ins for conferences that have only one entrant from an autobid, with a second place team that is not considered. I. E. Boise St.,
How about a subtraction from P5 teams that do not play mid major road games....
I am spending way too much time on this, due to LU being involved, but it sure seems like the NCAA finds schools outside the P5 or 6 to be an annoying presence at this event, Expand to 64, PLUS four schools get a third crack via the #11 playin games... P5 should be cut in half or excluded from the #11 play in. Oklahoma gets a redo? Come on already. The four schools playing for the two #16 seeds are autobids from conference winners! So two are out before the round of 64 as a reward for a great season and two P5 schools will get a #11 seed for their play in.....as a reward for WHAT?
This is a great reason why the conferences outside P5 need to work together, improve their quality of play and the amount of scheduling among themselves out of conference. It seems to me that the NCAA is not there to work equally for the sake of college basketball. Am I nuts or what? Please advise.

To add insult to injury, all the talk from the experts is that ND will get in for a few reasons. One of which is "This team would be a top 25 team had Colson been healthy all year."

Gee...that sounds familiar...

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Cigarboy sucks!

Great post, great questions, Ramblerguy. You have been thinking about some of the same things I've been thinking about.



YES! I pointed out last week that there are exactly 75 total teams in the P5+Big East. Their new way of keeping mid-major teams out of the tournament is this new "Quadrant" system that "replaces" consideration of top 50 and top 100 wins. And it's the number of Q1 and Q2 wins that matters--- the LOSSES DO NOT MATTER AT ALL. So where do they draw the line to consider what is a Q1 and Q2 win? For road games, it's at 75 for a Q1 win, and for home games the cutoff is 75. To me, that says "we won't consider any of your wins worthwhile unless they come against teams that are or should be in the top 6 conferences" without actually saying it. Also, they consider a team that 6 wins and 11 against Q1/Q2 teams to be far superior to a team that is 4-3 against Q1/Q2. Losses don't matter if they're against Q1/Q2 (or teams that would be in the P5+BE if RPI merit were the only consideration).

Something needs to be done about under-.500 conference teams getting at large bids, because they have no incentive to ever play decent teams outside their conference. They can play all MEAC or SWAC or the bottom of the WAC and Summit and Big Sky in guarantee games on their home court. They'll mix in an MTE, or a conference challenge game to make it look respectable and get another chance at a Q1/Q2 win. But there is a huge disincentive to play respectable teams.

So how to fix it?

1. Teams under .500 in conference need to have a better than .500 record in their conference tournament, or they are not eligible for consideration. (Example: If you're 8-10 in the Big 12 or SEC, you have to go at least 2-1 in your conference tournament).
2. Consider road victories as a factor equal to Q1/Q2 or strength of schedule, OR add a bonus similar to the RPI bonus for road victories when calculating SOS.
3. Also consider Q1/Q2 losses, so a team that is 6-13 against Q1/Q2 is actually worse off than a team that is 4-3, not BETTER off.
4. Adjust the Q1/Q2 cutoffs (e.g. make the neutral site cutoffs the home game cutoffs, and bump the cutoffs for road games up by 10-15%, and split the difference for neutral games). In other words, add 15 or so to all the Quadrant cutoff numbers.
5. If you're going to punish mid-major schools for not scheduling up, then you have to do that to major schools, too. Michigan, Michigan State, Houston, Texas A&M, West Virginia, NC State, Creighton, Florida State, and Nebraska all had Non-Con SOS numbers about where Loyola is or worse, and they played almost all their games at home, bought their home opponents, or bought out their promised road commitments. They had many more choices than mid-majors, and they knew they could make up their overall SOS in conference games, where they could finish below .500 and still make the tournament. This is only going to get worse with the current rewards/punishments as they are. The only way to reasonably be sure that the team you're scheduling against will have a Q1/Q2 level RPI is to schedule against a P5+BE team, but P5+BE teams refuse to schedule mid-majors, because they might lose, and because THEY DON'T HAVE TO.

JCT

We are also naive to think the NCAA thinks there is a problem here. They pulled in a BILLION LAST YEAR,
Maybe the answer lies in the distribution of funds...
That will only come when forced on them. How about non power 5 schools/conferences form a sub association with meetings to brainstorm the idea. They could discuss scheduling or not scheduling, or whatever to create themselves as a group with more clout. The NCAA has a problem this year because they are hard pressed to find enough quality power schools to fill the field. To that point, stronger mid major conferences would force the issue.
Seth Greenberg, ( I think) alluded to the committee letting in schools with sub par records so one and done student athlete stars, ala Trey Young, get the visibility and ratings otherwise lost.
What a mess.
I am glad we are enjoying LU's season on a much simpler plane. Go Ramblers

I hope there are a few people doing their master's thesis on The Oligarchization of the NCAA. The current system seems determined to erase any stratification of teams outside the favored group. As a result, the MVC, MWC, A10, CAA, and West Coast are being shut out in a systematic way-- shunned in scheduling by the P5+BE, and then held accountable for the result. It's Dickensian.

JCT, for the most part I like your take. I think I differ slightly on some of them.

1. I just think that if you don't finish 0.500 or better in conference, then you have to win your tournament. I think if you adapt the winning record in the tournament, you'll have conferences changing their tournament format to increase the odds of a team getting a couple wins and getting an at-large

2. I like this a lot. At any level, it's hard to play on the road, and they should reward teams for doing that.

3. I agree, but will word it a little differently. Look at how did a team do with what it was given, like winning% against Q1/Q2 teams. Ask any player/coach/fan if late in a game they want free throws shot by the guy who is 3-3 or 6-18. Give me the guy shooting 100% and not 33%.

4. I struggle with this only because I don't like team cutoffs in general. Is a team ranked 51 really an easier win than one ranked 50? But it's definitely easier to beat 50 than it is #1.

5. If you punish schools for not scheduling, the big conferences will just start to only schedule games against other power conferences to increase the non-conf SOS. I haven't figured out a real detailed plan that could work, but I do have an idea. Tier off conferences according to conference RPI (For example, Tier 1: 1-7, Tier 2: 8-15, Tier 3: 16-24, Tier 4: 25-32) Say if you're in Tier 1, you need to play at X% of your games against Tier 2, Y% against Tier 3, and Z% against Tier 4 with at least say 25% of those being a true road game. Make it so failure to meet these standards makes a team ineligible for an at-large bid. Do similar standards for the different tiers. Force teams to schedule.