Rambler88 wrote:
I don't think we should have a hard and fast rule about losing conference records. As it stands today, the Big 12 has 6 or 7 teams in the top 25 polls and 9 teams in Kenpom's top 35. I realize there
are scheduling issues with the big conferences, which hurts our ranking. At the same time, I think it is hard to argue that Big 12 shouldn't get 9 teams in the tournament and some of these teams will have losing conference records.
To me, it doesn't matter how good your conference is. The point of the NCAA tournament is to determine the best team in the country. If you have a losing record in your conference, you're nowhere near the best team in your conference. You had 18-20 games to show you could compete with the best and you didn't. If you're not close to the best team in your conference, you're not close to being the best team in the country.
Since they expanded the tournament to 64 teams, no team with a losing conference record has made the Final 4. A couple .500 teams have, but that's fairly rare, and all but 1 of them won at least one conference tournament game. Teams who win in the regular season tend to win come tournament time. I think the math even shows that mid-majors who have lots of wins out perform lower power conference teams relative to their seed.