My initial response to you was about this quote from you “Citing records is faulty because it doesn’t tell the whole story due to strength of schedule. NCAAT appearances does.”
To me that logic is faulty. You can be a good team, like South Carolina was last year and miss the tournament because you scheduled too many 250+ teams rather than 150+ teams, when it’s not much skill level difference in those teams. It’s basically a guessing game when your scheduling on where teams will finish and how good their RPI will be. Look at our non-conference this year, Mr. St. Mary’s has a 171 RPI, and North Florida has a 234 RPI. North Florida was the tougher game for us. Yet, the Mt. St. Mary’s win may end up helping us a lot more, considering they may end up winning their conference tournament. And I’m sure when season started more people would have gave North Florida a better shot to win their conference than Mt. St. Mary’s. If Mt. St Mary’s was a 275+RPI team and we had a couple more teams in non-conference end up as a 200+ RPI rather than sub 200, would be any lesser of a team? Nope, but we would be on the outside of the bracket rather than in right now.
I disagree. The Big 12, for instance, gets higher computer rankings than their quality because it is a small league, which means that there are fewer opportunities for a couple of terrible teams to bring down the SOS and, hence, the computer rankings of the entire conference. As a result, teams in those conferences get more shots at “quality wins” at home, which is usually what decides the bubble. UT- Arlington had a bigger margin of victory in Austin than any Big 12 team has this season, but UT-A has three road losses in the Sun Belt.
It’s very difficult for bubble teams to avoid bad losses on the road in any conference against teams that see them two and three times a year. The variance in the quality of the middle of the power conferences is less than the variance of the quality of play on a given night.
I watch a lot of CUSA basketball. Year in and year out the top of the conference has been quite good. The top four or five could easily compete with the middle of most power conferences. However, it always has a slew of crap at the bottom, being a 16-team conference. As a result, it is a one-bid conference because SOS requires teams to virtually run the table to get an at-large bid. It isn’t a coincidence that the CUSAT champ has performed quite well in the tourney the last couple of years, and neither was the best team in the conference that season.
In 2014 La Tech won 28 games. They won at OU, who got an at-large bid and finished second in the Big 12. However, they had three road losses in CUSA, one to #223 East Carolina and then got upset by Tulsa in the CUSAT finals. NIT. If that team had been in a power conference, they wouldn’t have won 28 games, but they would have been in the NCAAT.
I do understand from year to year there are mistakes for teams getting into the NCAA tournament and some left out. There are so many influences for stats, records, leagues, etc. the committee has to make a calculated and certainly in many instances a not so unbiased decision. What I don’t see is it’s harder to make the tournament in a down league (relative to so-called basketball conferences) like the SEC which does not have the type of ball several other conferences do have on an annual basis. A great point in case made is if we played in the ACC would it be easier for the Hogs to make the tournament and the commonsense answer is no because our record under MA would be a lot worse than it is now. Our entire Hog fan base believes the SEC is the best football conference in the country virtually every year, then logic would mandate CBB has a much harder time getting into and staying a Top 25 team and making upper echelon bowls. You can’t have it both ways.
Take Texas Tech last season. That wasn’t a team that was much better than our 16-16 team. If fact, we beat them at home, and they edged 14-17 Mississippi St. by 3 on a neutral court. Their best wins in nonconference were South Dakota St. and UALR, both at home. Tubby really played the scheduling game beautifully by only playing three 200+ opponents in nonconference, but his toughest game was probably us in a true road game, which he lost. They were .500 in the Big 12 but managed to get an at-large bid at 19-13.
There is no way that team puts up a gaudy, say, 13-5 record in the SEC, which is probably what they would have needed to get a bid out of the SEC with that nonconference resume. Vandy barely got in at 11-7 (also 19 total wins), having played a hellacious nonconference schedule that included Kansas, Purdue, Dayton,Baylor, and Texas (only Dayton at home). What got Tech in was a road win at Texas, who lost to Northern Iowa in the first round of the NCAAT, and great home wins over OU and Iowa St. Given enough opportunities a bubble team will get some quality wins, especially at home. See Tennessee over UK. Texas Tech would have finished in the middle scrum of the SEC like Vandy at around 11-7 and gone to the NIT.
You also can’t compare basketball to football it’s completely different in every single thing.
Also, your comment about it being harder to make the tournament in the ACC as being common sense, that’s not common sense, that’s your opinion. I’m looking at schools like Georgia Tech with Josh Pastner, who doesn’t have a great roster, who are currently in the “first four” out list, with a 6-7 record in conference. You know why they are on the first four out list with a record like that? Because they pulled 3 upsets against ranked teams on their home court, because they get an opportunity to do that almost every week in conference play. You mean to tell me Mike Anderson, with nearly a 90% home record, wouldn’t be able to pull some upsets at home on ranked teams if he played one in Bud Walton arena several times? Our 13-14 team, which wasn’t that great, beat a top 20 Kentucky team twice and lost by 2 points in OT to a final four Florida team, who was ranked #10 at the time. If we would have had 2 or 3 more ranked teams come to Bud Walton that year we would have made the tournament. That’s why Arkansas has trouble scheduling top tier schools for home/home in the non-conference because none of the top teams want to risk coming to Bud Walton arena and getting a loss, because they know it’s very possible.
18-7, Neutral record 2-1, road record 3-5, Conference record 7-6, Last 12 6-6, vs Top 50 RPI 2-5, SOS 58, OOC SOS 291, RPI 35 (today still 35), lost yesterday (18-8)
Team B:
19-7, Neutral record 2-0, road record 5-4, Conference record 8-5, Last 12 7-5, vs Top 50 RPI 3-4, SOS 62, OOC SOS 51, RPI 37 (today 33), won yesterday (20-7)
Per the people that answered on the board, Team B has the better resume. Per Palm and Lunardi team A is a solid 8 seed, Team B is on the bubble.
Team A plays in the ACC, Team B in the SEC. so, for those that are disagreeing how is team A a solid team?
That’s a great example. I’d love to hear someone explain that one to me. There’s only 1 argument that could be made for them, but shouldn’t be the difference from an 8 seed and a 11 seed. I’m curious to see Lunardi’s updated bracket on Monday.
I don’t know what’s going on with the SEC bias, but it’s there. Both Lunardi and Palm missed on Florida’s seeding when the committee put their top 16 out. Lunardi had them as a 4 and Palm as a 6, when the committee had them as the top 3 seed. Palm was on TV arguing about that, he was so certain the SEC didn’t have any teams in the top 16, and we ended up with 2. I really would have like if the committee did a complete bracket, for all we know when they had us on the first four out during that time, we could have been a 10 or 11 seed in the committee eyes.
It’s normal they hate the SEC. Joe Lunardi is a Mid major lover! Put Wichita State in the SEC or any other power 5 conference and they would not be sitting on 24 wins. Our league gets no respect ! The ACC today was showing 9 teams in the Dance with others on the bubble. That absurd. He’ll get change the name to the ACC invitational tournament. The bias will never change. Resume it should just list what conference. Syracuse and Georgia Tech are both NIT teams. And they both in consideration. Big 12 Big 10 same story. Michigan State is not a team that should make the dance but they will put them in.
I think it’s about $.
Gonzaga claims they will play anybody anywhere. Try to get a home and home with them. Kansas claims the same thing but cry baby Bill Self would probably crawlfish after we played them at Allen Field House and cancel. They just need to get some power 5 home and home series set up that would take care of 2 years at a time. You 3 to 3 of those and hope they continue the Big 12 challenge! Maybe get another challenge with another power 5 conference. Butler, Wichita State, Creighton, North Carolina and Oklahoma State seem to play teams in the SEC why not get some of these. When you do schedule teams like that you have to win for it to help you.