Opinions about NCAA Tournament

[IABucFan]

I am curious what people think about the way the NCAA tourney is currently structured.  Every year, there is talk about who was the last team in and who got snubbed.  This year, it seems those two teams are Michigan and St. Mary's.  I for one don't think that Michigan took a bid away from St. Mary's.  I think it's teams like Alabama State that take bids away from quality teams from smaller conferences.  I think if you put Michigan in the SWAC, they would win the conference going away, so in essence we are awarding teams for playing in bad conferences and punishing teams for playing in better conferences.  What has the SWAC or any other low-major conference done to warrant an automatic bid?  Realize, I'm not talking about the mid-majors here like the A-10, Mountain West, WCC, and Missouri Valley among others.  I'm talking about teams that get whalloped year in and year out by the big boys. 

Take for instance, Binghamton.  They got beat by 25 points against Central Connecticut State earlier in the year.  If they stay within 40 of Duke it will be remarkable.  Why do these teams get in but St. Mary's, San Diego State, and Creighton get left out?   It's affirmative action in athletics.  We have to help out the little guy, so we'll let one team in from each conference and they can have their fifteen minutes of fame.

Of course, many will counter that by saying that the big schools won't schedule these little guys.  But I would counter that by asking why should they?  What does Kansas possibly have to gain from playing Alabama A&M?  Yeah, there's certainly a financial incentive for the big schools to get more teams in the Dance.  Yeah, they hold most of the power, but the fact is that money is involved in these little schools playing D-1 basketball in the first place.  By these low-major schools moving up to D-1, they get more money than playing D-2 or D-3. 

At the end of the day, my point is, if you can't play with the big boys, then don't.  I don't know what my criteria would be for awarding automatic bids, but I don't think every conference should necessarily have an auto bid.  If the little guys don't like that, I'd say tough.  Prove you can play with the big boys and we'll let you play.  But, if you go out and schedule teams from bigger conferences and consistently get beat by 25+ points, then no auto bid for your conference.  The NCAA needs to send the message that not everybody and their dog can play D-1 basketball.  Some of these schools belong in D-2 or D-3.

Just by way of example, Colorado, which finished dead last in the Big 12, which was down this year, beat Prairie View A&M by 25 points.  PVAM finished a respectable third in the SWAC with a 12-6 record.  Iowa, who was absolutely PATHETIC this year beat the Citadel by 22 points.  The Citadel finished third in the Southern Conference with a 15-5 record.

From the other side, Arkansas Pine Bluff finished fourth in the SWAC and actually did schedule some of the big boys.  They got whipped by Colorado, Texas A&M, Creighton, Nebraska, Georgia Tech, Missouri, Purdue, and Cincinnati.  The closest they came in any of these games was a 14 point loss at Nebraska.  They then went on to have a winning record in conference.

So, I ask you, why is Alabama State in the NCAA tourney and not St. Mary's, or SDSU, or Creighton, or Penn State?

[ElliottBayBucco]

I'm still a bit ticked off at the NCAA for putting Oklahoma in the BCS Championship when Utah was clearly a better football team.

[gorillagogo]

I don't have a problem with the NCAA giving out auto-bids to every conference. If they hadn't been doing that all along, I guarantee some of the mid-major conferences you seem to think are OK wouldn't even be on the radar because a lot fewer schools from these conferences would have had NCAA tourney success in past years.

If anything, they should award the auto-bid to the regular season champ instead of the tourney champ. That would eliminate the bids given to teams that just happen to get hot at the right moment. I think St Mary's gets in if Cleveland St doesn't win the Horizon League tourney and their auto-bid went to Butler instead.

[Gnats Eyelash]

I'll come out of retirement to give you a Mr. Fix It solution to the NCAA Tournament.

They already play the 65-64 game, which is a play in game.  Why not allow the snubbed teams to challenge teams in the field on the same Tuesday night.  Basically, the idea would be for the St. Mary's of the world to challenge the 63rd, 62nd, etc teams.

One of the rules would have to be that the challenging school has to have a winning record...or maybe, has had to win at least 18 games.  Another rule:  The challenging school would have to put up the money to foot the cost of the game...and it should be played on the home court of the team that received the initial bid.  The choice to participate would have to be made known by 8 PM Sunday so coaches could prepare Monday for a Tuesday game.  (Maybe you add Wednesday, if the regional starts Friday.)

The winner gets the slot in the field of 64...and the loser is slotted into the NIT.  It would create a nice event for Tuesday (and maybe Wednesday)...give exposure to the mid majors...and would let teams decide it on the court, rather than having some surrogate argue it behind closed doors.  The teams that got the initial bid would get the revenue from the additional home gate, which would made getting a bid on selection Sunday valuable.

The NCAA should like it because it would get additional TV revenue from the play in round.

Back into retirement...

[Dogknot3]

St. Mary's and Alabama St both had the same opportunity to get in the Tournament.  St. Mary's failed to win their regular season conference title and their tournament championship.  St. Mary's also lost to Santa Clara and UTEP (who finished 5th in their conference).

It sucks for St. Mary's that Mills got hurt.  If Mills would have lit up the scoreboard when he came back, they probably would have got the nod.  Personally, I would have put them in the Tournament but I understand why they were left out too. 

Every conference should be represented.  If that was the case, George Mason would have never been in the Final Four a few years ago.  A team like Robert Morris would have nothing to play for.

[IABucFan]

My point isn't so much that every conference shouldn't be represented, but that not every conference should be in Division 1.  Everyone talks about the money that is involved and how the big schools more or less "buy" the at-large bids, or that there is a conspiracy to give them all to schools from the six power conferences, but nobody talks about the fact that a lot of these small schools make the jump from D-2 to D-1 because playing D-1 means more money for them.  I just think that at the end of the day, a conference like the SWAC, or America East, or a few others are better suited to play D-2.  I don't know how you would make that determination, or how you would decide which conferences get auto bids and which don't, but at some point, the NCAA needs to say that there are enough teams in Division 1. 

As it currently stands, there are well over 300.  What if every college in the country decided that they too wanted a piece of the pie and were set to make the jump to D-1?  I mean, heck, NJIT did it, why not MIT?  There is a D-3 school in my hometown, Buena Vista University, that is pretty good by D-3 standards.  What if they decide they want to play D-1?  My alma mater, the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN has a pretty good D-3 team.  Their enrollment is larger than a lot of schools that currrently play D-1.  In other words, which division is school is in is not determined by enrollment, but by other factors, among which, I think, is how big your gym is.  Theoretically, either UST or BVU could just build a bigger gym and then say they want to make the jump, but the fact of the matter is that while both can field competitive D-3 teams, they would be overmatched playing Division 1 competition, even with the ability to give scholarships.

There is only so much talent to go around and the best players will still flock to schools from the six power conferences.  Yeah, every so often, you'll get a Steve Nash at Santa Clara, or a Paty Mills, or a Stephen Curry, but by and large teams like Duke, Carolina, Kansas, UCLA, etc, etc, are good year in and year out because the best players want to go play for them.

I also see your point about George Mason.  Certainly there are others like Gonzaga and Sienna that have established themselves.  However, I'm talking about the absolute bottom of the barrel conferences here.  I'm not talking about the Missouri Valley, or the Mountain West, or the Big West, or even Conference USA (despite the fact that that conference is a joke after Memphis).

The way D-1 basketball is currently structured would be like the MLB playoffs expanding and then inviting the champion of the Carolina League over the third place team in the A.L. Central.