March Madness 2024

[Xville]

It's also very possible that as the commissioner she had repeatedly advised teams on how to manage their OOC schedules and this is sort of her looking at them, shrugging, and saying "See, I told you."

I guess it is possible, but I doubt it. Looking at the three schedules, it looks pretty fair to me. Some of these teams ended up being historically bad but those three had no reason to believe that would happen at that time they scheduled them. Here is who Seton Hall scheduled:

USC who was ranked at the time.
Iowa
@Baylor
Rutgers
Missouri who had just been to the tourney and was not supposed to be this bad.


Providence:

K State ---coming off an elite eight
Wisconsin
Georgia
@Oklahoma

St Johns:

Michigan who was not supposed to be this bad and they lost to them
Dayton
Utah
BC
@WVU would have been fine had huggy bear not gone scorched earth

I think her ChatGPT response was soft bs and instead of sticking up for the teams in her conference, she kind of blamed them.

Her competency over the last year should be highly questioned at this point, and I don't trust her to get a tv deal done that is beneficial for the conference. Where the Big East stands in the landscape of college sports, which honestly isn't great being that we don't have football to fall back on, we need a visionary like Gavitt, who btw would have never had that kind of crap response.

[D-West & PO-Z]

Okay, Dayton kind of proves the point I was trying to make the most when it comes to what a team needs to do OOC. They are objectively not a good team. Their OOC SOS was 40, they won the one road game they played, and they beat a team on the board away from home. And...that's ALL they did! Yet, they are somehow a 7. Perhaps the worst team that's ever worn white in the entire 85 years of the NCAA Tournament.

Another thing that I know is available to them is miles traveled. I'd like to think they don't look at that, but there are times I think they do. Since the Big 12 is spread throught three timezones, the look at the miles traveled and think "WOW! These guys go everywhere!" And then look at Saint John's and think "these guys never went anywhere."

I don't know what else to really say. I wasn't surprised by the selections. That's not at all the same as saying I agreed with them. But to me it looks like they did exactly what they always do. What's different about this year than any other year??

Well 2 teams were the highest NET teams to ever be left out. Historically if you were in the top 35 you were in. That changed.

Also they have historically been more concerned with who you beat that’s good and how many teams was that.

Seton Hall is the first team ever left out with 6 quad 1 wins. That feels different.

[xubrew]

Well 2 teams were the highest NET teams to ever be left out. Historically if you were in the top 35 you were in. That changed.

Also they have historically been more concerned with who you beat that’s good and how many teams was that.

Seton Hall is the first team ever left out with 6 quad 1 wins. That feels different.

I think you answered the first part with the second part. And while Seton Hall did have six quad 1 wins, Rutgers was left out last year with 5 quad 1 wins, and arguably a better record against both quad 1 and quads 1 and 2. Seton Hall was 6-8 vs quad 1 and 9-12 vs quad 2. Last year's Rutgers team was 5-4 vs quad 1 and 9-9 vs quad 2. So, while Seton Hall did have one more win, they also had way more chances to do it.

It's also worth noting that it wasn't a normal year. the ACC, Pac 12, A10, American, and Mountain West conference all had someone win the conference tournament that would not have made it into the field without the auto-bid. SOMETIMES you see that in the A10 or the AAC, and maybe once every twenty years you see that in one of the power conferences. Prior to this year I can only think of two examples, and that was Oregon State in 2021, which was the COVID year, and Georgia in whatever year it was the tornado hit the Georgia Dome. This year, it happened FIVE TIMES!! That's ABSURD!. That means that five teams that would have otherwise been in weren't. So, in a normal year, Seton Hall and Indiana State are both in.

Indiana State won 15 games away from home. I believe that is also a record for not being selected. Not only that, but if you look at the committee's final list of the teams they ranked 1 thru 68, Drake is ranked ahead of some of the teams in the First Four, so perhaps Indiana State has the biggest gripe.

[xubrew]

One more thought...

There are two teams with NETs in the top 30 that are in the first four, and another team with a top 30 net that was left out altogether. So, it seems pretty obvious to me that they aren't valuing teams that they feel are just gaming the NET, and that the answer is not to schedule weak teams and blow them out.

[D-West & PO-Z]

Regardless of bid stealers I will never understand Virginia being in.

54 NET
2-7 Quad 1
69 in KenPom (not an official tool but one at their disposal)

[xubrew]

Regardless of bid stealers I will never understand Virginia being in.

54 NET
2-7 Quad 1
69 in KenPom (not an official tool but one at their disposal)

They perfectly fit the profile of a team that shouldn't be in, but that normally gets selected anyway. They won an OOC game away from home against a tournament team. Whenever a team does that, their odds of making it go up exponentially. As someone that has looked at this pretty closely for a long time, I'm not saying that it SHOULD, I'm just saying that it DOES. They got in because on the fourth day of the season they beat Florida in Charlotte (which isn't even THAT far away) in a game that almost no one even realized was being played, and that if they were to replay it today they'd almost assuredly get destroyed.

[ArizonaXUGrad]

Virginia blown out but the Big East is 0-3 in the NIT opening round.

[Xville]

Virginia blown out but the Big East is 0-3 in the NIT opening round.

Virginia should not have been picked. Butler/Xavier lost a game that doesn't matter and X would not have even been in it had 6-7 teams not declined the invite. Providence didn't have their best player play a meaningless game.

Anyways, in regards to the selection committee, something needs to change. You can't watch basketball and believe that Virginia was a tournament team over Indiana State, Seton Hall, St. Johns etc. I don't know if we need some real basketball people in that room to add some common sense along with the "metrics" or what, but this was the worst bracket job I have seen in my lifetime. I'm not talking just about whether teams made it or not, but a lot of the seedings made absolutely zero sense.

[ArizonaXUGrad]

Virginia should not have been picked. Butler/Xavier lost a game that doesn't matter and X would not have even been in it had 6-7 teams not declined the invite. Providence didn't have their best player play a meaningless game.

Anyways, in regards to the selection committee, something needs to change. You can't watch basketball and believe that Virginia was a tournament team over Indiana State, Seton Hall, St. Johns etc. I don't know if we need some real basketball people in that room to add some common sense along with the "metrics" or what, but this was the worst bracket job I have seen in my lifetime. I'm not talking just about whether teams made it or not, but a lot of the seedings made absolutely zero sense.

Seedings are just their opinion, but it's clear to me that the BE was good 1-3 and 4-11 were dog shit and beat each other up. BC was 8-12 in conference, Georgia was 6-14, Minnesota was 9-11. Villanova and Seton Hall are left to show some face for the mid-table teams. I really hope they win a few games and save face for the conference as a whole. If not all this talk of the BE being the second best conference is nonsense.

[Xville]

I know he's not everyone's cup of tea, but he's been my favorite coach (outside of Miller) for a long time now. I really appreciate how vulnerable he has become over the last couple of years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GKfBfeqCms