Big East vs Mountain West Conference- what happened?

MHettel · 03-20-2024, 04:16 PM

So the NCAA selection Committee has made the decision that the Big East was worthy of only 3 Tournament bids. I could make an argument for a minimum of 4, probably 5, and a long shot for 6. The easy excuse was that there were "bid thieves", but how did it come out that seemingly only the Big East got screwed?

Another excuse, of course, is that the members on the committee are really "administrators" or bureaucrats, and aren't really qualified to assess which teams are most worthy beyond whats provided to them in the form of metrics. And I sure there is some truth to that, but do we expect that to be any different in the future?

Instead of complaining about what they didn't do, can we try to step in their shoes and try to determine WHY they DID what they DID?

To simplify the analysis of why the Big East was underrepresented, we get lucky because the Mountain West was just as equally OVER REPRESENTED.

Even better is that the Mountain West is also a conference with 11 members, just like the Big East. But there is one difference, and I'll get to that in a minute.

Lets start by looking at who got in (with Seed):

Big East (3 total) : UConn (1), Marquette (2), Creighton (3)
MWC (6 total): SDSU (5) Utah St (8), Nevada (10), CSU (10), Boise St (10), New Mexico (11- Auto bid)

So is this just a matter of Quality vs Quantity? Well, it could appear that way. But then you need to ask how a conference with such high quality doesnt have more quantity, and also why a conference with such "meh" quality have so MUCH quantity?

Lets compare the entire conferences against each other(I have excluded the NIT and Play in games that have already happened)

the Big East had a combined record of 204-157, a 56.5% Win %.
The MWC was at 214-147, which was 59.3%
So, that easy, right? They played the exact same number of games and the MWC won 10 more. That's good for 3 more NCAA bids...???

But wait, who did they play? Out of Conference, it's not even close.

On average the BE had the 61st ranked OOC SOS. The WMC had the 124th ranked OOC SOS on average.

Of the 22 teams involved,

BE had the 3 highest non-con SOS
BE had 5 of the top 6 non-con SOS
BE had 7 of the top 10 OOC SOS
BE has 9 of the top 13 OOC SOS
9 of 11 BE teams have a better OOC SOS than the MWC average
Bottom 3 OOC SOS belong to MWC teams

Allright, so the MWC must have had many more wins against that weak schedule, right? AH HAH! This is where the magic comes in. We established earlier that the WMC won 10 more games than the BE did. So they must have won 10 more non-con games, right, since every conference game has a winner and a loser....

Except for the fact that the MWC won 20 more non-con games than the Big east did.....because they play less conference games, and as a result more non-con games.

The Big East went 84-37 (69.4%) in the non-con against that grueling schedule. While the WMC went 104-38 (73.2%) against a not so challenging noncon schedule. So they got 20 more wins and only 1 more loss than the BE.

But they weren't done there. Because they played such a weak schedule, they could play on the road alot more. 52% of their games were at home, 22% were on the road, and 26% were neutral. Compare that to the Big East where 64% of the games were at home, 14% on the road, and 22% away.

If you haven't quite figured out the takeaway about OOC scheduling yet, then just give this section another quick read....

Moving on, lets talk about overall winning percentages.

Every conference game (and Conf Tourney game) has a winner and a loser. of the 204 TOTAL wins for the Big East, 120 of them came against a Big East Opponent. or said differently, our conference took 120 LOSSES on our overall combined record by playing each other. So now blend the OOC winning percentage with the conference winning percentage using a weighted average;

Big East: .500 In Conference over 240 total games played + .694 OOC over 121 games. When that blends together, we get a 56.1% combined winning percentage for the conference.

Mountain West: .500 in conference over 218 total games + 73.2% OOC over 142 games. That blends to a 59.3% combined winning percentage.

The takeway is that 2/3rd of the games (240 of 361) that go into the overall combined record of the BE are essentialy .500.

The math for the WMC works out to 60.4% of the combined record being based on games they played amongst themselves.

Well, I've laid out what I believe I see when I look beyond the numbers.

I know its not a popular take, but I think we play just too many conference games, and we need to add a couple additional non-con away games that we can win. Imagine if we only played 18 games and then each team had 2 additional non-conference games. thats 22 games. Instead of being guaranteed 11-11 in those games, imagine if we we just won at the same rate we won other non-con games (70%). That 15-7 instead. Then we all play each other and everyone benefits from that. Go a little further and make sure those additional non-con games are cupcakes or even better winnable road games. Wins stack up, SOS goes up, number of bids go up.

I like the round robin approach and wouldnt just dump it for no reason. But maybe its time to look at expansion? Grab Gonzaga and St Marys and play an unbalanced conference schedule and drop it to 17 or 18 games? Allow for up to 3 more non-con games for everyone (also easing the travel for the west coast teams....).

Anyway you look at it, this years BE was MUCH better than how it was represented in the NCAA field. We better start understanding what gets teams selected or our brand value could diminish.

Timing could not be worse going into TV contract negotiations.

xukeith · 03-21-2024, 06:33 AM

Thanks for the breakdown analysis.

Why was the BE scheduling a more difficult nonconference schedule while the B12 and MVC took drastic steps to lower their respective non conference?

It was an informed decision (choosing weaker competition) that reaped benifets for B12 and MVC
.

Why wasn't Big East given the memo?

**Jumpin_Jamal_Forever** · 03-21-2024, 08:25 AM

Good number crunching. Problem is that Providence, Nova, Butler and Xavier all lost in the first round. The first three lost at home and the first two were top seeded. So, one has to wonder if the NCAA selection folks got the B.E. correct after all.

JTG · 03-21-2024, 08:46 AM

The scheduling needs to be strategic. Top 3 teams schedule good teams, mid pack look to schedule middle Power 5s, and bottom 3 schedule cup cakes. That way the Big East should have a good NET going into conf play.

**Xville** · 03-21-2024, 08:50 AM

Originally Posted by Jumpin_Jamal_Forever

Good number crunching. Problem is that Providence, Nova, Butler and Xavier all lost in the first round. The first three lost at home and the first two were top seeded. So, one has to wonder if the NCAA selection folks got the B.E. correct after all.

Xavier shouldn’t have even been in the nit, providence had 2 starters not playing (one of them being that Carter guy who I’ve heard is pretty good. Using the nit as a barometer is silly.. they are glorified exhibition games that don’t mean anything.

Hett, thanks for the number crunching. It’s certainly interesting…. I think the big East needs to just schedule a bit lighter, prop up that net and kenpom and then once everyone gets in conference, everyone looks awesome. I will add that DePaul and gtown having historically bad seasons hurt everyone in the middle. Every conference has a bad team or two, but they were historically shitty.

The twenty game season is an interesting hypothesis but it hasn’t seemed to hurt the be until this year. If this happens again, it’s something to look at for sure.