How Many Teams Deserve to Play in March?

Would we see a few more upsets in the first round? Sure, that’s possible. A team like Illinois could beat another BCS conference foe or something, but come on, folks. These teams get ample opportunity to show they belong, and if they don’t prove they can win these games with any consistency, they don’t belong in the tournament. Every conference, save the Ivy League, has a conference tournament anyway, so virtually every team in the country can play their way into the tournament. Think it’s unfair? Tough break, kid. Go beat somebody.

checked you official Warden email lately?

I agree that expansion would not matter much to the Sweet 16, so I think it is unnecessary. And so for awhile my thoughts have been, “Unnecessary! IT AIN’T BROKE!!!” And stuff like that.

But it can still be good without being necessary. Like ice cream. Here is why I’m leaning towards supporting it:

1) The fact that it probably won’t affect the Sweet 16 at all is actually a positive. Low chance of injected defect.
2) It’s really about where the bright shining line is drawn. Is it fair to say something equivalent to “Kent St. may go, LA tech may not.”? By extending the cutoff down to teams that definitely don’t deserve in, you don’t have to make the painful/unfair decisions between the teams that DO deserve in the tournament who are only slightly better than some team that doesn’t; i.e. you’re being more fair to some teams who got excluded from the tournament on essentially a coin flip.
3) Of course, after the play-in round, the winners will have an extra win against top 75ish RPI, improving their resume.
4) More non-conference play between better RPI teams desperate to continue their season is a Good Thing. Would anyone not want to see these games?

BUT my support is based on the idea that the big play-in round would be presented as a “Playoff” and not attached to the tournament proper. This is to preserve the tradition of what it means to “be in the NCAA tournament.”

All that said, I have no specific counter to the claim that it will dilute the importance of conference tournaments. Perhaps bubble teams will still play just as hard for a bye.

(Honestly I’m not sure how I feel about conference tournaments anyway (can you tell I went to KU during the Roy years?). In better conferences, the best teams are not playing their best since they are already tournament locks, and if a non-better team wins… how much does the tournament mean as a tournament anyway? In other words I feel like the NCAA tournament has ALREADY damaged the conference tournaments… But this is a whole nother topic.)

Another possibly strong negative is that it removes some of the drama towards the end of conference play where the little teams are playing for their lives. Can they still sell the (relatively stupid) day-to-day drama of who’s in who’s out?

Crap, I’ve started to talk myself out of it. Well I think I’ve let my stupid opinions show enough for now ;)

But yeah spot on. I agree with sax solo that it doesn’t affect the later rounds too much, I just think it DOES take away from the tournament as a whole and the selectivity that makes it so special. But I’ve already stated my point so I digress

Doing some reading this morning and last night, I came across the following posts:

1- KenPom wondering about the selection process.

2- Basketball Prospectus questions why the NCAA won’t use margin of victory.

3- Yet Another Basketball Blog has a couple really cool spreadsheets that contain all kinds of information to check out if you’d like to compare teams. He also includes this take on the margin of victory and RPI:

But then we get down to the heart of the complaint, which I’ve rambled on about before. The NCAA’s big mistake is that it does not want margin-of-victory to be a criteria in any of its sports. The NCAA does this in order to promote good sportsmanship. But without margin-of-victory, no ranking system can properly evaluate teams. Ken Pomeroy recently decried New Mexico’s high seeding. But it is hard to make a case against New Mexico without the margin-of-victory stats. Look at Jeff Sagarin’s ELO CHESS ranking compared to his PREDICTOR ranking. The former uses outcomes only and the later uses margin-of-victory. New Mexico is 12th in ELO CHESS and 39th in PREDICTOR. Margin-of-victory is clearly useful, but the NCAA does not want to touch it.

So the NCAA ends up with something that is not about selecting the best teams. What you get in the post-season is the best teams and the teams that won their close games. But is that different from any other sport? Do the best 12 teams make the playoffs in NFL? Or do the best teams plus the luckiest teams make the post-season? You play to win the games, and so even if the NCAA ignores margin-of-victory, I’m comfortable with that.