As I mentioned in the previous entry, the 28-5 Houston Cougars are a five seed, courtesy of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. The BPI, contrastingly, has Houston rated as the second-best team in the country. The 2022 Pomeroy College Basketball Rating (KenPom) has them as the fifth best team. That's fifth best team overall, not a fifth seed.
The committee's raison d'etre is writing checks to brand names and "power" conferences. That's what they do. I want to point out some of the obvious problems with the current Committee-as-Boss-Hogg format.
Simulations
The first obvious element I want to make clear is that the committee has access to the same simulation programs that USA Today and other news outlets employ and discuss in their pre-tournament feature articles. Games-as-seeded are run through the program 100,000 times or more, and the programs spit out probabilities for who is how likely to win, given the seedings.
The committee has the ability to work backwards. They can decide what array of probabilities they prefer. Then they can experiment with various seedings and brackets so as to arrive at the array most likely to give them what they want. Houston as a five seed for example, seriously decreases Houston's chances as compared to a two seed.
Make no mistake. The committee has the ability to employ the same programs that simulate the tournament. That information can help them manipulate seedings to achieve what they want.
Starting from Scratch
The Pomeroy Ratings start from scratch each season. That's the only way true sport should be managed. No suppositions, no assumptions based on five stars, four stars, and one star. Teams earn their ratings. No alleged "eyeball tests," which usually turn out to be more auditory (how often have I heard this team's name on ESPN?) than visual.
In a sport like college basketball, with five players on the court and massive year-to-year turnover of personnel, Q-score television notoriety has no business influencing seeding or who squeezes into the tournament.
Conclusion
When a five seed like Houston is a shorter futures price than all of the four seeds but UCLA, well, Houston, we have a problem. Las Vegas sports books exist because they know who can do what to whom. A decadent committee not putting up its own money is strictly amateur hour compared to the sports books.
There are several ways this will get cleaned up. The committee can give up its kangaroo court nonsense and hand the reins over to pure power ratings like Pomeroy or to the sports books. Another way would be for a team or conference to sue the committee back into the Stone Age.
Bob Dietz
March 17, 2022
