I've spent years debunking the Rube Goldberg machinations of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. Season after season, the members of said committee have been screwing non-brand-name teams by imposing bad seedings and manipulating bracket design in service of writing checks to the major conferences. Teams' Q-Ratings and potential overall television ratings seem to have been the committee's guiding lights.
Once upon a time, back in the era when RPI was the committee's dominant tool (and Missouri State, with a low-30's RPI, got royally hosed), the committee at least tried to be semi-subtle about it. As the years have passed, however, the committee has become about as subtle as a Trump rally -- white, loud, and indifferent to history or reason. They've massaged every major conference wannabe winner into the tournament while designing gauntlets to squeeze the pesky low-Q teams out ASAP.
The Toughest Region
As most seasons unfold, I usually invest between 4K and 5K on assorted long shots, half of which are generally of the non-brand-name variety. This year I invested just dinner money on a couple of teams. When I saw the East bracket, I was glad I had just dinner money on the line. Literally half the teams I considered were in the East region. My initial reaction to the East was that it was arguably the toughest region of all time.
The East had two hugely underrated sleepers in Florida Atlantic and Oral Roberts. I thought there were three or four teams in the East better than Purdue. Charles Barkley predicted that Memphis would handle Purdue in the second round. So did I. The problem was Memphis first had to face the nine-seeded, 30-win FAU Owls, whose three losses had all been on the road. Why FAU was a nine, I couldn't tell you. Why Memphis was an eight, I couldn't tell you, either. Memphis had hammered Houston in the AAC final and had almost beaten them a second time. Houston was a one seed; why was Memphis given no respect?
The East also had Kentucky, Tennessee, and Duke, all potential Final Four teams. Plus a tourney-scary Michigan State. And I'm not even mentioning the one through three seeds (Purdue, Marquette, and Kansas State).
What sins did these teams commit to all be jammed into this bracket from hell?
Shoehorns and Exclusions
The usual collection of Big 10 teams was shoehorned into the tournament. Teams that were frozen out included Liberty, a couple of AAC squads in Tulane and Cincinnati, and two teams from Conference USA, North Texas and UAB.
My arguments for these teams go something like this: Kennesaw State had three-seed Xavier on the ropes in their tournament game until a late no-call turned the tide. Liberty was comparable to Kennesaw. If Houston was all that, then the AAC should have been assigned more teams. Tulane and Cincinnati had similar records to those shoehorned Big 10 squads. Given the Big 10's questionable showing in the tournament, it's not a reach to suggest that Tulane and Cincinnati deserved serious consideration. And finally, given FAU's run, it's also not a stretch to conclude that 29-7 North Texas and 28-9 UAB should have been invited.
The shoehorning of Big 10 teams is, as I said, an annual abuse.
Clearing the Smoke
The conference tournaments prove nothing and extend an already too-lengthy college season. Key injuries occurred in a handful of conference tournaments; Kentucky, UCLA, and Houston were all the worse for it. Players either aggravated existing injuries by trying to play or suffered injuries during the conference tournaments themselves. These conference tourneys cost the blue bloods this year.
The tourneys exist primarily to pad brand-name conference coffers, so it's fitting that blue blood greed led, in the long haul, to fewer NCAA tourney checks for those blue bloods.
Basketball teams are organisms, not collections of individuals. The brand names suffered mightily as injuries mounted and fragile chemistries affected by those injuries melted down in the cauldron of one-and-done. What surprised me most was that some experienced off brand teams that figured to be good but not overwhelming, such as Creighton and San Diego State, handled squads with more firepower.
Conclusion
Going forward, all we can hope is that the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee will make note of their errors, admit their malfeasance, and swear off their unfair seedings. Yes, perhaps the next time three Conference USA teams win 28 games or more, the committee will consider taking more than one of them. And maybe consider giving one of them a seed higher than nine.
But -- LOL -- let's not hold our breath waiting.
Bob Dietz
March 28, 2023
