When you're right, you're right.
I wanted to revisit the 2023 NCAA hoops seedings and brackets before they fade into the mists of history. Most of my criticisms of the seedings were laid out in my March 28 "Smoking the Seeds: 2023" and my March 30 "March Madness Meta." My main gripes, at the time, had to do with the beyond curious seedings and scheduling of Memphis and FAU and the shoe-horning into the tournament of the usual collection of Big 10 teams.
History showed that I was more correct than I realized at the time. I was really, really correct. Concurrent with the NCAA tourney was the NIT. The two Conference USA teams that I mentioned as getting hosed with no NCAA invites were at-the-time 29-7 North Texas and 28-9 UAB. These two teams waded through the entirety of the NIT field to meet in the championship game. North Texas won, 68-61. FAU, meanwhile, was in the NCAA tourney (as a nine seed, 30-win team, no less), made it to the Final Four, and lost 72-71 to San Diego State.
So, the overall major point is that Conference USA went 18-2 in post-season play. One of those losses was the NIT final between two C-USA teams. The other was the one-point loss in the Final Four.
My second major point is that mainstream media basically ignored these outcomes, and here we are, three months later. Nobody remembers that C-USA got hosed, and nobody wants to do anything about it. The conference got screwed in terms of NCAA invitations, in terms of seeding, and (most importantly) in terms of checks written to schools.
2024 and Beyond
The mirage of NCAA committee seeding legitimacy will go on, of course, as it always does. The brand names will dominate the media, and talking heads will continue to promulgate nonsense like "eye tests" to determine invitations, seedings, and checks written.
But let's look at the bright side. Ten years from now, AI will be making the tournament seeding decisions. It'll be a better, fairer, sporting world.
Bob Dietz
June 10, 2023
