Some further reflections on rating programs based on their success - or lack of it - in the pre-open tournament era before 1975. The quality of top teams left out of that tournament each year is just staggering. Here is a list of the highest rated teams each year in the final AP poll who were NOT in the NCAA tournament, meaning that they got no shot at a championship or even a Final 4:

1974 - #4 Maryland
1973 - #1 NC State (ineligible), #10 Minnesota
1972 - #6 South Carolina
1971 - #5 Southern California
1970 - #6 South Carolina
1969 - #2 LaSalle (ineligible), #13 South Carolina
1968 - #10 Duke
1967 - #13 Tulsa
1966 - #8 Vanderbilt
1965 - #8 Villanova
1964 - #9 DePaul
1963 - #8 Illinois
1962 - #4 Mississippi St (refused), #5 Bradley
1961 - #6 Bradley
1960 - #4 Bradley
1959 - #3 Mississippi St (refused), #4 Bradley
1958 - #7 Kansas
1957 - #8 Vanderbilt
1956 - #6 Louisville
1955 - #6 Duquesne
1954 - #1 Kentucky (ineligible), #3 Duquesne
1953 - #4 Seton Hall
1952 - #7 Iowa
1951 - #6 Bradley
1950- #6 Duquesne
1949 - #3 St. Louis

It may seem that I should not have included ineligibles. The reason is that other schools have been declared ineligible after the fact for exactly the same reasons as some of these, e.g. Memphis for using a player (Derek Rose) who was later found to have been ineligible. Although those schools have been forced to vacate their Final 4's, their accomplishments have been routinely used by anyone rating them. That seems like a double standard.

9 of the years you listed have teams #7 or worse as the top team missing. Not a big deal there at all. 1 year had no one missing. Another 7 years had #6 team missing. Once again, still have the top 5 teams. So 17/26 years you have had teams ranked #6 or worse as the top team missing. It's laughable to infer that a championship isn't legit because the #9 team wasn't in the tourney.

(04-11-2013 10:40 AM)stever20 Wrote:  9 of the years you listed have teams #7 or worse as the top team missing. Not a big deal there at all. 1 year had no one missing. Another 7 years had #6 team missing. Once again, still have the top 5 teams. So 17/26 years you have had teams ranked #6 or worse as the top team missing. It's laughable to infer that a championship isn't legit because the #9 team wasn't in the tourney.

The year that had no one missing is because the AP poll was only a top ten that year, not a top 20. For convenience and consistency, I used the AP poll although I could just as easily have used the Coaches' poll. I've edited my original post for 1967, using that year's UPI poll to show that #13 Tulsa was the highest rated team that year left out of the NCAA tournament.

Not a big deal to leave out a #7 or #8? Those translate into #2 seeds! As is #6.

I'm glad that I could give you a good laugh, Steve, but I know that you're smarter than what you posted. We just went through a tournament in which 3 of the top 4 years failed to make it to the Final 4. Just 2 years ago, none of the top 4 seeds made it to the Final 4 and the tournament was won by a team that finished 9th in its conference. This kind of stuff happens all the time these days.

To treat rankings as being set in stone is beyond silly. You know better than that. Top seeds are knocked off these days when computers, cable TV broadcasts, and widespread intersectional play probide a lot of information about each school. 40, 50, and 60 years ago, little to none of this information was available, making the polls highly unreliable.

Just look at the years that I listed. I'm the following years, a team left out of the tournament was ranked higher than the team that's actually won it: 1950, 1952, 1954, 1958, and 1959. That's half the tournaments in that decade, so leaving out even better teams is not insignificant. Imagine how many more upsets there would have been - as there are in today's era - if the tournament had included even better teams.

Nowhere in my post above did I question the legitimacy of the champions. I questioned using tournament records to rate teams historically. But the lack of top level competition and the failure of top teams to be challenged by high level opponents for much of the tournament certainly does detract from the stature of their championships.

It's a joke to question the tournament because in some years 1 of the top 10 didn't make it. That's just stupid.

And- all you are doing is questioning the legitimacy of the champions- trying to elevate the NIT and make the NCAA not appear as important. It's a shame for you that you are in the minority on that historically.

Oh and your list of the 50's is misleading. the same team won it in 1950.

(04-11-2013 01:51 PM)stever20 Wrote:  It's a joke to question the tournament because in some years 1 of the top 10 didn't make it. That's just stupid.

And- all you are doing is questioning the legitimacy of the champions- trying to elevate the NIT and make the NCAA not appear as important. It's a shame for you that you are in the minority on that historically.

Oh and your list of the 50's is misleading. the same team won it in 1950.

I never made a comparison with the NIT. My comparison is between the tournament of the open era (1975-present) and the era of championship tournaments that preceded it.

It's not correct that only one of the top ten didn't make the tournament in the years listed. I listed only the highest ranking team that was left out. In 1962, for example, half of the top ten were not included. In 1959, half of the top 4 were not included.

Again, my point is not to question the legitimacy of champions as you seem to think, my point has to do with using tournament success from the pre-open era as a measure of a program's accomplishments since participation depended so much on the luck of the draw.

Here's a vivid example. Bradley is never mentioned among the programs who have had historically significant accomplishments. Yet, Bradley was ranked between #4 and #6 for 4 straight years (1959-62), led for 3 of those years by one of the great players of that era, Chet Walker, later to be an NBA champion and All Star. Bradley never got a shot in the NCAA tournament any of those years because they were stuck behind the great Cincinnati dynasty in the Missouri Valley Conference. USC suffered a similar fate in the PAC 8 behind the UCLA dynasty.

It's fine for you to think that my criticisms are stupid. Reasonable minds can disagree. But the point is that tournament accomplishments in the open era simply cannot be compared with those from the era that preceded it. The fact is that the two are simply different. There is no dispute about that.