(02-08-2015 11:03 PM)OhioBobcatJohn Wrote: I think the regular seeding should matter. It rewards the body of work and less on a hot team one week. Finishing first or second seed over 18 games is a huge accomplishment. With 18 games the schedule averages out. If you can't get into the top 4 after 18 games you really aren't that good.
You say if you can't get into the top 4 you're not that good. But look at last year's #3, #4 ad #5 seeds-
#3 Buffalo (13-5), 7-3 v MAC East, 2-2 v UA & OU, 1-1 v top two seeds.
#4 Akron (12-6), 6-4 v MAC East, 2-2 v OU & UB, 0-2 v top two seeds.
#5 Ohio (11-7), 6-4 v MAC East, 2-2 v UA & UB, 1-4 vs top two seeds.
Each team had to play 2 West teams twice, chosen at random. Those opponents were-
#3 Buffalo- (3-1) #7 NIU, #12 BSU. Lost to BSU.
#4 Akron- (4-0) #6 EMU, #12 BSU.
#5 Ohio- (1-3) #1 WMU, #2 UT. Lost to UT once and WMU twice.
Buffalo and Akron each played the top 2 seeds once, Buffalo beat WMU and lost UT, Akron lost to both.
Buffalo has the odd distinction of beating the #1 seed and losing to the #12 seed but winning an extra East game over the other two nudges Buffalo into the #3 seed. I think you would agree that the margin of separation between Buffalo and the other two teams is not large. Now look at Akron and Ohio and the margin is even smaller- identical records vs East and head to head, the difference is the two extra games vs the West. Akron gets a second game against EMU and a 2-16 BSU while Ohio has to take on the top 2 seeds twice each. And Ohio managed to win against them, unlike Akron.
It wasn't intentional, it was just the luck of the draw, but at the end of the day 1 game separated the #4 and #5 seeds and things could have gone very differently if Akron played WMU twice or Ohio played BSU twice.
The end result is that because Akron managed to win one more game than Ohio Akron gets to travel to Cleveland on Monday and rest and prepare for their first game on Thursday. Ohio, as the #5 seed, has to play a game at home on Monday night and win it, spend Tuesday traveling and preparing for their next opponent, play a game on Wednesday night and win it, AND THEN they can face a well rested Akron on Thursday. Btw, in that #4 v #5 match up Ohio had the lead for the entire game until the 3:20 mark. When asked how they were able to grab the lead at the end Keith Dambrot said it looked like the previous tournament games had finally caught up to Ohio and they ran out of gas.
We all knew that the gap between #4 and #5 was huge when the change was made, but with the variance in schedules I can't agree with you when you say if a team didn't make it in the top 4 then the reason is because they weren't good enough. If you're going to have schedules that have this large of a variable in strength then you can't have this large of a gap between two seeds.
If this was a one time event I wouldn't bother mentioning it but I don't think it is. In fact, I'm sounding the warning bells right now, this situation is going to repeat itself again this year and its not going to be pretty.
Either equitable conference schedules or equitable tournament structure, we have to have at least one.