OK please consider the following scenario and idea and please add your comments.

2017 - our tournament seeding and scenario

We travel 3 times zones west to california to play an 11 seed that should have been an 7 or 8 seed and then play our second game against a 3 seed UCLA with 3 soon-to-be NBA players including 2 likely lottery picks - one who will be the 1-3 range pick in the upcoming draft.

Xavier an 11 seed (I so wish they weren't the glaring 6 seed example), travels within their own time zone to Florida to play the worst 6 seed, Maryland, who arguably shouldn't have been an at-large bid in the tournament followed by the very worst worst 3 seed Florida effing State.

I mean seriously, if someone on the selection committee offered us the chance to exchange our 6 seed placement with their 11 seed, we would have taken them up on that offer before they could finish the sentence.

The above scenario really shouldn't happen. Ever.

So here is an idea to keep these sometimes not very knowledgeable and/or meddling committee aholes from creating stupidly unbalanced brackets in the future:

NEW PLAN

The Committee creates the initial NCAA bracket with seedings and releases them to all involved teams.

The 1 seeds are already given the most favorable, important status elements - those seeds are "locked in"

The remaining seed lines 2-15 (does not include play-in teams) are also noted with a sub rating of 1-4 for each seed line. This already happens now - we just don't see it.

After the brackets are sent - Teams have 2 hours to decide the following

1.Whether they want to force swap position with another team on their same seed line. Which is granted in order of sub rating. (1's can swap with 2's, 3's and 4's) (4's can't swap with anybody).

OR

2. Whether they want to swap positions with ANY opposite number seed line team (example: a 5 seed could choose to swap positions with ANY 12 --- a 7 seed could swap places with ANY 10). Again, all of the above in order of seed line and sub rating.

Each team would be able to submit ONE swap request and would do so without any knowledge of the swap requests submitted by other teams.

The committee would change the bracket as required and release the final bracket to the teams and public.

Eastside, I think changes need to start earlier in the process:

1) Do NOT allow AD's to be on the committee. They know how to run an athletic department, but they have less knowledge of basketball than the average poster on this message board.

2) Look to retired coaches to do the selections. They have to be members of the committee for a 5 year term and they have no say so until their 2nd year. Also, they can't make any decisions re: teams that they have coached for.

----- OR -----

Just turn everything over to CBS so they can maximize their revenue. That is what happens today. The process will just be more honest about it.

(03-22-2017 12:55 PM)Eastside_J Wrote:  OK please consider the following scenario and idea and please add your comments.

2017 - our tournament seeding and scenario

We travel 3 times zones west to california to play an 11 seed that should have been an 7 or 8 seed and then play our second game against a 3 seed UCLA with 3 soon-to-be NBA players including 2 likely lottery picks - one who will be the 1-3 range pick in the upcoming draft.

Xavier an 11 seed (I so wish they weren't the glaring 6 seed example), travels within their own time zone to Florida to play the worst 6 seed, Maryland, who arguably shouldn't have been an at-large bid in the tournament followed by the very worst worst 3 seed Florida effing State.

I mean seriously, if someone on the selection committee offered us the chance to exchange our 6 seed placement with their 11 seed, we would have taken them up on that offer before they could finish the sentence.

The above scenario really shouldn't happen. Ever.

So here is an idea to keep these sometimes not very knowledgeable and/or meddling committee aholes from creating stupidly unbalanced brackets in the future:

NEW PLAN

The Committee creates the initial NCAA bracket with seedings and releases them to all involved teams.

The 1 seeds are already given the most favorable, important status elements - those seeds are "locked in"

The remaining seed lines 2-15 (does not include play-in teams) are also noted with a sub rating of 1-4 for each seed line. This already happens now - we just don't see it.

After the brackets are sent - Teams have 2 hours to decide the following

1.Whether they want to force swap position with another team on their same seed line. Which is granted in order of sub rating. (1's can swap with 2's, 3's and 4's) (4's can't swap with anybody).

OR

2. Whether they want to swap positions with ANY opposite number seed line team (example: a 5 seed could choose to swap positions with ANY 12 --- a 7 seed could swap places with ANY 10). Again, all of the above in order of seed line and sub rating.

Each team would be able to submit ONE swap request and would do so without any knowledge of the swap requests submitted by other teams.

The committee would change the bracket as required and release the final bracket to the teams and public.

It will never happen obviously, but I love it. I'd just say that it should all be out in the open. Imagine how fun it would be to await the changes to the brackets.

I have been saying the committee should be a member of every major media outlet, but no more than 1 member per. So Palm from CBS, Lunardi from ESPN, USA Today, Fox Sports, etc.

Maybe you fill-in with some ex-coaches or something if you need more. But I like having those in the know who have no real agenda working together to do an unbiased job.May still be some favorites, but I don't think as many.

Give the American Athletic Conference a freaking representative.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

I love this idea, as unrealistic as it would be to ever happen.

People need to be removed from the equation altogether. The NCAA will surely not rest their hat on RPI or KenPom, so let them have a convention involving every AD from every Division I school to decide their own mathematical ranking criteria. In addition to removing selective bias, it will also help teams develop schedules that will benefit their ranking instead of guessing at whether the committee is going to take them seriously.

Along with this, the AP, USA Today, and Coaches should not release rankings until the end of January. Being highly ranked at the beginning of the year and losing five by this point is less costly than being unranked and losing five games. Preliminary rankings before conference play only serve to reinforce who people think is worthy.

Tournament participant slots are first filled with conference tournament winners, and the remainder with other teams in order of ranking based on the mathematical ranking.

Two sites located within the proximity of each geographical region will host each weekend. These sites should change annually - for example, there shouldn't be a game in Greensboro every year The opening weekend site will be identified as the center of the region and will be used to draft each seed. For example, the 1 seed closest to the first point will be the 1 for that region, and so on and so forth. Either that, or the regions should be split to include 16 (or 17) teams within the geographical map and the seeds can be selected based on their ranking in the aforementioned rankings.

Problem solved. But honestly, that's the problem with this plan. It doesn't favor the blue bloods enough and NCAA just isn't about fairness these days.

I don't think there is a problem.

Most of your scenario around our draw and X's draw is subjective at best and pretty obviously false at worse. Kansas State was one of the last teams in the field by virtually every metric. Florida State was a higher RPI team and probably better resume than UCLA. Orlando is much closer to FSU than Sacramento is to UCLA.

And I didn't even bring up that our coach actively campaigned pre-selection to not put us on Thursday.

(03-23-2017 08:08 AM)uccheese Wrote:  I don't think there is a problem.

Most of your scenario around our draw and X's draw is subjective at best and pretty obviously false at worse. Kansas State was one of the last teams in the field by virtually every metric. Florida State was a higher RPI team and probably better resume than UCLA. Orlando is much closer to FSU than Sacramento is to UCLA.

And I didn't even bring up that our coach actively campaigned pre-selection to not put us on Thursday.

I guess it depends what you look at. I see a big issue with the seeding process because committee is too hung up on RPI xyz wins, doesn't properly rate road wins over non top 50 RPI type teams (or even those just outside the top 100), and altogether ignores good advanced metrics.

A team like Wichita State that sits in the top ten by most advanced metrics should never be a 10 seed. Maryland was a 6 seed that was 15+ spots behind Kansas State an 11 seed in kenpom. I think if the committee fixes their over reliance on rpi top xyz wins, values road games appropriately and factors in advanced metrics at some level we will get a much better field with teams more appropriately seeded.

I say this as someone who has repeatedly insisted that UC was not screwed by the committee.

Every conference needs to be in the room. 32 conferences, 16 voting reps, 16 non-voting reps

8 new people each year, rotation every two years in terms of which conferences votes and which are non-voting reps. Allow select media to sit in on the process and report and consult.

You do this, you can take the mystery of the selection process and allow each conference a chance to defend themselves and report back from the committee room. If Cincinnati doesn't want to go west then the AAC rep should make that known to the committee.

The idea is a solution in search of a problem. The teams that think they were cheated do not matter to the powers that be.

(03-23-2017 08:24 AM)bearcatmark Wrote:  

(03-23-2017 08:08 AM)uccheese Wrote:  I don't think there is a problem.

Most of your scenario around our draw and X's draw is subjective at best and pretty obviously false at worse. Kansas State was one of the last teams in the field by virtually every metric. Florida State was a higher RPI team and probably better resume than UCLA. Orlando is much closer to FSU than Sacramento is to UCLA.

And I didn't even bring up that our coach actively campaigned pre-selection to not put us on Thursday.

I guess it depends what you look at. I see a big issue with the seeding process because committee is too hung up on RPI xyz wins, doesn't properly rate road wins over non top 50 RPI type teams (or even those just outside the top 100), and altogether ignores good advanced metrics.

A team like Wichita State that sits in the top ten by most advanced metrics should never be a 10 seed. Maryland was a 6 seed that was 15+ spots behind Kansas State an 11 seed in kenpom. I think if the committee fixes their over reliance on rpi top xyz wins, values road games appropriately and factors in advanced metrics at some level we will get a much better field with teams more appropriately seeded.

I say this as someone who has repeatedly insisted that UC was not screwed by the committee.

I personally favor making the resumes matter more than how "good" a team is. Kansas St was seed correctly for their resume. So was Maryland. So was UC. So was Xavier. So was UCLA. So was FSU.

eta: to elaborate, advanced metrics are good because they are more predictive and are more able to tell us what the team could have and should have done. That is great if you're trying to figure out who is better and who is likely to win the next game. It's a poor way of knowing what actually happened. A team like Maryland can win a last second shot 500 games in a row and Vegas doesn't think they're any better. They'll just lead the nation in the "luck" column. Shouldn't they get credit for actually winning those games though with regards to seeding? The Gators can lose to Vanderbilt by 2 twice in a week and it doesn't make them much worse by advanced metrics. I think the games have to matter and the wins and losses have to matter.

(03-23-2017 08:44 AM)uccheese Wrote:  

(03-23-2017 08:24 AM)bearcatmark Wrote:  

(03-23-2017 08:08 AM)uccheese Wrote:  I don't think there is a problem.

Most of your scenario around our draw and X's draw is subjective at best and pretty obviously false at worse. Kansas State was one of the last teams in the field by virtually every metric. Florida State was a higher RPI team and probably better resume than UCLA. Orlando is much closer to FSU than Sacramento is to UCLA.

And I didn't even bring up that our coach actively campaigned pre-selection to not put us on Thursday.

I guess it depends what you look at. I see a big issue with the seeding process because committee is too hung up on RPI xyz wins, doesn't properly rate road wins over non top 50 RPI type teams (or even those just outside the top 100), and altogether ignores good advanced metrics.

A team like Wichita State that sits in the top ten by most advanced metrics should never be a 10 seed. Maryland was a 6 seed that was 15+ spots behind Kansas State an 11 seed in kenpom. I think if the committee fixes their over reliance on rpi top xyz wins, values road games appropriately and factors in advanced metrics at some level we will get a much better field with teams more appropriately seeded.

I say this as someone who has repeatedly insisted that UC was not screwed by the committee.

I personally favor making the resumes matter more than how "good" a team is. Kansas St was seed correctly for their resume. So was Maryland. So was UC. So was Xavier. So was UCLA. So was FSU.

eta: to elaborate, advanced metrics are good because they are more predictive and are more able to tell us what the team could have and should have done. That is great if you're trying to figure out who is better and who is likely to win the next game. It's a poor way of knowing what actually happened. A team like Maryland can win a last second shot 500 games in a row and Vegas doesn't think they're any better. They'll just lead the nation in the "luck" column. Shouldn't they get credit for actually winning those games though with regards to seeding? The Gators can lose to Vanderbilt by 2 twice in a week and it doesn't make them much worse by advanced metrics. I think the games have to matter and the wins and losses have to matter.

I agree with the concept that resumes matter, my point is the committee measures resumes poorly. Close wins over bad to mediocre teams aren't as good as dominating wins over bad to mediocre teams. I don't believe the committee should look at Kstate at 29 kenpom and Maryland as 45 and say "Ok we should seed them that way," but the committee should certainly consider why Maryland is so low with their metrics when seeding them.

More important than that is properly weighting road games and using something better than the RPI to group the quality of your wins.

(03-23-2017 08:24 AM)bearcatmark Wrote:  

(03-23-2017 08:08 AM)uccheese Wrote:  I don't think there is a problem.

Most of your scenario around our draw and X's draw is subjective at best and pretty obviously false at worse. Kansas State was one of the last teams in the field by virtually every metric. Florida State was a higher RPI team and probably better resume than UCLA. Orlando is much closer to FSU than Sacramento is to UCLA.

And I didn't even bring up that our coach actively campaigned pre-selection to not put us on Thursday.

I guess it depends what you look at. I see a big issue with the seeding process because committee is too hung up on RPI xyz wins, doesn't properly rate road wins over non top 50 RPI type teams (or even those just outside the top 100), and altogether ignores good advanced metrics.

A team like Wichita State that sits in the top ten by most advanced metrics should never be a 10 seed. Maryland was a 6 seed that was 15+ spots behind Kansas State an 11 seed in kenpom. I think if the committee fixes their over reliance on rpi top xyz wins, values road games appropriately and factors in advanced metrics at some level we will get a much better field with teams more appropriately seeded.

I say this as someone who has repeatedly insisted that UC was not screwed by the committee.

In some ways the committee did a better job 20 years ago when they basically just looked at the RPI number and seeded teams accordingly with a few adjustment based on road RPI and last ten games. While the RPI is a flawed metric at least we knew what the committee was doing.

Today the committee relies heavily on top 50 and top 100 wins and seemingly ignores other metrics unless they need to justify what they are doing. I don't believe UC was seeded correctly, UC's resume was very similar to the type of resume's that used to earn 3 through 5 seeds two decades ago.

1997, RPI 13, UC had 2 top 50 wins and earned a 3 seed.
1998, RPI 16, UC had 7 top 50 wins and earned a 2 seed. None of the wins were top 20.
1999, RPI 9, UC had 8 top 50 wins and earned a 3. UC had one bad loss.
2000, RPI 1, We know UC deserved a one seed that year. Kenyon's injury changed seeding
2001, RPI 31, UC had 2 top 50 wins and earned a 5 seed.
2002, RPI 2, 7 top 50 and well earned 1 seed
2003, RPI 29, 17 total wins, 3 top wins, 8 seed. Probably NIT under today's committee.
2004, RPI 11, 7 top 50 wins, 4 seed
2005, RPI 24, 4 top 50, non in the top 25, 7 seed

2017, RPI 12, 3 top 50 wins, two in the top 25, 6 seed

Once the committee changed the RPI formula and gave specific weight to the different types of wins and losses its predictive value has gone down. The original intent was to give mid-major teams that won a lot of road games a better chance for at-larges bid because their RPI would be higher than teams just won a bunch of buy games early in the year and split their conference slate. Once the power conferences realized that their RPI numbers were being hurt by the new formula they shifted the analysis to top 50 and top 100 wins. The purpose of the RPI, Kenpom, any computer metric is to compare teams that play different schedules. If you don't play anyone that is good but still have good computer numbers you are still a good team like Wichita State was this year. Non-power conference schools and to a certain extent teams out West do not have the volume of high RPI games like the eastern based power conferences do.

How about we go to the seeded blind draw method used for soccer? The committee seeds teams into several pots. It's a blind draw from those pots to fill the field.

The committee identifies the 68 teams into the tournament. Each team is ranked into one of 8 pots. Teams 1-8 into pot 1, 9-16 into pot 2, etc. Pot 8 gets 12 teams to fill out the first 4 games in Dayton. You do not identify any individual rankings within the pots - for this year UC would be in pot 3 with 7 other teams.

Open draw on stage - pick teams from pot one and work across to fill in rows 1 and 2. Then onto pot 2 to fills rows 3 and 4 etc until completed. The game locations are also fixed before the draw so it's not only who you play but where you have to play the games which add to the luck of the draw.

(03-23-2017 09:01 AM)bearcatmark Wrote:  

(03-23-2017 08:44 AM)uccheese Wrote:  

(03-23-2017 08:24 AM)bearcatmark Wrote:  

(03-23-2017 08:08 AM)uccheese Wrote:  I don't think there is a problem.

Most of your scenario around our draw and X's draw is subjective at best and pretty obviously false at worse. Kansas State was one of the last teams in the field by virtually every metric. Florida State was a higher RPI team and probably better resume than UCLA. Orlando is much closer to FSU than Sacramento is to UCLA.

And I didn't even bring up that our coach actively campaigned pre-selection to not put us on Thursday.

I guess it depends what you look at. I see a big issue with the seeding process because committee is too hung up on RPI xyz wins, doesn't properly rate road wins over non top 50 RPI type teams (or even those just outside the top 100), and altogether ignores good advanced metrics.

A team like Wichita State that sits in the top ten by most advanced metrics should never be a 10 seed. Maryland was a 6 seed that was 15+ spots behind Kansas State an 11 seed in kenpom. I think if the committee fixes their over reliance on rpi top xyz wins, values road games appropriately and factors in advanced metrics at some level we will get a much better field with teams more appropriately seeded.

I say this as someone who has repeatedly insisted that UC was not screwed by the committee.

I personally favor making the resumes matter more than how "good" a team is. Kansas St was seed correctly for their resume. So was Maryland. So was UC. So was Xavier. So was UCLA. So was FSU.

eta: to elaborate, advanced metrics are good because they are more predictive and are more able to tell us what the team could have and should have done. That is great if you're trying to figure out who is better and who is likely to win the next game. It's a poor way of knowing what actually happened. A team like Maryland can win a last second shot 500 games in a row and Vegas doesn't think they're any better. They'll just lead the nation in the "luck" column. Shouldn't they get credit for actually winning those games though with regards to seeding? The Gators can lose to Vanderbilt by 2 twice in a week and it doesn't make them much worse by advanced metrics. I think the games have to matter and the wins and losses have to matter.

I agree with the concept that resumes matter, my point is the committee measures resumes poorly. Close wins over bad to mediocre teams aren't as good as dominating wins over bad to mediocre teams. I don't believe the committee should look at Kstate at 29 kenpom and Maryland as 45 and say "Ok we should seed them that way," but the committee should certainly consider why Maryland is so low with their metrics when seeding them.

More important than that is properly weighting road games and using something better than the RPI to group the quality of your wins.

Good discussion either way so thanks. KState and Maryland is a particularly ironic example because they played each other on a neutral floor. Not surprisingly given the 2 teams seasons, Maryland won that game by exactly 1 point. Any advanced stat is going to correctly look at that game and say "eh, they're about the same". The resume says someone won that game and someone lost it.

(03-22-2017 12:55 PM)Eastside_J Wrote:  The remaining seed lines 2-15 (does not include play-in teams) are also noted with a sub rating of 1-4 for each seed line. This already happens now - we just don't see it.

The Committee is transparent about the overall seed list from 1 to 68. Florida State was actually the second highest 3-seed. UCLA was third.



Those two teams were flipped though using KenPom rankings coming into the Tournament, with UCLA at #18 and Florida State at #19.

(03-23-2017 11:56 AM)Xpectations Wrote:  

(03-22-2017 12:55 PM)Eastside_J Wrote:  The remaining seed lines 2-15 (does not include play-in teams) are also noted with a sub rating of 1-4 for each seed line. This already happens now - we just don't see it.

The Committee is transparent about the overall seed list from 1 to 68. Florida State was actually the second highest 3-seed. UCLA was third.



Those two teams were flipped though using KenPom rankings coming into the Tournament, with UCLA at #18 and Florida State at #19.

It a great that the Committee shared that I guess. This discussion is more concerned with how the SC got to that list (sausage making) than the end result.

There is no one on this earth that watched UCLA and FSU that would in their right mind say they were even remotely equal in quality. Maybe UCLA is a three but then FSU should've been lower.

A closer look at FSUs record would've shown that their good wins were at home and were really not a good road team.

(03-23-2017 01:21 PM)mptnstr@44 Wrote:  This discussion is more concerned with how the SC got to that list (sausage making) than the end result.

There is no one on this earth that watched UCLA and FSU that would in their right mind say they were even remotely equal in quality. Maybe UCLA is a three but then FSU should've been lower.

A closer look at FSUs record would've shown that their good wins were at home and were really not a good road team.

Can't go by one game and draw any conclusion. By that logic, perhaps X should've been a 3-seed, and even I know they didn't deserve that.

FSU took a 25-point beating because they allowed Xavier to be the #1 most efficient offensive team against them for the entire season, and FSU's second worst defensive performance was a large distance from that figure.

The game was an anomaly for both teams if you go by the rest of the season. Xavier produced a better Offensive Efficiency AND Defensive Efficiency against FSU than Duke (in 2 games), North Carolina, Louisville, Virginia, Notre Dame (in 3 games), and Florida, to name a few.

Now I believe Xavier's game plan was perfect. But even with that, I think they'd have to play several dozen more times before you'd see another 25-point victory.

The UC v UCLA game was also a sizable anomaly if you look at the rest of the season. UC's defense is awesome, and yet in that game, UCLA's Offensive Efficiency was 124.9. There were 11 teams outside the Kenpom Top 100 who held UCLA in check better than that, and 5 teams outside the Kenpom Top 260.

If UCLA played UC 100 times, I don't think you'd see a high percentage of double-digit UCLA wins.

Small sample sizes = Big Anomalies.

I will say that FSU was a favorable matchup for Xavier. Not because of what their seeding should have been (I believe their seeding was fine), but because they are a bang it inside and score in transition team that is suspect from behind the arc. Xavier's switching 1-3-1 to 2-3 zone is made to stop teams like that.

But I have to believe Coach K, Rick Pitino, Coach Bennett, Roy Williams and other top coaches knew that too.

(03-23-2017 01:50 PM)Xpectations Wrote:  

(03-23-2017 01:21 PM)mptnstr@44 Wrote:  This discussion is more concerned with how the SC got to that list (sausage making) than the end result.

There is no one on this earth that watched UCLA and FSU that would in their right mind say they were even remotely equal in quality. Maybe UCLA is a three but then FSU should've been lower.

A closer look at FSUs record would've shown that their good wins were at home and were really not a good road team.

Can't go by one game and draw any conclusion. By that logic, perhaps X should've been a 3-seed, and even I know they didn't deserve that.

FSU took a 25-point beating because they allowed Xavier to be the #1 most efficient offensive team against them for the entire season, and FSU's second worst defensive performance was a large distance from that figure.

The game was an anomaly for both teams if you go by the rest of the season. Xavier produced a better Offensive Efficiency AND Defensive Efficiency against FSU than Duke (in 2 games), North Carolina, Louisville, Virginia, Notre Dame (in 3 games), and Florida, to name a few.

Now I believe Xavier's game plan was perfect. But even with that, I think they'd have to play several dozen more times before you'd see another 25-point victory.

The UC v UCLA game was also a sizable anomaly if you look at the rest of the season. UC's defense is awesome, and yet in that game, UCLA's Offensive Efficiency was 124.9. There were 11 teams outside the Kenpom Top 100 who held UCLA in check better than that, and 5 teams outside the Kenpom Top 260.

If UCLA played UC 100 times, I don't think you'd see a high percentage of double-digit UCLA wins.

Small sample sizes = Big Anomalies.

I will say that FSU was a favorable matchup for Xavier. Not because of what their seeding should have been (I believe their seeding was fine), but because they are a bang it inside and score in transition team that is suspect from behind the arc. Xavier's switching 1-3-1 to 2-3 zone is made to stop teams like that.

But I have to believe Coach K, Rick Pitino, Coach Bennett, Roy Williams and other top coaches knew that too.

FSU was awful against FGCU too. It wasn't just XU that made them look bad. FSU struggled to get past their 14.

The ACC as we have found out was very overrated. They got 9 teams in the tourney, the most of any league and just one made it to the SS. No one would expect all of them to make it through. There's always the bad matchup argument. But 1 out of 9? Quite a few with Top 4 seeds and good site locations. That equals an over valued conference.

FSU was seeded too high, their road record was poor and their good wins were at home but they benefited from the over rated conference that they played in and committee representation.