(03-15-2018 04:37 PM)dbackjon Wrote: (03-15-2018 02:08 PM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote: UPenn and Kansas both deserved better than each other.
If Kansas didn't crap the bed against Bucknell over a decade ago, they would have been a better 16-seed for this match. Penn's way better than a 16.
Why?
25th ranked conference. Penn was the 7th lowest RPI (barely). There are 6 16 seeds - Georgia State was barely below them. At best, they should have been the last 15 seed.
Their conference is what anchors those numbers, though. You have almost half the conference without a pulse for basketball, so much so they aren't just bad, they can be found around the bottom of all D1. Brown, Columbia, and Dartmouth are usually metric killers, and it hurts as a result, especially when you see each team twice, having a bad night or weekend when you're in the back-to-back games they do during the conference season, and typically play less games than others in D1 (their tournament brings its champion closer to what most schools play now, and some dabble with non-D1 on their schedules).
It shows up in Penn's numbers. 18 Group 4 games. Yet, Penn itself had only 1 Group 4 loss. Of the 15's, nobody has less than 2; it's in the 14-line where you find similarity against that group. Penn and Bucknell both played Monmouth, La Salle, St. Joe's in the non-conference, Penn going 2-1, Bucknell 1-2.
I just don't think the committee knew anything about this team other than its numbers. And, you're right to question them. Yeah, they play a Big 5 schedule every year...their NC-SOS was still dreadful. Overall SOS is miserable because of the Ivy schedule. However, the record against Group 4, and 11-6 in road and neutral court games...what's one to do?
I don't think anyone should be surprised Kansas had its hands full with Penn, though. 16 or any seed, Penn has it in them to line up against Kansas-types. They do it yearly against Nova and Temple. Nothing new to them. Then again, that could be biased...but, so is this logic that Bucknell shouldn't be any lower than a 14 seed anymore because of two good years in the tournament over a decade ago. These more recent Bucknell teams would get their butts handed to them by the ones from '05 and '06.