(03-20-2021 08:34 AM)Side.Show.Joe Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 11:26 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Villanova beats Winthrop.

I knew Villanova wasn't losing to Winthrop.

They will not lose to North Texas either.

I don't know. I watched Villanova beat Winthrop last night, and I didn't see where Nova was any better than Purdue. I think the Mean Green could beat them too. We will find out tomorrow.

Well, without Gillespie, this isn't the "real" Villanova. But even without him, it's hard for me to see Wright losing to a G5 team. But as you say, we shall see.

(03-20-2021 08:33 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 09:18 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 09:13 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 08:59 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 08:55 PM)johnintx Wrote:  North Texas over Purdue, 78-69 in OT.

Very happy for the Mean Green.

It would be very frustrating to be a Purdue fan. They are a well-respected, well-supported program. A lot of people would never know it, but they haven't been to a Final Four since 1980.

Coached by Lee Rose, who then inexplicably left Purdue to take the job at my USF.

Led by Joe Barry Carroll, a formidable 7-footer who was a good NBA center for about 10 years, and Roosevelt Barnes, who never made the NBA but played several years as a linebacker in the NFL.

You are going to have to explain very carefully to me why the ratings systems aren't skewed and why the Big 10 and the ACC (counting Mich St.'s play in loss) deserved 16 slots between them or roughly 1/4 of the total field???

So far North Carolina, Virginia Tech, and Georgia Tech have lost for the ACC 0-3 with two relatively tight games still underway, and Michigan State, Ohio State, and Purdue have lost with Illinois getting a win against Drexel and Wisconsin killing North Carolina (with the ACC looking very suspect and Drexel being a #16 seed) make them deserving of the "special" consideration their schools get over everyone else annually in this Tournament?

It has been pretty clear that West Coast and Southern schools and G5 and lower schools just don't get due consideration. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Michigan gets stunned tomorrow. They drew a pretty game team to open with. The issue is the preseason over ranking of the Northeaster, Atlantic Coast and Big 10 schools. When they start high, and particularly this year play among themselves, of course their RPI's remain high even if the mediocre.

I'll always hate computers! Garbage and bias in, garbage and bias out, and then garbage and bias justifications from the peanut gallery! With the exception of Baylor which I did overlook in my post where I was challenging the field ahead of time, I do think there will be a dearth of P5's present in final four. I do believe Gonzaga and Baylor will be there. The Bears will face a test with the Hogs if the Hogs stay hot. But the rest Quo is going to be wide open with some welcomed surprises.

You'd have to be more than careful. You'd have to be downright creative to justify 16 bids.

It's the oldest trick in the books, using tournament performance to justify whether teams "belong" in the NCAA Tournament. If we go by that criteria, half of the teams every year won't belong in the field. You have to be a complete idiot if you believe Ohio State and Purdue didn't belong in this year's NCAA Tournament. The time to judge who belongs and who doesn't belong in the NCAA Tournament is before the tournament starts. The NCAA doesn't know who's going to win games in the NCAA Tournament any more than anyone here.

There's truth in what you are saying, but then again picking teams for the tournament isn't an exact science either, so it is also very possible that teams got in that didn't deserve to. If you can't say that just because a team lost they didn't deserve to be in, you can't say that just because the committee selected them that they did deserve to be in.

In the case of a team like Ohio State, they obviously belonged in despite their upset loss yesterday. But that upset loss also suggests they were overrated, over-seeded as well. The fact that Purdue lost as well suggests they were too, and since both are from the B1G, that suggests the B1G was overrated by the committee. I suspect the extreme strength of the top two B1G teams, Michigan and Illinois, cast a positive halo effect on the rest of the conference, leading to more teams getting in, and at higher seedings. But we shall continue to see how the tournament develops. Who knows, maybe the B1G will get three teams in the Final 4 anyway.

(03-20-2021 07:34 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 07:06 AM)bill dazzle Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 06:16 AM)schmolik Wrote:  Lot of teams I liked lost and lot of teams I won lost but at the end of the day my two favorite teams won so I'm happy about that. Villanova finally won without Gillespie.

On this theme, Schmolik, do you cheer more so for Illinois and Villanova than you do for Penn State and Temple? And don't you have another school you like?

I have the Illini going to the title game (and losing to Gonzaga). Illinois is impressive. Good luck to your teams.

Well the simple fact is Illinois and Villanova win more in men's basketball. In football I cheer for Penn State more. I do have a soft spot for Illinois because it's my undergrad. I spent four years there vs. two at Penn State. Illinois was my first college experience and my first time away from home. When I was at Penn State it was been there done that and I was comparing it to Illinois.

Cool. I was curious.

(03-20-2021 08:40 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 08:33 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 09:18 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 09:13 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 08:59 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Coached by Lee Rose, who then inexplicably left Purdue to take the job at my USF.

Led by Joe Barry Carroll, a formidable 7-footer who was a good NBA center for about 10 years, and Roosevelt Barnes, who never made the NBA but played several years as a linebacker in the NFL.

You are going to have to explain very carefully to me why the ratings systems aren't skewed and why the Big 10 and the ACC (counting Mich St.'s play in loss) deserved 16 slots between them or roughly 1/4 of the total field???

So far North Carolina, Virginia Tech, and Georgia Tech have lost for the ACC 0-3 with two relatively tight games still underway, and Michigan State, Ohio State, and Purdue have lost with Illinois getting a win against Drexel and Wisconsin killing North Carolina (with the ACC looking very suspect and Drexel being a #16 seed) make them deserving of the "special" consideration their schools get over everyone else annually in this Tournament?

It has been pretty clear that West Coast and Southern schools and G5 and lower schools just don't get due consideration. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Michigan gets stunned tomorrow. They drew a pretty game team to open with. The issue is the preseason over ranking of the Northeaster, Atlantic Coast and Big 10 schools. When they start high, and particularly this year play among themselves, of course their RPI's remain high even if the mediocre.

I'll always hate computers! Garbage and bias in, garbage and bias out, and then garbage and bias justifications from the peanut gallery! With the exception of Baylor which I did overlook in my post where I was challenging the field ahead of time, I do think there will be a dearth of P5's present in final four. I do believe Gonzaga and Baylor will be there. The Bears will face a test with the Hogs if the Hogs stay hot. But the rest Quo is going to be wide open with some welcomed surprises.

You'd have to be more than careful. You'd have to be downright creative to justify 16 bids.

It's the oldest trick in the books, using tournament performance to justify whether teams "belong" in the NCAA Tournament. If we go by that criteria, half of the teams every year won't belong in the field. You have to be a complete idiot if you believe Ohio State and Purdue didn't belong in this year's NCAA Tournament. The time to judge who belongs and who doesn't belong in the NCAA Tournament is before the tournament starts. The NCAA doesn't know who's going to win games in the NCAA Tournament any more than anyone here.

There's truth in what you are saying, but then again picking teams for the tournament isn't an exact science either, so it is also very possible that teams got in that didn't deserve to. If you can't say that just because a team lost they didn't deserve to be in, you can't say that just because the committee selected them that they did deserve to be in.

In the case of a team like Ohio State, they obviously belonged in despite their upset loss yesterday. But that upset loss also suggests they were overrated, over-seeded as well. The fact that Purdue lost as well suggests they were too, and since both are from the B1G, that suggests the B1G was overrated by the committee. I suspect the extreme strength of the top two B1G teams, Michigan and Illinois, cast a positive halo effect on the rest of the conference, leading to more teams getting in, and at higher seedings. But we shall continue to see how the tournament develops. Who knows, maybe the B1G will get three teams in the Final 4 anyway.

I think this year was the hardest to judge teams from different conferences because there were fewer non conference games to distinguish teams. Illinois played just 6 non conference games, so did Ohio State, Michigan played 5. Colgate (NET #9) didn't play any non conference games. The more data the NCAA (and bracketologists) have, the more accurate they will be.

Also with smaller crowds it's not surprising to see more upsets. You can say there's no home crowds in the NCAA Tournament but you've never seen North Carolina or Duke play games in Charlotte or Greensboro? I went to see Villanova play an NCAA game in Philly, it was a Villanova home game. I also saw Illinois play Arizona and the big comeback to make the Final Four. I'd be hard pressed to believe without that crowd that they don't make that comeback. If Ohio State's playing Oral Roberts close to home and there are a lot of OSU fans there, I'd say they win that game yesterday. If that game was in Indy in a normal year, there would be more Ohio State fans than Oral Roberts fans there.

Please stop with the "we had players out" excuses!
Ohio State was without starter Kyle Young and EJ Liddell has been playing with a bad back, so what, they should have still won, but didn't! Oral Roberts was better!
Every school has injuries this late in the season, your school is no exception.

(03-19-2021 11:26 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Villanova beats Winthrop.

I knew Villanova wasn't losing to Winthrop.

They will not lose to North Texas either.

Seems clear by first round results the past 6 years that media bias systematically undervalues C-USA. If North Texas beats Villanova on Sunday, I hope the C-USA commissioner shouts this from every media platform that grants her an interview.

(03-20-2021 10:32 AM)cubucks Wrote:  Please stop with the "we had players out" excuses!
Ohio State was without starter Kyle Young and EJ Liddell has been playing with a bad back, so what, they should have still won, but didn't! Oral Roberts was better!
Every school has injuries this late in the season, your school is no exception.

Oral Roberts wasn't better. Ohio State took them lightly and paid the price. If Ohio State treated and prepared for Oral Roberts the way they did vs. Illinois and Iowa they would have won by double digits. If Ohio State and Oral Roberts played 10 times, Ohio State wins 9 times or at least 8. Problem is in the NCAA Tournament it's one and done. No one seeded 13 or lower can beat a team seeded 1-4 if the team seeded 1-4 comes to play. If the 13-16 seed wins, it's because the high seed sucked or played badly that day. Oral Roberts was a 15 seed for a reason. If they were a better team they'd be higher seeded. No one was talking about them before the tournament. Maybe when you get to 5 vs. 12 you might be able to say the 12 could be better but that's pushing it. You want to say Oral Roberts is better than Ohio State then you're saying Oral Roberts would've made the Big Ten Tournament final. Does anyone here believe that? Does anyone believe Oral Roberts would finish .500 in the Big Ten? They got lucky in one game.

(03-20-2021 08:40 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 08:33 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 09:18 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 09:13 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 08:59 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Coached by Lee Rose, who then inexplicably left Purdue to take the job at my USF.

Led by Joe Barry Carroll, a formidable 7-footer who was a good NBA center for about 10 years, and Roosevelt Barnes, who never made the NBA but played several years as a linebacker in the NFL.

You are going to have to explain very carefully to me why the ratings systems aren't skewed and why the Big 10 and the ACC (counting Mich St.'s play in loss) deserved 16 slots between them or roughly 1/4 of the total field???

So far North Carolina, Virginia Tech, and Georgia Tech have lost for the ACC 0-3 with two relatively tight games still underway, and Michigan State, Ohio State, and Purdue have lost with Illinois getting a win against Drexel and Wisconsin killing North Carolina (with the ACC looking very suspect and Drexel being a #16 seed) make them deserving of the "special" consideration their schools get over everyone else annually in this Tournament?

It has been pretty clear that West Coast and Southern schools and G5 and lower schools just don't get due consideration. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Michigan gets stunned tomorrow. They drew a pretty game team to open with. The issue is the preseason over ranking of the Northeaster, Atlantic Coast and Big 10 schools. When they start high, and particularly this year play among themselves, of course their RPI's remain high even if the mediocre.

I'll always hate computers! Garbage and bias in, garbage and bias out, and then garbage and bias justifications from the peanut gallery! With the exception of Baylor which I did overlook in my post where I was challenging the field ahead of time, I do think there will be a dearth of P5's present in final four. I do believe Gonzaga and Baylor will be there. The Bears will face a test with the Hogs if the Hogs stay hot. But the rest Quo is going to be wide open with some welcomed surprises.

You'd have to be more than careful. You'd have to be downright creative to justify 16 bids.

It's the oldest trick in the books, using tournament performance to justify whether teams "belong" in the NCAA Tournament. If we go by that criteria, half of the teams every year won't belong in the field. You have to be a complete idiot if you believe Ohio State and Purdue didn't belong in this year's NCAA Tournament. The time to judge who belongs and who doesn't belong in the NCAA Tournament is before the tournament starts. The NCAA doesn't know who's going to win games in the NCAA Tournament any more than anyone here.

There's truth in what you are saying, but then again picking teams for the tournament isn't an exact science either, so it is also very possible that teams got in that didn't deserve to. If you can't say that just because a team lost they didn't deserve to be in, you can't say that just because the committee selected them that they did deserve to be in.

In the case of a team like Ohio State, they obviously belonged in despite their upset loss yesterday. But that upset loss also suggests they were overrated, over-seeded as well. The fact that Purdue lost as well suggests they were too, and since both are from the B1G, that suggests the B1G was overrated by the committee. I suspect the extreme strength of the top two B1G teams, Michigan and Illinois, cast a positive halo effect on the rest of the conference, leading to more teams getting in, and at higher seedings. But we shall continue to see how the tournament develops. Who knows, maybe the B1G will get three teams in the Final 4 anyway.

It's not just the losses but who they lost to and how badly some played. It's also who they've beaten. The ACC lost 4 times yesterday and 2 were to Big 10 schools. You use the term halo to describe how the committee looked at the Big 10, but the ACC lives under a perpetual halo, and how can a halo justify 9 bids from a 14 member conference?

The NCAA committee works the same way the CFP committee works because they get paid the same way, TV ratings! The Big 10 got 9 in because they drew the largest basketball audiences. The ACC got 7 because they are next, and the SEC got 6 because they are next after that.

We had a number of schools without key players make the field. Committees are supposed to consider this but didn't. Why? Because it's about ratings.

I for the life of me don't know why any conference should get more than their to 1/3rd teams in the tournament. There needs to be a cap! If you want a great tournament cap the P5 at no more than 5 schools each. If you want to keep the P5 from breaking away, which is still a viable potentiality, then split 50% of the credits money among their teams and 50% among the rest and pay a bonus for the sweet 16 and final 4. I think that would clean the tourney up nicely. 25 slots would still be there for the P5 and adjustments to revenue could be made if you had schools in one conference that didn't meet a minimum win threshold. And if you did this then shrink the tourney back to 64 and quit the bracket creep.

Just my 2 cents. And decisions on which teams are so banged up as not to be competitive should be made by the conferences.

For instance if the SEC, Big 10, Big 12, ACC, and PAC wanted to keep conference tourneys (which they will) then 1 of their 5 slots should go to the tourney champ, 1 to the regular season champ, and the conference should select the next three based on what they believe is the next best 3 in counting injuries. If a tourney champion isn't over .500 for the year then that conference gives 1 bid to the regular season champ and decides the other 4. No losing records permitted in the NCAA tourney. This goes for small conferences too. If a loser wins they get to send their regular season champ. Too many good champs in small conferences get blitzed in their conference tourneys or by conferences trying to squeeze 2 bids.

(03-20-2021 08:36 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 08:34 AM)Side.Show.Joe Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 11:26 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Villanova beats Winthrop.

I knew Villanova wasn't losing to Winthrop.

They will not lose to North Texas either.

I don't know. I watched Villanova beat Winthrop last night, and I didn't see where Nova was any better than Purdue. I think the Mean Green could beat them too. We will find out tomorrow.

Well, without Gillespie, this isn't the "real" Villanova. But even without him, it's hard for me to see Wright losing to a G5 team. But as you say, we shall see.

You do realize North Texas is without important contributors too. We just don't have a platoon of 4 star back ups on our bench. We were not at full strength last night against Purdue, and won't be Sunday against Nova. It's just part of March Madness. May the best team win.

(03-20-2021 11:07 AM)Side.Show.Joe Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 08:36 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 08:34 AM)Side.Show.Joe Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 11:26 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Villanova beats Winthrop.

I knew Villanova wasn't losing to Winthrop.

They will not lose to North Texas either.

I don't know. I watched Villanova beat Winthrop last night, and I didn't see where Nova was any better than Purdue. I think the Mean Green could beat them too. We will find out tomorrow.

Well, without Gillespie, this isn't the "real" Villanova. But even without him, it's hard for me to see Wright losing to a G5 team. But as you say, we shall see.

You do realize North Texas is without important contributors too. We just don't have a platoon of 4 star back ups on our bench. We were not at full strength last night against Purdue, and won't be Sunday against Nova. It's just part of March Madness. May the best team win.

I don't have a dog in this hunt but from what I saw (and I watched both of these games yesterday pretty much start to finish) North Texas was a much more disciplined team that patiently ran clock, looked for the cut to the basket, and methodically wore down their opponent. They boxed out well and didn't get in a rush. Cold perimeter shooting kept their competition in the game.

Villanova was lucky to escape Winthrop and had help from one of the worst officiating teams I watched work the games yesterday. Winthrop picked up phantom and touch fouls and Nova got away with 1 key goal tend and endless muggings to achieve turnovers.

If the game is evenly called I think North Texas takes them handily.

And one more thing. North Texas beat a good team. Nova didn't. They escaped a weaker but more disciplined one.

(03-20-2021 10:46 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 10:32 AM)cubucks Wrote:  Please stop with the "we had players out" excuses!
Ohio State was without starter Kyle Young and EJ Liddell has been playing with a bad back, so what, they should have still won, but didn't! Oral Roberts was better!
Every school has injuries this late in the season, your school is no exception.

Oral Roberts wasn't better. Ohio State took them lightly and paid the price. If Ohio State treated and prepared for Oral Roberts the way they did vs. Illinois and Iowa they would have won by double digits. If Ohio State and Oral Roberts played 10 times, Ohio State wins 9 times or at least 8. Problem is in the NCAA Tournament it's one and done. No one seeded 13 or lower can beat a team seeded 1-4 if the team seeded 1-4 comes to play. If the 13-16 seed wins, it's because the high seed sucked or played badly that day. Oral Roberts was a 15 seed for a reason. If they were a better team they'd be higher seeded. No one was talking about them before the tournament. Maybe when you get to 5 vs. 12 you might be able to say the 12 could be better but that's pushing it. You want to say Oral Roberts is better than Ohio State then you're saying Oral Roberts would've made the Big Ten Tournament final. Does anyone here believe that? Does anyone believe Oral Roberts would finish .500 in the Big Ten? They got lucky in one game.

You just said exactly what I said. Oral Roberts WAS better on this day. Nobody ever said Oral Roberts would Make the BIG finals, except you. Unlike you, I don't cheer for an entire region or conference. Unlike you, I have the ability to accept defeat with a little class and praise others when they win. Finally, unlike most people on here, I don't make excuses non-stop on here every time a team they like is defeated, it's ridiculous!

(03-20-2021 09:35 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 08:40 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 08:33 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 09:18 PM)ken d Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 09:13 PM)JRsec Wrote:  You are going to have to explain very carefully to me why the ratings systems aren't skewed and why the Big 10 and the ACC (counting Mich St.'s play in loss) deserved 16 slots between them or roughly 1/4 of the total field???

So far North Carolina, Virginia Tech, and Georgia Tech have lost for the ACC 0-3 with two relatively tight games still underway, and Michigan State, Ohio State, and Purdue have lost with Illinois getting a win against Drexel and Wisconsin killing North Carolina (with the ACC looking very suspect and Drexel being a #16 seed) make them deserving of the "special" consideration their schools get over everyone else annually in this Tournament?

It has been pretty clear that West Coast and Southern schools and G5 and lower schools just don't get due consideration. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Michigan gets stunned tomorrow. They drew a pretty game team to open with. The issue is the preseason over ranking of the Northeaster, Atlantic Coast and Big 10 schools. When they start high, and particularly this year play among themselves, of course their RPI's remain high even if the mediocre.

I'll always hate computers! Garbage and bias in, garbage and bias out, and then garbage and bias justifications from the peanut gallery! With the exception of Baylor which I did overlook in my post where I was challenging the field ahead of time, I do think there will be a dearth of P5's present in final four. I do believe Gonzaga and Baylor will be there. The Bears will face a test with the Hogs if the Hogs stay hot. But the rest Quo is going to be wide open with some welcomed surprises.

You'd have to be more than careful. You'd have to be downright creative to justify 16 bids.

It's the oldest trick in the books, using tournament performance to justify whether teams "belong" in the NCAA Tournament. If we go by that criteria, half of the teams every year won't belong in the field. You have to be a complete idiot if you believe Ohio State and Purdue didn't belong in this year's NCAA Tournament. The time to judge who belongs and who doesn't belong in the NCAA Tournament is before the tournament starts. The NCAA doesn't know who's going to win games in the NCAA Tournament any more than anyone here.

There's truth in what you are saying, but then again picking teams for the tournament isn't an exact science either, so it is also very possible that teams got in that didn't deserve to. If you can't say that just because a team lost they didn't deserve to be in, you can't say that just because the committee selected them that they did deserve to be in.

In the case of a team like Ohio State, they obviously belonged in despite their upset loss yesterday. But that upset loss also suggests they were overrated, over-seeded as well. The fact that Purdue lost as well suggests they were too, and since both are from the B1G, that suggests the B1G was overrated by the committee. I suspect the extreme strength of the top two B1G teams, Michigan and Illinois, cast a positive halo effect on the rest of the conference, leading to more teams getting in, and at higher seedings. But we shall continue to see how the tournament develops. Who knows, maybe the B1G will get three teams in the Final 4 anyway.

I think this year was the hardest to judge teams from different conferences because there were fewer non conference games to distinguish teams. Illinois played just 6 non conference games, so did Ohio State, Michigan played 5. Colgate (NET #9) didn't play any non conference games. The more data the NCAA (and bracketologists) have, the more accurate they will be.

Also with smaller crowds it's not surprising to see more upsets. You can say there's no home crowds in the NCAA Tournament but you've never seen North Carolina or Duke play games in Charlotte or Greensboro? I went to see Villanova play an NCAA game in Philly, it was a Villanova home game. I also saw Illinois play Arizona and the big comeback to make the Final Four. I'd be hard pressed to believe without that crowd that they don't make that comeback. If Ohio State's playing Oral Roberts close to home and there are a lot of OSU fans there, I'd say they win that game yesterday. If that game was in Indy in a normal year, there would be more Ohio State fans than Oral Roberts fans there.

No question, crowds matter, and historically the NCAA - for money reasons - has tended to put teams with big fan bases, like Duke, Kentucky, UNC, Syracuse, etc. in brackets close to home, where their fans buy up a ton of tickets and it is close to being a home game for them.

I also agree about the relative lack of OOC games as that makes comparison difficult. It also created biases. E.g., once we decide that Iowa, Ohio State, Illinois and Michigan are very good teams, then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy - why let Michigan State in? Well they beat Illinois and that's a great win, and they lost to Michigan, but that's a "good loss" so it doesn't hurt them, etc. That helped the B1G a lot, I thing.

(03-19-2021 10:37 PM)stever20 Wrote:  

I think they've been quite happy taking all that money in BTN subscriber fees from New Jersey households all this time.

(03-20-2021 12:12 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 09:35 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 08:40 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(03-20-2021 08:33 AM)schmolik Wrote:  

(03-19-2021 09:18 PM)ken d Wrote:  You'd have to be more than careful. You'd have to be downright creative to justify 16 bids.

It's the oldest trick in the books, using tournament performance to justify whether teams "belong" in the NCAA Tournament. If we go by that criteria, half of the teams every year won't belong in the field. You have to be a complete idiot if you believe Ohio State and Purdue didn't belong in this year's NCAA Tournament. The time to judge who belongs and who doesn't belong in the NCAA Tournament is before the tournament starts. The NCAA doesn't know who's going to win games in the NCAA Tournament any more than anyone here.

There's truth in what you are saying, but then again picking teams for the tournament isn't an exact science either, so it is also very possible that teams got in that didn't deserve to. If you can't say that just because a team lost they didn't deserve to be in, you can't say that just because the committee selected them that they did deserve to be in.

In the case of a team like Ohio State, they obviously belonged in despite their upset loss yesterday. But that upset loss also suggests they were overrated, over-seeded as well. The fact that Purdue lost as well suggests they were too, and since both are from the B1G, that suggests the B1G was overrated by the committee. I suspect the extreme strength of the top two B1G teams, Michigan and Illinois, cast a positive halo effect on the rest of the conference, leading to more teams getting in, and at higher seedings. But we shall continue to see how the tournament develops. Who knows, maybe the B1G will get three teams in the Final 4 anyway.

I think this year was the hardest to judge teams from different conferences because there were fewer non conference games to distinguish teams. Illinois played just 6 non conference games, so did Ohio State, Michigan played 5. Colgate (NET #9) didn't play any non conference games. The more data the NCAA (and bracketologists) have, the more accurate they will be.

Also with smaller crowds it's not surprising to see more upsets. You can say there's no home crowds in the NCAA Tournament but you've never seen North Carolina or Duke play games in Charlotte or Greensboro? I went to see Villanova play an NCAA game in Philly, it was a Villanova home game. I also saw Illinois play Arizona and the big comeback to make the Final Four. I'd be hard pressed to believe without that crowd that they don't make that comeback. If Ohio State's playing Oral Roberts close to home and there are a lot of OSU fans there, I'd say they win that game yesterday. If that game was in Indy in a normal year, there would be more Ohio State fans than Oral Roberts fans there.

No question, crowds matter, and historically the NCAA - for money reasons - has tended to put teams with big fan bases, like Duke, Kentucky, UNC, Syracuse, etc. in brackets close to home, where their fans buy up a ton of tickets and it is close to being a home game for them.

I also agree about the relative lack of OOC games as that makes comparison difficult. It also created biases. E.g., once we decide that Iowa, Ohio State, Illinois and Michigan are very good teams, then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy - why let Michigan State in? Well they beat Illinois and that's a great win, and they lost to Michigan, but that's a "good loss" so it doesn't hurt them, etc. That helped the B1G a lot, I thing.

Big Ten was completely a product of its own hype this year and the tournament is showing that. The conference's non-conf resume was thinner than you'd think (even in an already thin year).. Your point is exactly right. The mid-to-upper middle teams got tons of chances to beat "elite" teams and no number of losses seemed to be held against them as long as they got a couple big wins.

A 12-8 conference team (OSU) getting a 2 seed is an absolute joke. Not like they had a long list of nonconference accomplishments.