quo vadis
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RE: NCAA Fri Thoughts
(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.
(This post was last modified: 03-20-2021 12:14 PM by quo vadis.)
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