(03-16-2024 11:47 AM)jjj Wrote: With selection Sunday approaching, most brackets have Virginia and Seton Hall in over Indiana State. Indiana State is 30 NET right now, Virginia and Seton Hall are 55+. Oklahoma is at 46. NET does incorporate strength of schedule in its computatations.
NET supposedly is the "sophisticated" tool used by the committee.... I can see New Mexico and Colorado getting in, with a higher NET. That makes sense.
Why will Indiana State get left out???? This is total BS.
IMO, New Mexico has really underperformed expectations this year while Colorado has been a mixed bag in a weaker than usual conference.
As for Indiana State, I'd definitely put them in ahead of New Mexico but probably not Colorado.
As for both Virginia and Seton Hall, NET rankings aside, I think both of those teams are better than Indiana State. Seton Hall is sneaky good and Virginia is pretty solid. I'd be pretty surprised if Indiana State could beat either of those teams if they played.
IMO, Virginia has one bad loss (Notre Dame). Seton Hall has a bad loss to Rutgers. Seton Hall has, what I would say is a bad loss to USC but it was back in November when USC was ranked #23.
But there's a lot of parity in NCAA hoops so teams lose nowadays, even the best teams.
As for Indiana State, the losses to Illinois State and SIU stand out. I'm also not in love with the loss to Michigan State though that team did go on a bit of a run in the B1G which is another conference that was particularly down and weak this year. But they just don't have any wins over non-MVC teams that impress me all that much but I'd still slot them in ahead of New Mexico.
With all of that said, I really don't like conference tournaments determining automatic bids. For example, you have a team like a Merrimack or Central Connecticut who kick azz in their conference and then get upset in one game and now the conference representative is Wagner who went 16-15 (7-9 in the NEC) or you have the Big South where High Point, UNC Asheville and even Gardner-Webb had really good seasons but the representative is Longwood who went 6-10 in conference. Actually...maybe Longwood is not yet eligible for the postseason (which is dumb) and it defaults to UNC Asheville (who lost in the Conf Final). But it happens elsewhere as well.
In the Big Sky, the rep is Montana State (17-17, 9-9) when Eastern Washington is by far the best team in that conference and both Northern Colorado and Montana are also well deserving.
The rep of the A-10 will not be one of the 4 best teams in the conference.
Temple is one of 4 teams that could potentially represent the AAC.
UTEP could represent CUSA.
Kent State could represent the MAC.
The rep of the MEAC will be either Howard (17-16) or Delaware State (15-17) when the best team was Norfolk State who went 22-11.
I know I complain about this every year but I just want to see conferences get represented by their best teams and to disregard the regular season and leave it up to a single elimination tournament where literally anything can happen sure makes for great entertainment but it really robs the NCAA Tournament of the best teams.
I know they'd never do it and I'm sure it would be loaded with tomfoolery, but ideally I'd award an auto-bid to all regular season conference champs and then a 2nd bid to any team that wins it's conf tournament. But that would mean some mediocre Major conference teams wouldn't get in like Wake Forest or Colorado or Oregon and we all know the powers that be need those teams in and really couldn't give a rat's azz about Norfolk State, Central Connecticut or Indiana State.
Anway...tl;dr....I don't like the selection process.