But going forward?

I don't know

From ESPN today:

"There definitely should be some coaches and players on that thing (the NCAA Tournament selection committee) to bring some levity to as crazy as it's gotten," Izzo said. "I never know what the NET means, what KenPom means, what ESPN means or the Daily News. There's so many things out there right now that do influence [the committee]."

Sounds like Izzo doesn't know what levity means, either, but OK.

Fair to suggest a 69-year-old coach probably feels having a couple old-timers throwing their weight around on the committee couldn't hurt his team's chances. There definitely is a case to be made that tournament selections in a certain sport should be made by people with a significant background in that particular sport (did you see the a makeup of the CFP selection committee for crying out loud).

Back to the article:

Izzo, who played in college at Division II Northern Michigan, said he's always been a fan of "the little guys" but that from a business perspective, squeezing out big-name programs like Michigan State presents problems. Izzo, whose teams have made 26 consecutive NCAA Tournaments, noted that 20 of the 32 Division I conferences had a team win the league tournament that wasn't the regular-season champion.

"What's happening now, everybody likes the upsets on the first weekend, but I'm not sure moving on that's what's best for the game," Izzo said. "I think it's got to be looked at seriously."

So now upsets are bad for bu$ine$$ (a point that can be debated) and, therefore, should, in Izzo's opinion, be prevented from happening (a whole other discussion)?

Not just the shockers like longshot UMBC knocking off top-seeded Virginia, but is Izzo also implying San Diego State and FAU advancing to the Final Four from mid-major conferences isn't "what's best for the game."

Should the number of non-P6 schools in the NCAA Tournament be capped at a minimal number? Or should mid- and low-major programs be kept out of tournament altogether lest they beat a Virginia or a Purdue or a Kentucky.

Wonder if Izzo would also be in favor of B1G universities only hiring coaches from P6 conferences?

Hope someone else in the media follows up on Izzo's comments and we're provided any necessary clarification

LINK: Tom Izzo: NCAA selection process needs more nuance, less analytics

Overrated.

He has one title that he walked into only because Kenyon Martin broke his leg. We'd have beaten MSU by 25 points.

(03-20-2024 12:27 PM)Bear Catlett Wrote:  Overrated.

He has one title that he walked into only because Kenyon Martin broke his leg. We'd have beaten MSU by 25 points.

My brother was a UC student when that injury occurred. I saw it live on TV. Devastating.

And, yes, I truly believe Cincinnati had the nation's best team that year and was the favorite to win it all.

Eh, I think it's just living in the bubble of Big Ten land for so long you forget that 78% of Division I has a drastically different experience. (I've also heard great things about Izzo as a person from people I know/trust, and I believe those things to be true).

But he's really "not wrong" about those things. He does sound "old man yells at clouds" on the upset thing. But conference tournaments protect their top seeds. It's just that DOING SOMETHING about that definitely is wrong. You want a tournament that's fair, and the results are the results.

I also think it needs to be pointed out that upsets are up and are perceived the way they are simply because of the conditions we have, which fans absorb and base their expectations on. The P6 is always on TV with big media contracts; the sports media works for the companies that invest in those contracts. The narrative is that P6 is just lightyears ahead of non-P6: Us and Them. The metrics we use to judge teams all year long before the NCAA tourney tips off were designed to reflect that perception.

Everything is SOS based. No one talks about teams being good outside of a schedule context: You beat ____, you didn't beat anyone." You are your schedule. Which is really kinda dumb: If the Dodgers played a season of Double A baseball, they're still the Dodgers. No one would say "they're not better than the Twins, because the Twins beat MLB teams this year!"

So non-P6 teams are just A LOT better than their perception. Because the performance of your conference members is 62% or more of your SOS, which is what the vast majority of NET; and we use counting stats of Q1 wins like it's pre-Moneyball baseball looking at RBI.

Which flows nicely into what he said about NET. I'm not sure how anyone can argue the NET is good. No matter which side of the P6/non-cartel fence you're on, you can't look at: #50 Grand Canyon, #51 South Carolina, #52 James Madison... and say "That makes sense."

EVERYONE wants to know "What do we have to do to get in?" and wants a transparent metric to judge teams. (and I don't see anything wrong with "trying to game the system" since that's no different than using analytics for focusing on threes and dunks instead of mid-range jumpers). If you have a secret system that can't be gamed, it better spit out a list that looks a lot more like what's in our heads, because NET ain't that at all.

(03-20-2024 12:27 PM)Bear Catlett Wrote:  Overrated.

He has one title that he walked into only because Kenyon Martin broke his leg. We'd have beaten MSU by 25 points.

Yikes, what brought that on?

Izzo is 55-23 in the NCAAT, with one championship and 7 other final 4s, 10 B1G regular season championships and 6 B1G Tournament Championships. His 8 total final 4's is the same total as INDIANA has in their entire history. Izzo has more Final 4s and Conference championships than all but a handful of schools in their entire history. Your school is one of the very few in the country with more of any of those stats, though your 2 titles were more than 60 years ago. Since then, you've made 1 final 4 and won about 30 total NCAAT games, a .5 per year average, which is GREAT by the standards of the vast majority of programs. Izzo wins more like 2 NCAAT games per year, and he's done it for nearly 30 years now.

Is he old? Yes. Is he pushing an agenda that favors Michigan St and other Big programs (like Cincinnati and A&M btw)? Yes. Is he correct? I think not. But I'm not going to trash a 69 year old expert in all things MBB-related because I disagree with his opinion on a much-discussed and little-agreed-upon topic like this one, and I don't think you should, either.

Cheering on the little guy is part of the fun. Tom Izzo tried to have fun once...he hated it.

(03-20-2024 02:02 PM)JSchmack Wrote:  Eh, I think it's just living in the bubble of Big Ten land for so long you forget that 78% of Division I has a drastically different experience. (I've also heard great things about Izzo as a person from people I know/trust, and I believe those things to be true).

But he's really "not wrong" about those things. He does sound "old man yells at clouds" on the upset thing. But conference tournaments protect their top seeds. It's just that DOING SOMETHING about that definitely is wrong. You want a tournament that's fair, and the results are the results.

I also think it needs to be pointed out that upsets are up and are perceived the way they are simply because of the conditions we have, which fans absorb and base their expectations on. The P6 is always on TV with big media contracts; the sports media works for the companies that invest in those contracts. The narrative is that P6 is just lightyears ahead of non-P6: Us and Them. The metrics we use to judge teams all year long before the NCAA tourney tips off were designed to reflect that perception.

Everything is SOS based. No one talks about teams being good outside of a schedule context: You beat ____, you didn't beat anyone." You are your schedule. Which is really kinda dumb: If the Dodgers played a season of Double A baseball, they're still the Dodgers. No one would say "they're not better than the Twins, because the Twins beat MLB teams this year!"

So non-P6 teams are just A LOT better than their perception. Because the performance of your conference members is 62% or more of your SOS, which is what the vast majority of NET; and we use counting stats of Q1 wins like it's pre-Moneyball baseball looking at RBI.

Which flows nicely into what he said about NET. I'm not sure how anyone can argue the NET is good. No matter which side of the P6/non-cartel fence you're on, you can't look at: #50 Grand Canyon, #51 South Carolina, #52 James Madison... and say "That makes sense."

EVERYONE wants to know "What do we have to do to get in?" and wants a transparent metric to judge teams. (and I don't see anything wrong with "trying to game the system" since that's no different than using analytics for focusing on threes and dunks instead of mid-range jumpers). If you have a secret system that can't be gamed, it better spit out a list that looks a lot more like what's in our heads, because NET ain't that at all.

It's interesting to me how a lot of us (including yours truly) get worked up every year about rankings and seeding choices, especially those at the cutoff line, for the CFP and NCAAT. The NCAAT selection committee is picking from a handful of somewhat-deserving but highly flawed teams for those last few spots, so we get a bit miffed about the specific schools put in or left out but they overall slide by with less criticism. I mean, these aren't top 5, 10, 20, or even 30 teams, they're teams are are somewhere beween the 40th and 50th best teams in the country. Who cares if they screw one up here or there, or if my school gets a 9 seed instead of a 10, or a 7 seed instead of a 5 like last year? But the CFP committee gets a heaping dose of criticism b/c the decisions they make can and sometimes do determine the champion. In the BCS era there was a split champion one time. In the first 10 years of the CFP era, the #4 team has won 2 titles and the #3 team has won once. That's 4 times over 2 decades in which the (often controversial) decisions of first computers and later on a human committee had a direct impact on the eventual champion.

I'm curious to see if all the frustration and angst is mitigated when we go to a 12+ team format for the CFP. I suspect that there will be a lot more of "they should have won more games" comments for the first team out in the CFP in the future.

(03-20-2024 02:52 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  It's interesting to me how a lot of us (including yours truly) get worked up every year about rankings and seeding choices,

a handful of somewhat-deserving but highly flawed teams for those last few spots,
they overall slide by with less criticism.

But the CFP committee gets a heaping dose of criticism b/c the decisions they make can and sometimes do determine the champion.

I'm curious to see if all the frustration and angst is mitigated when we go to a 12+ team format for the CFP. I suspect that there will be a lot more of "they should have won more games" comments for the first team out in the CFP in the future.

I think a lot of that is nature of the beast: In basketball, EVERYONE in the top 100 is talented enough to be an NCAA team. It's all just consistency, because it's a much larger sample size than football.

Yeah, in football, it's "coulda shoulda woulda" I can point to three plays that would have made Tulane undefeated -- and they still wouldn't get in. It's just a ridiculously smaller sample size in terms of both season length (31+ vs 12) and in-game (75 possessions vs 15).



Another thing I want to point out is that when we see stories like this Izzo one coming from the sports world, we frequently forget THAT THEY'RE ASKED. These are NOT cases of someone grabbing a bullhorn and asking for everyone's attention because they have something to say.

No one asked Tom Izzo to prepare a presentation on the topic. He doesn't know what he's getting at a press conference. He sits down and some guy asks what he thinks about Pitino's suggestion for a coaches committee instead of ADs. So you get an answer like that (and the reports don't even tell you who asked and what the question was).

Every thread on this site, we get to decide if we want to reply. We can take as much time as we want to research and write and edit. He's just on the spot. So you kind of have to take comments like these with a massive grain of salt.

I was reminded about Izzo's 2000 title after reading this thread, so I looked up Michigan State's season that year. They beat Wisconsin four times (twice in conference, once in the B1G tournament and again in the Final Four). Is that the only time a team has gone 4-0 against another team in the same season?

Oh, and the BIG reason it seems like "basketball gets to slide" more than the CFP committee is because we have 47 hours from Selection Show to tip-off and it's all forgotten (unless its your team, then you take it to the grave) by Thursday when you're hit with an onslaught of 48 games in four days.

With football, we get the CFP selections and then it's almost a month before they play.

Picture sitting at the bar watching games next to someone like me. During the CFP, it's the big plays that interrupt me from saying "It's BS, they shouldn't even be there."

During the 2016 NCAA Tournament, I'd START telling you it's ridiculous that Tulsa got in over St. Bonaventure, and we'd be interrupted by Hawaii is leading Cal, Wichita State is beating Arizona, Temple and Iowa are in OT, St. Joe's and Cincinnati are coming down to the buzzer.... Yale beat Baylor! There goes my bracket. Northern Iowa to beat Texas, I picked that! Stephen F Austin over West Virginia!" Little Rock is in Double OT vs Purdue! Down goes Michigan State! Middle Tennessee with the 15-2 upset!

(03-20-2024 02:39 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(03-20-2024 12:27 PM)Bear Catlett Wrote:  Overrated.

He has one title that he walked into only because Kenyon Martin broke his leg. We'd have beaten MSU by 25 points.

Yikes, what brought that on?

Izzo is 55-23 in the NCAAT, with one championship and 7 other final 4s, 10 B1G regular season championships and 6 B1G Tournament Championships. His 8 total final 4's is the same total as INDIANA has in their entire history. Izzo has more Final 4s and Conference championships than all but a handful of schools in their entire history. Your school is one of the very few in the country with more of any of those stats, though your 2 titles were more than 60 years ago. Since then, you've made 1 final 4 and won about 30 total NCAAT games, a .5 per year average, which is GREAT by the standards of the vast majority of programs. Izzo wins more like 2 NCAAT games per year, and he's done it for nearly 30 years now.

Is he old? Yes. Is he pushing an agenda that favors Michigan St and other Big programs (like Cincinnati and A&M btw)? Yes. Is he correct? I think not. But I'm not going to trash a 69 year old expert in all things MBB-related because I disagree with his opinion on a much-discussed and little-agreed-upon topic like this one, and I don't think you should, either.

Over...rated.

How many times has he been gifted a bid? How many years has he been overseeded?

Maybe UC could have done some damage in this year's tournament if you just... get... in.

But we'll never know because their 19-14 was better than our 20-14. Allegedly.

(03-20-2024 03:27 PM)Hokie4Skins Wrote:  I was reminded about Izzo's 2000 title after reading this thread, so I looked up Michigan State's season that year. They beat Wisconsin four times (twice in conference, once in the B1G tournament and again in the Final Four). Is that the only time a team has gone 4-0 against another team in the same season?

UC beat Memphis 4 times in 1992.

I have always thought highly of Izzo and still do. IMO his comments are reasonable.

(03-20-2024 03:46 PM)Bear Catlett Wrote:  

(03-20-2024 03:27 PM)Hokie4Skins Wrote:  I was reminded about Izzo's 2000 title after reading this thread, so I looked up Michigan State's season that year. They beat Wisconsin four times (twice in conference, once in the B1G tournament and again in the Final Four). Is that the only time a team has gone 4-0 against another team in the same season?

UC beat Memphis 4 times in 1992.

That Memphis loss for a chance to go to the Final Four was painful. My brother had not yet enrolled at UC (that came in 1998) and our family was strongly rooting for the Tigers.

But the Bearcats won all four games vs. Memphis that season and were clearly the better team.

**** that guy. May they lose to Wayne County Community College next year.

This latest assult on any conference not named the Big 10 or SEC comes after last years tourney included 2 of the 4 schools in the final 4 were Group of 5 schools (FAU and SDSU)

This years NIT they took the Auto bids away from the G5 again. Even though the NIT Championship Game included 2 teams from CUSA. And of course CUSA was snubbed with no teams invited even though Xavier was invited with a losing record because they are in the Big East.

Their arguements are changed to suit them. In FBS Football they use the example that the SEC and Big 10 had so many teams in the 4 team playoff that they deserve the most money and byes, and auto bids because of performance.

But the same arguement is not used when last years NIT and NCAA Championship games 3 of the 4 teams were from the G5.
What do we get from those basketball sucesses (No G5 auto bids in the NIT this year and a call for no G5 auto bids in the NCAA in the future.

They could not even give the 12 team playoff a chance to work for a while now they want a 14 team version. Structured with big payouts for the SEC and Big 10.

You have 10 FBS Conferences and the champion of each one should be included in any playoff. The FCS, Div 2 and 3 do this every year.

All this money grab is in addition to the 70 million each school can receive in the Big 10 and SEC TV contracts along with the revenue from their 90,000 seat stadiums.

And also remember that in most cases that in both Football and Basketball the G5 school has to play the P5 at their home.

Add in NIL and the transfer portal, Where you have to recruit a new team every year. They talk about name brand schools for ratings. Why are they name brands because they are on Prime Time National TV every week.

The NFL has a great model where you have revenue sharing and schedules where you play home and away.
Oh there are 2 things that the Group of Greed
Likes about the G-5 (steal our coach or players)

They are destroying college sports.

THANK YOU GROUP OF GREED

(03-20-2024 03:27 PM)Hokie4Skins Wrote:  I was reminded about Izzo's 2000 title after reading this thread, so I looked up Michigan State's season that year. They beat Wisconsin four times (twice in conference, once in the B1G tournament and again in the Final Four). Is that the only time a team has gone 4-0 against another team in the same season?

Didn't Indiana beat Michigan five times that year they went undefeated with Scott May, Quinn Buckner, Bobby Wilkerson and Kent Benson?

(No, looked it up: Just 3 times)

I always tought Izzo & MSU got alot of gifts

MSU lost 5 out of last 7, they did not belong in Tourn this yr
no wonder so many schools opt out of NIT

If you don't think highly of Tom Izzo, then you don't think highly of a Hall of Fame coach whose had three decades of great success with basically local recruits. His Spartan teams are known for defense, rebounding, and toughness. If their style of basketball doesn't appeal to you, then I'm sorry about your softness problem.

He's currently the best active coach in the entire sport. If you gave him Duke's roster every year, he would have John Wooden championship numbers. If you gave him Kentucky's roster every year, he would win 300 games in a row.

There is not a single coach other than Brad Stevens' quick stop at Butler who has demonstrated more consistently that it doesn't matter what his roster is, he is going to squeeze every last drop out of it. His guys, to a man, will die in a heap on the court before not trying in a big game.

Michigan State is not a Tier 1 program nor are they a blue blood. They have none of those inherent advantages that Duke, Kansas, et al do. What they have is forty times the amount of heart though. Michigan State upset that Duke team with Zion Henderson with 1/10 the talent level. They also crushed other NBA-loaded Louisville, Tennessee, Virginia, etc. teams in March for the same reason.

What it means to be a Spartan is that you know going into the fight that you're a little brother. Yet, despite knowing this, you fight your big brothers as hard as humanly possible until you cannot continue to fight.

The college basketball regular season is completely irrelevant. The Spartans own the only month in the sport that is relevant. And they've owned it for almost three decades in a row without having first round draft picks to help them out. Coach K, Roy Williams, etc. are clowns relative to Izzo. Give them Izzo's rosters and they don't even crack .500. As a Michigan State fan, I am not ashamed to admit that we've had only three (count em!) bona fide NBA All Stars under Izzo (Draymond Green, Jason Richardson, and Zach Randolph). And yet, we friggin dominate March. When the millions are watching, we play tough and we play proud to be Spartans.

So, if you don't like the coach who created that, congrats on wearing Alabama football pants with a North Carolina sweatshirt and a Kentucky hat. You're likely born on second base and have zero appreciation for the fact that what a man earns off of hard work is the only thing you can judge a man on. Everything else is luck and unearned.

(03-20-2024 05:17 PM)Hilltop75 Wrote:  This latest assult on any conference not named the Big 10 or SEC comes after last years tourney included 2 of the 4 schools in the final 4 were Group of 5 schools (FAU and SDSU)

They are destroying college sports.

THANK YOU GROUP OF GREED

I understand your point of view, and agree with the overall concept.

But like I said, this isn't an organized assault; this is a coach being asked a question in a presser than he probably wishes he didn't get because he'd rather talk about basketball and not administration.

And all the media folks are reporting it as "Izzo wants to end auto bids" because the media is out for controversy and clicks, because the clicks help their company and the reporters' careers.

The good news is that coaches really don't get a say in the business side. You saw Boeheim criticize rumors of Syracuse to the ACC and then a few years later, Syracuse is off to the ACC and he kinda kept his mouth shut better for a while (until he didn't).


The bad news is that he's probably echoing what's been talked about in Big Ten circles.

I hope you get a good non-P6 coach say something along the lines of: "Look, the game is rigged, and that's fine. Life isn't fair. That's how the world works, the golden rule is 'he with the gold makes the rules.' We just want a chance to play. No one's saying we're as lucrative, or as sexy to TV networks. But we can play ball. And just let us play. You think the upsets are bad for the sport? You've got 40 minutes to prevent one. Just give us our 40 minutes to try and pull them off. That's all we want. We're not asking for your TV money, we just want everyone watching on TV to see that we're pretty good, too."

Because that would absolutely crush the PR battle. The P6 is going to look like greedy monsters trying to kill AQs.