So, I must say, the changes made by the NCAA to the format of the NIT this year have really helped bolster the legitimacy of that tournament. Letting in conference champs, seeding the teams, giving the better-seeded teams (not necessarily the more prominent teams) home games, etc. … very cool. But I gotta ask: how on earth did Louisville get a #1 seed over Missouri State, which was universally acknowledged as one of the “first teams out” of the NCAAs (indeed, the highest-ranked RPI team ever left out of the Big Dance), whereas Louisville wasn’t even seriously in the discussion? All of the #1 seeds, in fact, were major-conference teams (Louisville, Maryland, Cincinnati and Michigan), while Missouri State joined Florida State, Creighton and St. Joe’s on the #2 line.
I hadn’t really considered, until now, the implications of this secondary snub of Missouri State — but it’s actually quite significant, because the Cardinals and Bears are in the same region, and both advanced to the quarterfinals, so they play each other tonight… at Freedom Hall in Louisville! By all rights, this should be a home game for Missouri State, but instead, Louisville gets that unearned privilege. Bah. Here’s hoping the Bears use that as motiviation, kick Louisville’s butt, and advance to the NIT Final Four at Madison Square Garden. Now that Creighton’s out, I’m hoping for a Hofstra-Missouri State championship game… with Hofstra beating Michigan to get there, and Missouri State beating Cincinnati. Billy Packer will love it!
Anyway… three quarterfinals tonight, including an all-CAA battle between Old Dominion and Hofstra. (The Pride, inexplicably a #3 seed, got there by winning at St. Joseph’s. ODU won at Colorado. Nice.) Here’s the scoreboard. Here’s the bracket. And here’s a refresher on the implications of tonight’s games for the 12 contestants still alive in the BrendanLoy.com NIT pool.
March 22nd, 2006 at 10:26:23 pm
I’m with you about it being ridiculous that the Bears were not a #1 seed–I’m really complaining more that Louisville was a 1 seed. You could argue which teams should be the 1 seed but I don’t know how Louisville fit into the discussion. I could see Florida St maybe?
What I think really happened was that the NIT had to promise ‘home games only’ for Maryland and Louisville to participate. I’m not sure where I saw it but I’m pretty sure that Maryland initially declined a bid and had to be talked into accepting it. I’m pretty sure the ‘talked into it’ ended up being a promise of all home games. I’m assuming the same deal for Louisville.
I’ll give Michigan and Cincinnati credit.
As I’m typing this note, the game is not going well for Mo St (SMS to me). It’s been a war but Louisville is up 11 with 13 minutes to go.
March 22nd, 2006 at 11:00:29 pm
SCOREBOARD
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:59:43 am
I know they had a good record and everything, but Louiseville ended up being the second hardest out of conference game they played all year. They were in a solid conference but I think MVC ended up about where it should be, 4 bids. I would’ve put them in over Air Force but not over Cincinatti or Florida State
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:00:26 am
My above post was talking about NCAA tourney. I think the NIT seedings are arguable, but giving them a 2 seed isn’t a travesty or anything like that.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:08:42 am
I think it’s indeed a travesty… much moreso than the 4 bids is a travesty (as opposed to 5 or 6). Leaving out Missouri State and Creighton in favor of Cincinnati, Florida State, Maryland or Michigan could potentially have been justifiable (though leaving them out in favor of Air Force and Utah State certainly wasn’t), but there is no way you can convince me that Louisville deserved that #1 seed ahead of Missouri State. Yes, I know they kicked their asses tonight, clearly Louisville was the better team tonight, but Missouri State had the better season… and who knows how different the game might have been if it had been at Missouri State, like is SHOULD have been, instead of at Louisville.
Also, to talk about “the second hardest out of conference game” ignores that they play in a really good conference… it would be like saying an ACC or Big East team with a weak OOC schedule didn’t play anybody good… well, not *quite* like that, but the same basic idea. Add to it the fact that, unlike the ACC and Big East bubble teams, Missouri State actually had a good record, and you’ve got real problems in terms of denying them an NCAA bid… let alone giving them a #2 seed and forcing them to play on the road against Louisville, a team that barely qualified for the Big East tournament and wasn’t a serious at-large contender. It’s obvious what happened here: the NIT committee gave Louisville the #1 seed for ratings/financial reasons and perhaps, as the above commenter suggested, to get them to play in the tournament in the first place. Sad. Funny how so many mid-majors are willing to play anybody, anywhere, anytime, while the big boys basically have to be bribed just to play in the NIT, and they’re too chickenshit to go on the road against a team that might actually beat them… LAME…
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:11:57 am
(For the record, I would have left out Air Force, Utah State and Seton Hall, and put in Cincinnati, Missouri State and Hofstra. Hofstra would have been my “last team in”; Seton Hall my “first team out,” followed by Florida State, Michigan and Maryland… not sure if that’s the right order, but they would have been #2-4 left out. Utah State and Air Force would not have been seriously considered, as their pre-tournament resumes clearly did not merit consideration given the number of obviously more qualified teams.)
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:18:40 am
I would love to see more of the MVC good teams play a tougher out of conference schedule. Whether the reason is creative MVC scheduling or power schools being afraid to schedule them, it would make evaluating things in the end a lot easier.
I don’t see how you can call giving Louisville a #1 seed here a travesty. Travest is a very strong word There is an argument to be made against it, but certainly one for it as well. Louisville had 4 more losses then Missouri State coming into the NIT. Four of them were against NCAA #1 seeds Connecticute and Villanova. I don’t know if its fair to penalize them for playing those games. They also lost road games to WVU, Pitt and Kentucky. The records might be a little deceptive here.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:19:58 am
I agree with you on Utah State not deserving to get in, I think that (and a lot of the seeding) is a result of the conferences that members of the comittee represent. I would’ve swapped Hofstra for George Mason which obviously looks bad in hindsite right now.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:35:35 am
All this talk of team selections, mid-major bias and bribing teams to particpate in the NIT has reminded me of an idea I had back on Selection Sunday.
Since the NCAA now owns the NIT they now control the fate of every team to make post-season play. This year that was 105 teams. (Why does the field of 65 have only a single “play-in” game again?)
What if they just selected 104 teams for one huge bracket? The top 24 seeds get a first-round bye and there are 40 “play-in” games. The 40 losing teams go to the NIT and continue with single-elimination play from there.
The number of teams could be adjusted if scheduling becomes a problem. Maybe 96 teams with 32 byes and a 32-team NIT field would be a nice round number that is more manageable. I think this would strengthen the Championship tournament. Would it hurt the NIT?
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:42:23 am
I would love a 32-team NIT that was played 24/7 over the 3/4 days after selection sunday (all at the garden) with the final 2 or 4 getting the last bids into the NCAA and taking a red eye to get beat on in the NCAA first round (give em all 12 seeds to they have a prayer).
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:52:11 am
Louisville also lost at St. John’s and at Rutgers, and its only wins in conference were at Providence, at home vs. Cincinnati, at home vs. Notre Dame in overtime, at home vs. South Florida by only 3 points, at home vs. DePaul, and at home vs. Marquette in overtime. So really, the only quality wins in there are Cincinnati and Marquette. Non-conference, they beat Miami and….. that’s it, nobody else of note on the schedule.
Missouri State’s conferences losses were all to the MVC’s good teams — i.e., no St. John’s or Rutgers equivalents. They lost to Creighton, Northern Iowa, Bradley and Southern Illinois once each (which means they also beat them once each), and they lost to Wichita State twice. Non-conference, they won at Wisconsin-Milwaukee… nobody else particularly good.
Louisville’s schedule was certainly strongly, but they lost almost all of the tough games. Wins over Cincinnati and Marquette are pretty much offset by losses to St. John’s and Rutgers, and you’re left with a resume that contains nothing to suggest that they deserve more credit that their record suggests. It’s great to play a tough schedule, but you’ve got to WIN at least one or two of those games… and if you’re not going to get very many good wins, you’ve definitely got to avoid bad losses. By contrast, Missouri State won four games against its conference’s quality teams, and didn’t have any bad losses whatsoever. Plus, winning at Wisconsin-Milwaukee has gotta be seen as more impressive than winning at Miami.
So, sorry, but I don’t see the case for Louisville… I just don’t. At the end of the day, you have to win some games, not just play tough teams and lose to all of them.
I do agree, though, that I’d love to see the MVC teams play more major-conference teams. Unfortunately, as I alluded to earlier, most of the major-conference teams are too greedy or scared to schedule those games fairly. At best, they’ll schedule home games early, not home-and-home or even 2-and-1 series (2 games at the major conference team, 1 at the mid-major). Why? Because they have nothing to gain and everything to lose from those matchups. Nobody gives them credit if they win, and it looks bad if they lose.
There are exceptions… Indiana plays Indiana State every year, and Northern Iowa plays Iowa and Iowa State because the state passed a law forcing the big schools to schedule those games (!). But it would be great to see, say, Illinois against Southern Illinois every year, home-and-home… Illinois against Bradley, home-and-home… Kansas against Wichita State, home-and-home… Georgetown against George Mason, home-and-home… Missouri State against Missouri, home-and-home… is it going to happen? No, because the major conference teams can’t be bothered. They’d rather play low-majors in home-only series, and be virtually guaranteed of wins. I’d love for the NCAA to step in somehow, or for more states to do what Iowa did, but I doubt that’s going to happen.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:00:07 am
Re: the NIT as a “feeder” to the NCAAs somehow… cool ideas, but the problem is, they would decrease the likelihood of first-round upsets, which are many people’s (myself included) favorite part of March Madness. They also would make seeding much more important… imagine the debates over who gets a #8 and who gets a #9 in a scenario where #8s get first-round byes while #9s have to play #24s for the right to get into the first round! Given some of the nonsensical seeding decisions the committee made this year, I’m not sure I trust them with making seeding decisions that important… :) But the bigger issue is, you’d just inevitably have fewer upsets. The teams with the byes would definitely like that, and you could certainly argue that it creates a situation where teams are rewarded for good seasons (kinda like how the conferences tournaments that reward the top teams with byes are widely praised for doing that), but it takes away the joy of watching something like the Northwestern State upset happen as often as it currently does, since fatigue would be a factor for the teams that win through. Upsets would still happen, of course, but I’d be stunned if they happen as often as they do now.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:12:05 am
P.S. An alternative vision:
Only teams with automatic bids get into the NCAAs automatically. That’s 31 teams, but I’m sure another new conference will pop into existence one of these years, so let’s pretend there are 32 automatic bids because it makes the math easier. :)
Okay, so now, the committee picks the 64 best at-large teams in the country, seeds them from 1 to 64, and pairs them up against one another in a massive “play-in” orgy. Included in this at-large pool is everyone from the UConns (top teams that didn’t get automatic bids) to the Hofstras (current bubble teams) to the Louisvilles (current NIT teams). Also, just like in the current NIT, regular-season conference champions who don’t win their conference tournaments get automatic bids into the 64-team “play-in” round.
The 32 winners of the “play-in” round advance to the NCAA Tournament, joining the 32 automatic bid winners who got byes directly into the tourney. The 64 teams are reseeded (so you don’t have the absurd situation of #8-seed Monmouth vs. #9-seed UConn) and they play on as normal.
The 32 losers of the “play-in” round go to the NIT.
Hell, if you wanted to get really creative, you could have the NIT inherit the NCAA losers at every turn, at least until the Final Four. The 32 “play-in” losers play the 32 NCAA first-round losers in the NIT first round… the 32 winners of those games advance to play each other, reducing the field to 16… whereupon they are joined by the 16 losers second-round NCAA losers, so you have another round of 32, then a round of 16, which reduces the NIT field to 8… and then those 8 are joined by the 8 NCAA Sweet 16 losers… etc. etc.
That’s probably overkill, but I do rather like the idea of making conference tournaments mean something for EVERYONE — if you win your conference tourney, you get a bye into the Big Dance; if you don’t, you don’t, whether you’re UConn or Wichita State or whomever — while simultaneously rewarding all regular-season champions with at least a shot at the Dance, though they have to win an extra game (and most likely against a REALLY good team, if they’re from a low-major league) to get there.
My plan would also mean that every team would enter the NCAA Tournament on at least a 1-game winning streak. :)
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:18:46 am
(My idea of basically making the NIT a double-elimination arm of the NCAA tourney — except with its own eventual champion, separate and distinct from the NCAA champion — would have the advantage of REALLY fun brackets. :)
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:06:18 pm
Brendan, you’re on crack. Louisville was definitely the better team tonight and this season. They happened to be young and shaky, but obviously they have pulled it together, and they have Rick Pitino as their coach. I’d pick Louisville any time over Missouri State.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:43:29 pm
No Andrew, you’re on crack. The question isn’t whether Louisville is “the better team,” it’s whether they had the better season. As I’ve pointed out before, if we were going on who is subjectively “the better team,” Notre Dame would have been in the NCAAs. So would Florida State. But “young and shaky” teams who are therefore inconsistent and, as a result, compile weak objective resumes, don’t deserve either NCAA bids or high NIT seeds. Teams aren’t supposed to be rewarded for potential, they’re supposed to be rewarded for results.
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:10:53 pm
The question isn’t whether Louisville is “the better team,� it’s whether they had the better season.
I said: “Louisville was definitely the better team tonight and this season.” I think the season’s results clearly show that Louisville was the better team going into the NIT and therefore should be seeded higher. Louisville would get the higher seed whether you’re looking at “potential” or results.