After watching Winthrop dismantle a good Missouri State team on its home court, 77-66, let me just say this:
If the Eagles get tripped up in the Big South tournament, and they get passed over by the NCAA selection committee in favor of some big-conference mediocrity like Florida State, Georgia Tech or Illinois, it’ll be shame… a damn shame.
Winthrop is good, and if they go undefeated in conference play — with their only regular-season losses being road games, all but one of them close, against North Carolina, Wisconsin (in overtime), Texas A&M and Maryland — they deserve an opportunity to prove themselves in the Big Dance. And the nation deserves a chance to watch them try.
Speaking of which, this 5-minute excerpt of the conversation between Andy Glockner and Joe Lunardi on yesterday’s edition of the ESPN College Basketball Insider podcast expresses my feelings on the perennial major vs. mid-major selection debate perfectly:
I particularly like Glockner’s comments toward the end:
Teams like Alabama…or Arkansas or Maryland or Georgia Tech or whatever: I’ve seen enough performances out of you that I know that you can lose games. You’ve proven that you are what you are. I don’t see any particular upside there. Versus a team that I’m not quite sure, because you haven’t seen them get that type of caliber of opportunity on a consistent basis, like an Old Dominion, a team that won at Georgetown earlier this year, or like a Xavier, which is quietly putting together a decent profile in the Atlantic 10. That would be my argument for it.
Exactly. When in doubt, give the little guys a chance. The big guys have plenty of chances during the regular season to prove themselves (and their opportunities, unlike Winthrop’s, occur both at home and on the road), and if they can’t take advantage of enough of those chances to even finish in the top half of their conference, they simply don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt over a mid-major or low-major team that has a plausible at-large case, especially a conference champion or runner-up.
As Lunardi puts it, “You’ve got to achieve something against the standard of competition where you sit.” Winthrop has sure as hell achieved something, going 12-0 with two games left, and validating that record tonight against the third-place team out of the well-respected Missouri Valley. What have Florida State (5-7 in the ACC), Georgia Tech (5-6) and other such teams achieved? If they can’t even get to .500 in conference play, why should we care about them? Honestly!
The reality is, if Winthrop goes undefeated in the Big South but doesn’t get the automatic berth, they probably won’t go dancing. Likewise, the loser of the probable Southern Conference title game between Davidson and Appalachian State will most likely be NIT-bound. I realize that. I just happen to think it sucks. I’d much, much rather see teams like Winthrop, Davidson or App. State (or, yes, VCU, Old Dominion or Xavier) get a shot, rather than seeing the eighth-place team from the ACC, or even the seventh-place team from the Pac-10, go up against the same sort of competition that they’ve already lost to repeatedly.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:11:53 pm
Winthrop is 1-4 against the top 50 and 0-4 versus the top 25 in Sagarin. They have zero quality wins. GT is 3-5 against the top 25 and 7-5 versus the top 50 and they are a young, improving team (won 4 straight). FSU is 4-9 against the top 25 including a win over Florida. The ACC is that much better than everyone else this year. You can’t say an ACC team is mediocre because it has losses against other ACC teams. The fact is the ACC dominated in nonconference competition.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:20:42 pm
They had a chance to prove themselves and lost every time they played a team from a power conference. If they win their conference they’ll get a second chance.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:26:32 pm
Somehow I thought you might comment on this post, JT. :)
First of all, you can’t say Winthrop has “zero quality wins,” because they just got a quality win, on the road, tonight. If you don’t count beating Missouri State at Missouri State as a quality win, then you’re judging teams by the names on their jerseys instead of their quality of play.
Secondly, Winthrop’s four losses were against four good teams, three of them EXTREMELY good — teams that will be #1 or #2 seeds, most likely — and they came very close to winning two of those games. One of them went to overtime. I realize a “near-win” isn’t the same thing as a win, but when your only opportunities to earn quality wins are on the road (a symptom of the inherent unfairness/imbalance between the “haves” and the “have nots,” a disadvantage the Georgia Techs of the world don’t have to deal with), and three of the five are against teams in the Top 8 nationally, and you win once going away, lose once going away, and lose two very close regulation games and one overtime game, I’m not going to claim that’s a great outcome, but it’s not terrible either. It certainly doesn’t conclusively demonstrate that you aren’t tourney-worthy. Obviously I would have liked to see Winthrop beat Wisconsin or North Carolina; obviously my argument would be stronger if they had. But I still think it would be better for the sport to give a team like Winthrop a chance, rather than a team that finishes in the bottom half of a major conference, possibly with a losing conference record. At some point, consistently winning games should be worth something.
Thirdly, I recognize that the ACC is probably the best conference in the country, but the statement “you can’t say an ACC team is mediocre because it has losses against other ACC teams” is laughable on its face. Of course I can say that. Just because you play in a good conference doesn’t mean you get a free pass from being described as mediocre if you lose most of your games in that conference. That’s pretty much the definition of mediocrity. Note I didn’t say bad, just mediocre. Now, a 7-9 team in the Big East or Big 12 might be bad, but a 7-9 team in the ACC is better than those conferences, so a 7-9 team in the ACC is merely mediocre.
Acknowledging that the ACC is the best conference in the country obligates me to assume that a 7-9 team in the ACC is most likely better than a 7-9 team in the Big East or the Pac-10 or the Missouri Valley or whatever. It does NOT obligate me to assume that a 7-9 team in the ACC is most likely better than a 14-4 team in the MVC, or a 14-0 team in the Big South. Those debates are still very subjective, and reasonable people can disagree. And I simply believe that where it’s a close call, the “tie should go to the mid-major,” if you will, because as Lunardi says, at some point you need to accomplish something against the competition you’re playing, not just say “we play in the ACC” and rest on your laurels, assuming that a .500 or just-below-.500 record will/should get you in. If a team gets to 9-7 in the ACC, I won’t argue with their inclusion, not for a second. But 8-8 or (especially) 7-9? Letting a team like that in, ahead a 14-0 conference champion that has proven it can play with some of the very best teams in the country? Yeah, I have a problem with that.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:36:43 pm
P.S. Georgia Tech really can’t talk about losing games on the road. Tech has road losses to Miami (bad), Vanderbilt (fellow bubble team), Clemson (fellow bubble team), North Carolina (good), Maryland (fellow people team) and Wake Forest (very bad). They have a road win over Memphis, which is very impressive, but other than that? Not too much. Their next-best road win is over Florida State (fellow bubble team). And the bad losses to Wake and Miami more than offset the one good road win.
Are you saying Georgia Tech would have done better than 1-4 if their only five games against quality competition were road dates at North Carolina, Wisconsin, Texas A&M, Maryland and Missouri State?? Guess what, you start out at 0-2, since you’ve already lost on the road to the Heels and Terps (and by wider margins than Winthrop did). How confident are you that you’d go 2-1 at Wisconsin, A&M and Mo State? There is nothing on Tech’s resume to suggest that any such confidence would be justified. To be honest, I’d put my money on 0-3.
Tech has built a resume around inconsistent performance against consistently good opposition. Winthrop has built a resume around consistently good performance against inconsistent opposition — a handful of very good teams, a bunch of awful teams. Because I believe quality of play is more important than strength of schedule (the latter being something that the teams largely do not control), I take Winthrop every time in that debate.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:44:44 pm
P.P.S. With regard to your statement that “you can’t say an ACC team is mediocre because it has losses against other ACC teams” … I want to reiterate that two of Tech’s losses are to the ACC’s worst teams, Wake Forest and Miami. If they had won those games, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. And that’s precisely what I mean by “major-conference mediocrity.” If you’re losing to teams like Wake Forest and Miami, you don’t deserve an at-large berth unless you’re making up for those bad losses with a bunch of really good wins. If Tech finishes 7-9, with their best wins being at Memphis, at Florida State, and let’s say at home against Boston College, I’m not willing to say that’s enough to entirely make up for losing to Wake and Miami, in addition to all the other losses. It would be different if they were doing really well in their other games, but you can’t basically split your games against the good teams AND lose to some of the bad teams, and still expect to avoid the term “mediocre.” That’s pretty much the definition of mediocrity right there.
Look, this argument isn’t specifically about Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets clearly have a chance to play their way in, and honestly, if they get to 8-8, looking at their schedule, that’ll require enough quality wins that I won’t be complaining much, if at all. I’m just saying that, right now, there is absolutely nothing on their resume that even comes close to proving that they are a better team than Winthrop. Nor can I prove that Winthrop is better — it’s a close call, a very subjective thing, and there really isn’t enough information to definitively decide. Even if you can argue that Tech is better, it’s a close enough call that I think Winthrop deserves the benefit of the doubt more than Tech does, simply because Tech has had like four times the opportunities to prove themselves, and the result has still been inconclusive. At some point, a team with all the inherent advantages/opportunities of a Georgia Tech needs to put up or shut up, and not rely on conference affiliation to make up for their shortcomings.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:52:33 pm
Okay, I’m done editing my comments now. :)
February 16th, 2007 at 10:55:01 pm
I did not see the Missouri State win. That is an okay win. I have no problem with Winthrop making the tourney if they win their conf. However, if Winthrop loses to anyone in their conference then they have a very bad loss on their record. The second best team, High Point, is 175 in sagarin. Do you think Winthrop should get in ahead of Maryland too? Maryland has the same number of wins in the ACC as GT and FSU. Heck, Maryland has a losing record in the ACC. Of course they did beat Wintrop by 10.
You say a team needs to win against the competition they play but its not like FSU and GT haven’t won. GT is 17-8 and FSU is 17-9. This isn’t college football. Teams get a chance to prove themselves against non-conference teams. GT and FSU did quite well against quality out of conference teams. FSU beat Florida and GT beat Memphis, UGA, and UConn. Actually, GT’s only out of conference losses were against UCLA in Maui and at Vandy during final exam week.
February 16th, 2007 at 11:06:41 pm
Yes, GT sucked on the road for the last 2 seasons. This has a lot to do with youth on the road. Before they beat FSU on the road I never would have let them in the tourney because they hadn’t proven that they can win on the road.
My real problem with your post isn’t that you think that Winthrop deserves to get in. My problem is that you use the phrase “it’ll be a shame… a damn shame.” That kind of superlative goes way beyond your argument that reasonable people can disagree. The definition of “a shame” would be if GT wins at Duke on Sunday and Duke still gets a better seed in the NCAA’s despite getting swept by the Jackets (for the record - Duke will probably win). If Winthop wins out then I would agree they have the chance to knock off a mid tier big conf team. However, if they lose to any team in that garbage conference I’ll have serious questions about their ability.
February 16th, 2007 at 11:16:10 pm
Heck, Maryland has a losing record in the ACC. Of course they did beat Wintrop by 10.
And Georgia Tech by 15. :)
I agree with Lunardi: I wish teams had to reach .500 in conference play in order to be eligible for the NCAA Tournament — or, however many games under .500 they are, that’s the number of games they need to win in the conference tournament to become eligible (so a 7-9 team would need to win two games… and could then finish 9-10, counting their loss in the next round — I’d be okay with that. I just think it’d be better for college basketball to open up those one or two spots and thus reward deserving mid-majors ahead of those below-.500 big-name mediocrities, because as Lunardi and Glockner say, the reality is that with most of these mid-major teams, we just don’t know how good they really are. Whereas we’ve seen Georgia Tech play enough quality teams to really get a sense of them as a team — and we know they’re, eh, okay, but not that good. So I think it would be better for the sport to create that bright-line rule. (It might also provide some incentive to the conferences to balance their damn schedules, which would be another good thing.)
But that rule doesn’t exist, more’s the pity, so in its absence, who deserves the bid more: Winthrop or, say, a 7-9 Maryland or Clemson or Georgia Tech or Florida State team? Well, in Maryland’s case, yeah, I’ll give it to them based on the head-to-head win… even though it was a home game, and I’m not convinced they wouldn’t have split if they played home-and-home. ;) As for the others… I’d have to look more closely at the resumes, and honestly, given the selection criteria as they currently exist, I’d probably have to grudgingly give the edge to the ACC team. I just think the criteria should be tweaked a bit, that’s all. That’s why I started my post by saying Winthrop’s exclusion would be “a shame,” rather than “a travesty.”
With regard to the point about any hypothetical loss in the Big South conference tournament being a “bad loss,” RPI-wise or Sagarin-wise, of course you’re right. But note what I said about Georgia Tech’s bad losses: “If you’re losing to teams like Wake Forest and Miami, you don’t deserve an at-large berth unless you’re making up for those bad losses with a bunch of really good wins. … It would be different if they were doing really well in their other games.” Obviously, Winthrop doesn’t have any “really good wins” available in the Big South, but that’s not their fault, nor is it their fault that the only opportunities for quality wins that they have are road games (whereas Tech gets a half-dozen opportunities to earn a home win over UNC or BC or Duke, etc., that they can hang their hat on). But even though they don’t have the opportunity for “really good wins” in conference, Winthrop is “doing really well in their other games.” Although no individual Big South win is anything to write home about, I think a 14-0 regular-season record would make up for a single loss in the conference tourney. The reality is, conference play is tough; the teams know you, they know how to prep for you, etc. Beating a team three times in one season is tough. I don’t think there’s any shame in going 16-1 (supposing they lose in the title game) in any conference. Anybody can lose one game to a motivated conference team. What bugs me about Tech, and other teams in their position, is when they repeatedly lose to teams at their level or below, and yet bristle (or their fans do, anyway :) at the label “mediocre.” That’s what mediocrity is!
Anyway, I do appreciate your magnanimousness is stating that you have “no problem with Winthrop making the tourney” if they win their conference tournament — in which case they’re obviously in automatically. Heh. :)
February 16th, 2007 at 11:23:46 pm
I hope my above comment clarifies what I mean by “a shame.” Let me clarify a bit more: I do NOT mean that it would be a travesty, an outrage, a miscarriage of justice, etc. I simply mean that it would be too bad, because I think Winthrop has the opportunity to make some serious noise in the tournament, and I’d really like to see them have a shot. It’s an expression of personal preference, not an indictment of the system.
if they lose to any team in that garbage conference I’ll have serious questions about their ability.
Point taken, but I really think it would depend on the nature of the game, how close it is, how “flukey” it seems, etc. I really subscribe to the “any given day” principle; I believe a team can have an off day, lose to a bad team, yet still be a good team. It’s when that happens multiple times that it becomes a serious problem, but I’ll give any team, in any conference, one “freebie” loss, because I think going undefeated in conference play is very, very difficult, and something always to be admired and applauded, never taken for granted just because the conference is, on paper, “garbage.” Even weak conferences have motivated teams with inventive coaches who can think of ways to potentially trip up a group of college kids who might be looking past them on a given night. And Winthrop, like Gonzaga*, has the “Notre Dame problem” to deal with: they are everyone’s biggest game, everybody’s got them circled on their calendar, because they’ve been the “big dog” in the conference for so many years. So, if they can go 14-0 and win the conference tournament, that will be damn impressive, in my mind, even though it’s the Big South. And since it’s damn impressive, it follows that we shouldn’t just blithely assume that of course they should be able to do it, or else they suck. I think they could lose a flukey conference tournament game to a highly motivated team and still be an NCAA threat if they could get in (which, realistically, they almost certainly wouldn’t).
*Mind you, I’m not defending Gonzaga’s performance in the WCC this season, as it’s gone way beyond the “any given day” principle at this point, with 3 losses (and counting). Like I said, it’s when it becomes a pattern that it’s a problem, and with Gonzaga, it’s become a pattern this year.
February 16th, 2007 at 11:38:35 pm
I don’t necessarily like the .500 rule because it would encourage conferences to add 3-4 bad teams to complete a conference. Hell, the ACC already tried to do this by adding VT and Miami. Who knew VT would get good? Also, I’ll take a 7-9 ACC team over a 9-7 Big 10 team. Every year the ACC dominates the ACC/Big Ten challenge and then the Big Ten gets more teams in the tourney because they have more garbage teams that count as free wins for the top of the conference. I actually think the middle of the ACC is as strong as it has ever been despite the fact that it is weaker at the top than it has been in a while. I think 4-9 in the ACC would all finish 3rd or 4th in the Big Ten.
February 17th, 2007 at 1:26:19 am
when in doubt ill go with the teams from the power conferences since they do better in the ncaa when given similar seedings in the ncaa tournament. forgot the espn insider article that proved it, but it had like 7-10 years worth of statistics that showed that when power conference teams (bcs+old conference usa) were given a certain seed, a team in that seed would perform much better on average than a “mid-major” team with the same seed. really wish i could find a link to this article now, i did 5 minutes of googling but no luck. please dont take my statement out of context though, i think there are a ton of good mid-major teams out there, and the committee has a pretty good balance on who they let in the tourney right now, but on average id like to take out the bottom 2-3 mid-major teams in the tourney and sub in the georgia tech like teams that you loathe so much.
February 17th, 2007 at 3:44:08 am
By the way, the year GT made it to the National Title game they were only 9-7 in conference. By the way, at one point GT was 6-7 in the ACC. I guess that team was mediocre too. I think you underestimate how difficult it is to play game after game against such difficult competition. You also underestimate how that kind of schedule prepares you for the tournament.
February 19th, 2007 at 2:06:34 am
Brendan, I find it interesting — but not surprising — that in this year of overall weak mid-majors, you still stick by your argument that the strong mid-majors should get in before the middle-of-the-pack teams from the major conferences. Aside from the Georgia Tech factoid pointed out above by JT, the simple fact is that many major programs have younger but more talented teams that take the course of a season to progress. All those hard-fought, close losses in the ACC and Pac-10 often mean the teams grow up fast and are more ready to play come tourney time. For instance, I would not be surprised at all if Washington somehow sneaks into the tourney field as a low seed, then proceeds to make it to the Sweet 16 based off the mature play of Hawes in the middle and their quick guards outside. They’ve struggled quite a bit this year away from home, but I think the Pitt game showed they are almost ready to go toe-to-toe with the big boys. Similarly, it is probably just a matter of time before Duke pulls it together and starts putting a can of whoopass on everyone in their path. I am all for Winthrop getting in over inconsistent BCS schools that probably won’t improve any more (e.g. Alabama, LSU), but other programs would probably do much better than Winthrop in the tournament. You can’t simply throw out a major program because of a .500 record in its league.
February 19th, 2007 at 2:08:42 am
I would also point out that a .500 record needs to be examined closely if it is a league where schedules are unbalanced (e.g. the Big East).