March madness

NCAA has a rule on the books to account for this. They made the rule in the 60s. In April 1998 they revoked the rule and allowed for a 60-day response period about that revocation. During that period 99 schools, including Baylor, Duke, Georgia, Michigan, Nebraska, Stanford, Texas A&M, USC, Navy, Air Force, and others all publicly responded stating that they were in favor of preserving the rule. Because of that they held a vote of the entire 300 plus NCAA D1 membership on the rule. The NCAA membership voted to reinstate the rule.

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They are older than the Bulls…

…while 3 of our top 5 scorers are freshmen. Interesting matchup.

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I think the word “shockingly” is misplaced.

I thought GT might make some noise too. However, I just changed my opinion as Moses Wright will now miss opening weekend. Big blow

Meh. Yeah that’s a bummer for them.

While we’re chatting in here about the tourney, be sure to jump over and play the Pick 9 Challenge. Fun game from the former AO, rebooted since we didn’t write the old rules down. But still fun to pick some over-achievers and a team to root again with all the hate you can muster.

And somehow a Michigan fan couldn’t pick Ohio State as the big loser, had to go with Illinois. I hope they both go out the first weekend!

Yes, and when you’re done doing that, head on over to March Madness pick’em tournaments and submit pick to one of any of the links posted there. Can you beat my high score?!?!

So those were some interesting games last night.

Seemed everyone was picking MSU to go on.

What is it with teams playing for the last shot by having a player dribble out the clock at the top of the key and then hiking up a low percentage shot. They never pass the ball or make a try for a higher percentage shot. I saw that too many times during the conf tournament, and again MSU did it last night…

Someone explained this to me on the AO but I forgot the reasoning behind it, so kindly enlighten me again:

Why are 1/2 of the first-four 11-seeds instead of 15-seeds? Why don’t they put the winner of those games against the other 1-seeds (in South & Midwest) instead of the 6-seeds (in West & East where the other two first-four winners play)?

Michigan State learned that watching Michigan in the B10 tourney

Low level conferences put up a big fight about this. They were okay with expanding, but didn’t want to only have half of the bottom 8 make the field of 64. Compromise was the bottom 4 auto bids would play first four games, and then the last 4 at larges would play as well.

Can’t screw the other two #1 seeds by giving them at-large teams who are way better than the auto qualifiers, so they slot them in where they belong on the S-curve they use for seeding. Doesn’t have to be an 11, but the way it works out it’s almost always an 11 or 12 seed.

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I think it’s so that you don’t have 4 automatic qualifiers eliminated before getting to 64. Half the games are played between teams that made it in because they won their conference championship, but probably won’t go far, and the other half are the bubble at-large teams who are from stronger conferences.

Ninja’d

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Yeah, that’s more or less the right answer. GENERALLY SPEAKING, the field of 68 is made up of the 44 best teams in the country plus 24 teams that are not in the top 50, but are the winners of 24 minor conferences. The 44 almost all come from the 6 Major conferences (Big 10, Big 12, Big East, ACC, SEC, Pac 12). So when they are picking the teams that make the field, the bottom 24 are pre-decided. Aside from allocating the seeds, the biggest job the tournament committee has to do is to rank the teams in the whole country at # 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, and 48. You can read a lot about this in the week or two prior to the tourney. They collectively are called the “last four in”, and “the first four out”. The “last 4 in” (ranked 41 thru 44) get the 11 seeds in the big tourney, a.k.a. The Big Dance, a.k.a. March Madness. The “first four out” (#45 thru #48) traditionally get the top 4 seeds in the NIT tournament (the somewhat sad secondary tourney for the also-rans). These teams rated 41 through 48 generally are teams that are 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th in the major conferences, which are wholeheartedly better teams than the 2nd place teams in the minor conferences.

So the committee makes the 4 play-in games between the weakest 4 teams (playing as 16 seeds) and the “last 4 in” teams that play as the 11 seeds.

I prefaced the above with “generally speaking” because there are always curveballs that make each year a little different. The IVY league did not play this year. The #45 team this year was likely Duke, who said “no thank you” to playing in the NIT. Sometimes a minor conference will actually have 2 worthy teams instead of just 1 winner. Sometimes a good team will have a post-season ban for a limited number of years because of a violation (usually a recruiting violation). Sometimes --and this is a fun part of the whole process…)–a minor conference will have only 1 truly worthy team, but that team doesn’t win their conference tournament. Then the tournament winner gets the automatic bid, and the worthy team still makes the main tourney. Then one of the teams rated at 41 thru 44 gets displaced by the so called “bid stealer” team that beat a worthy team in the minor conference tournament.

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That brings up another question that I didn’t know I had…is the NIT holding there tournament this year. They obviously are.

I wondered about it simply because the NIT exists for one reason only - to make money. (At least the NCAA also has the ability to name a champion.) Given there’s probably limited or no attendance, they’re not going to make much money. Maybe it was worth it to hold the tournament for continuity’s sake. Maybe they make enough money off of TV to still make it worth it.

They are still holding the NIT this year, but it has only half (16) of the teams it usually has (instead of 32). I am sure that they are making a wee bit of money from the NIT.

Incidentally, it is fun for crowds at games towards the end of the regular season to taunt opponents who are ranked in those precarious 41st thru 48th positions. Oh what I would have given to hear some decent ACC crowd, say Georgia Tech’s, taunt Duke this year by chanting "N.I.T. N.I.T. N.I.T. "

That would have displaced my favorite crowd taunt ever.

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And OSU didn’t learn from either… So much for the conference being of higher learning.

THE OSU playing like #2

Ouch. I hate when the Big 10 gets embarrassed like that. Except Michigan. Michigan could lose to a girls rec league team and I would be ecstatic.

Ohio State looked determined to squander their possessions away at the end.

Many mixed feelings about Loyola vs. GA Tech. Loyola is a sentimental favorite, but I want Illinois to win in round 2. Maybe it’s better if GT just wins so I have no ambivalences in the second round.