Do away with auto-bids?

[tornado]

East Coast journalist thinks awarding automatic bids on the basis of conference tournaments is faulty -- it thus allows teams with horrible records (like Liberty at 15-20 & RPI 282 who won their tourney) to sneak into the tourney by playing well just a couple days in March.

http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/are-conference-tournaments-the-best-way-to-award-n-c-a-a-bids/

The hint is to either award the bid to the regular season champ or -
he offers this novel but ridiculous thought-
"..where one team wins the regular season and another the
conference tournament should be settled by one-game playoffs"
(this, of course would effectively negate the entire concept or benefit to winning the tourney!)

Or -- I suppose - make all 68 bids "at-large" based on the "eye-test" so that the selection committee can simply pick the teams that they want & which will generate the most $$ - you know this is what's coming and then the smaller schools will simply be told "go get your own tournament".

[amckillip]

Generally, the conference determines who gets the award. All conferences except the Ivy League, have set this to be the Tournament winner. I'm of the opinion that the bottom 50% should have it be their regular season champ, because it gives the better team a chance to play in the NCAA Tourney, and thusly advance. However, the top 50% of conferences should use the tourney winner, because it gives them a better likelihood of getting an additional team in.

I'm am surprised more lower level conferences don't follow the Ivy's lead...

[alczervik75]

East Coast journalist thinks awarding automatic bids on the basis of conference tournaments is faulty -- it thus allows teams with horrible records (like Liberty at 15-20 & RPI 282 who won their tourney) to sneak into the tourney by playing well just a couple days in March.

http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/are-conference-tournaments-the-best-way-to-award-n-c-a-a-bids/

The hint is to either award the bid to the regular season champ or -
he offers this novel but ridiculous thought-
"..where one team wins the regular season and another the
conference tournament should be settled by one-game playoffs"
(this, of course would effectively negate the entire concept or benefit to winning the tourney!)

Or -- I suppose - make all 68 bids "at-large" based on the "eye-test" so that the selection committee can simply pick the teams that they want & which will generate the most $$ - you know this is what's coming and then the smaller schools will simply be told "go get your own tournament".

I think the conference decides how to give their auto-bid. I think in conferences that are almost always multi-team conferences (including MVC) it makes sense for it to be the tournament.

For smaller 1 bid leagues I like his idea. Still gives teams a chance, but increases the odds the strongest team representing the league.

[bradleyfan124]

I have always felt that the regular season champ should get an automatic bid and they sit out the conference tournament. Then the rest of the teams in the conference fight it out in a tournament to see who else might go. That way it satisfies the arguments for teams that catch fire at the end of the year. If you take this back to 1982 when Bradley won the regular season but lost in the tournament, the ncaa did not extend an invitation to Bradley using the excuse they did not win the tournament. In fact they were just p.o.'d at Versace for standing up to them

[Buesch N Chips]

I say you go totally blind resume' and pick 80 teams. 4 play-in games each bracket. No automatic bids.

Objective data to pick the 80. kenpomish, but refined to make sure it is valid.

[BUBalum05]

I say you go totally blind resume' and pick 80 teams. 4 play-in games each bracket. No automatic bids.

Objective data to pick the 80. kenpomish, but refined to make sure it is valid.

I'd go 96 with 32 play in games. Thats still just over 1/4 of all teams making the tournament. Probably could get rid of the NIT then too.

[tornado]

I say you go totally blind resume' and pick 80 teams. 4 play-in games each bracket. No automatic bids.

Objective data to pick the 80. kenpomish, but refined to make sure it is valid.

nice in theory but since the room with the selection committee will want to know who played who and want to see the schedules...then it would become easy for most members of the committee to instantly recognize which teams are which even if you put tape over the teams' names...
and they'd certainly know when their own school comes up based on the factoids...
I just don't see any way you'd ever be able to do it completely "blind"...