John Feinstein Shame On the Selection Committee

[Murph]

Makes some excellent points.....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/14/AR2007031402021.html

John Feinstein - Shame On the Selection Committee - washingtonpost.com

Quote...Forget the fact that the nine teams in the Big Ten not named Ohio State and Wisconsin won a total of 16 road games all season. They deserve to be in the tournament.

But Drexel didn't deserve a bid.

Take a guess how many road games Drexel won this season. How about 14. That's one school winning 14 games away from home versus nine winning 16. Who did the Dragons beat? Syracuse, Villanova, Creighton, St. Joseph's and several very good CAA teams. You see when you're in the CAA, no one from a power conference will play you on the road. Maryland Coach Gary Williams complained last year when The Missouri Valley got those four bids that the league had, "cracked the RPI code."

Here's what they did to crack the code: they played good teams on the road and won. Sounds pretty evil to me.

[tornado]

Ken Kavanagh told me that last year when Bradley was trying to get games scheduled for 2006-2007, nobody wanted to play us either in Peoria or on the road, until
Patrick O'Bryant went pro, then "the phone started ringing".
They still didn't want to play us in Peoria, but at least they talked to us about a game.

The very fact that lots of MVC teams simply cannot get any of those bigger schools to play us is proof that the committee members are flat out lying when they seed the teams per "who would you not want to play" criteria.

In reality, they DON'T WANT to play the Valley teams, but publicly they give the BCS-types the higher seeds claiming those are the teams they don't want to play.

Think about this.
The highest three RPI teams that didn't get in the NCAA were Bradley, Missouri State, and Air Force.
Missouri State got a 3 seed in the NIT and we got a 4 seed!
Mississippi State who did get a #1 seed in the NIT has an RPI of 64 and a non-con SOS of 127.
(Bradley's corresponding numbers are 38 and a 15 SOS)

The other NIT #1 seeds,
West Virginia has a 57 RPI and a non-con SOS of 271!!
Clemson finished 9th in the ACC, RPI 46, and non-con SOS 214, plus they lost 10 of their final 14 games!!
Air Force had a non-con SOS of 136

So, anyone else totally puzzled by BU getting #4 seed while these other teams get seeded higher?

[BTID]

Every year I (and many others like me) get suckered into thinking that the RPI and SOS is the end-all, be-all for selecting at-large teams. Note to self: Stop thinking that way!!!

Well, I'm over it--the tournament begins today, and I won't be boycotting it at all. I watched for years when Bradley didn't have a ghost of a chance at participating in it. I will continue to watch even if I think my alma mater got the short end of the stick. The NCAA tournament is as big a thing to me as the World Cup--compelling matchups with a chance, slight as they are, to watch a monumental upset or two.

As for Feinstein's article, he's dead on! Purdue and Stanford are the undeserving teams in the field to me, but you always get a couple or three teams like that every year, regardless of conference affiliation (Air Force, Bradley, Utah State from 2006 come to mind--if you go by basketball analysts who unlike us fans, get paid to spout their opinions!). Arkansas wouldn't have been in the discussion if they had lost to South Carolina or Vanderbilt in the SEC tournament. Still, they did finish ahead of Bradley, Drexel, and Missouri State in the final Pomeroy rankings. Purdue and Stanford finished behind and still got in (Purdue with a generous 9 seeding).

The perception problem with smaller schools though makes it tough on them regardless of who they beat or where those games took place. Looking at next year's schedule for Bradley, let's say the Braves beat Iowa State, VCU, and Michigan State, but lose at Butler and Wright State, and we finish with the same conference record and post-season showing in St. Louis that we had this year. The committee would probably exclude the Braves saying, "yeah, they won games against impressive teams, but those were home games!". It does make one grimace!

[thefish7]

Great article by Feinstein. Maybe we could all e-mail him and get him to follow BU for a year and write a book.

[Da Coach]

Great article by Feinstein. Maybe we could all e-mail him and get him to follow BU for a year and write a book.

That would be a great idea.

He should title it "A Season on the Rink".

[thefish7]

Great article by Feinstein. Maybe we could all e-mail him and get him to follow BU for a year and write a book.

That would be a great idea.

He should title it "A Season on the Rink".

HAHAHHAHA.

[BradleyBrave]

Great article by Feinstein. Maybe we could all e-mail him and get him to follow BU for a year and write a book.

That would be a great idea.

He should title it "A Season on the Rink".

Ha! I think that's what I named the BU movie about the hiring process and Danny Granger departure. He could follow it up with an Illinois tell-all and call it "A Season in the Clink" or "A Season with a Drink".