The first non-introductory Wothism post created a lot of debate and drew even more criticism.
I couldn't be happier.
While many of you already hate this idea, I want to take it one step further and detail just exactly how this year's NCAA tournament would have looked under my methodology.
To clarify, the basic tenets are:
1. Only regular season conference winners qualify
AND THAT'S IT.
The caveat with this year's results is that not all conferences have truly balanced schedules (two games between each two teams, one home and one away), so a regular season champion may not always be truly fairly determined. That said, because there's no other real option, I am assuming that all conference schedules WERE truly balanced.
Without further ado, this year's 32 33 bids would go to:
Big Ten: Ohio State
Big East Football (splitting into two 8-team subdivisions -- one for football members ... ): Pittsburgh
Big East Non-Football (and one for non-football members): Notre Dame
Big 12: Kansas
ACC: North Carolina
Pac 10: Arizona
SEC: Florida
MWC: BYU
CUSA: UAB
A10: Xavier
MVC: Missouri St.
Horizon: UW-Milwaukee
WCC: St. Mary's
WAC: Utah St.
Ivy: Princeton
MAAC: Fairfield
Big West: Long Beach St.
MAC: Kent St.
Summit: Oakland
ASun: Belmont
Southern: College of Charleston
OVC (goofy since some teams play 19 conference games and other teams play 18): Murray State
Big Sky: Northern Colorado
Patriot: Bucknell
Northeast: Long Island
Sun Belt: FAU
Big South: Coastal Carolina
Southland: McNeese St.
America East: Vermont
MEAC: Bethune Cookman
Great West (Currently not an auto bid conference): Utah Valley
SWAC: Texas Southern
I like seeding in order of overall conference quality, as broken down by KenPom.com here.
(UPDATE 3/30: Since I somehow missed the CAA and George Mason the first time around, these would be altered a bit. I would either leave the Great West as a non-auto bid conference -- it was really only cobbled together a few years ago -- or put Utah Valley and Texas Southern into a play-in game. In the end, it's not really going to materially affect the below results.)
So, your 2011 NCAA bracket would look like:
EAST REGIONAL:
No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 16 Texas Southern
No. 8 Princeton vs. No. 9 Kent St.
No. 5 UAB vs. No. 12 Bucknell
No. 4 Florida vs. No. 13 FAU
No. 6 UW-Milwaukee vs. No. 11 Murray State
No. 3 North Carolina vs. No. 14 McNeese St.
No. 7 Utah St. vs. No. 10 Belmont
No. 2 Notre Dame vs. No. 15 Bethune Cookman
WEST REGIONAL:
No. 1 Pittsburgh vs. No. 16 Utah Valley
No. 8 Fairfield vs. No. 9 Long Beach St.
No. 5 Xavier vs. No. 12 Northern Colorado
No. 4 BYU vs. No. 13 Long Island
No. 6 St. Mary's vs. No. 11 College of Charleston
No. 3 Arizona vs. No. 14 Coastal Carolina
No. 7 Missouri St. vs. No. 10 Oakland
No. 2 Kansas vs. No. 15 Vermont
Now THAT is a fun and fair tournament. It has all the intrigue of the current tournament with none of the selection committee garbage. There can be no griping about not being included. If your team was truly deserving of competing to be the best team in the nation, why couldn't it even win its own conference?
Based on my own set of proprietary numbers (quite similar to KenPom's numbers), the likelihood that each team would win this tournament are as follows:
OHIO ST. 44.82
KANSAS 28.01
PITTSBURGH 11.03
NORTH CAROLINA 4.22
BRIGHAM YOUNG 3.48
NOTRE DAME 3.31
FLORIDA 1.88
UTAH ST. 0.8
BELMONT 0.7
ST. MARY'S 0.64
ARIZONA 0.41
XAVIER 0.31
UAB 0.09
COASTAL CAROLINA 0.09
OAKLAND 0.09
MISSOURI ST. 0.03
PRINCETON 0.02
FAIRFIELD 0.02
MURRAY ST. 0.01
COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON 0.01
LONG BEACH ST. 0.01
KENT ST. 0
LONG ISLAND 0
BUCKNELL 0
NORTHERN COLORADO 0
VERMONT 0
WISCONSIN MILWAUKEE 0
FLORIDA ATLANTIC 0
MCNEESE ST. 0
UTAH VALLEY 0
TEXAS SOUTHERN 0
BETHUNE COOKMAN 0
Now, I can hear some of you already. "BUT BOB, THE NUMBER OF BAD TEAMS INCLUDED IS APPALLING! HECK, 25 OF 32 TEAMS -- 78.125 PERCENT (YOU ADD CONDESCENDINGLY) -- HAVE LESS THAN A 1 PERCENT CHANGE OF WINNING! WHY EVEN INCLUDE THEM IF THEY HAVE LITTLE TO NO CHANCE OF WINNING?!?"
As it turns out, the current format is very similar. In this year's 68-team tournament, 52 of those teams had less than a 1 percent chance of winning it all at the tournament's outset -- 76.47 percent. So, despite any claims you might have wanted to make about a watered down field, it's really quite similar. (Amazingly, Kentucky had a 2.6 percent chance of winning this year's tournament, but no other team in the Final Four was above 1 percent -- UConn was just below that mark.)
The biggest differences of course, are at the top. I had Ohio State winning 27.4 percent of the time before this year's 68-team tournament -- using this method, the Buckeyes leap to 44.82 percent. Kansas was at 18.4 percent in this year's field -- under my method, the Jayhawks jump to 28.01 percent.
It seems fair to me to reward outstanding regular seasons with a better chance of winning it all. Call me crazy (and I know some of you will), but the only real difference between how it's done now and how I would do it is that you have to prove it every step of the way in my format.
If you're not the best in your conference throughout December, January and February, you don't get in.
If you're not the best in March, you don't win it all.
It almost makes too much sense, doesn't it?
6 comments:
Not a bad proposition...I would, however, be in favor of inviting the top 2 seeds from the major conferences. Seeing as they have a tougher road to hoe, it would seem that a legitimate and deserving contender could take 2nd in a big time conference (i.e. Duke).
I could maybe get on board with the top two seeds idea if it was from EVERY conference. This would at least slightly mitigate the "luck" that can creep into the results. (And yet, I still feel like it cheapens the overall process.)
Otherwise, who or what determines which conferences get one or two teams? Sure, we can pretty obviously say that the Big Ten deserves two teams while the SWAC doesn't, but what about those tweener conferences that are some years really good and some years not so much like the A10, MVC and MWC?
I don't want a selection committee tackling that task and definitely don't want to see it set in stone that, for example, the Pac 10 ALWAYS gets two bids while the A10 ALWAYS gets only one. That would be a horrible injustice.
Bob,
First of all, thank you for bringing this difficult and unpopular subject to the surface.
The unbiased fan in me, thinks that you are dead on in that we should limit the number of teams making the tournament in order to increase the effectiveness of the tournament in crowning a deserving champion. I think that altering the single elimination structure should also be taken into consideration. I submit for your approval, the Swiss-system Tournament (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_system_tournament).
Furthermore, I would prefer if we stuck with the old school logic of using geographic areas to filter our teams up to the championship. We would still have the issue of crappy teams making the Final 4, but imagine the momentum following those teams on their run to the championship. It would have been awesome to watch. In lieu of that, we need to rely on conferences to provide that filter.
Finally, the biased fan in me realizes that expanding the field to 96 means I would rarely ever need to watch a ND NIT game. In light of this fact, I support expansion.
Did I miss something... or did you skip the Colonial: George Mason?
D'oh. Apparently my distaste for VCU's run has bled into a subliminal hate for all things Colonial.
I shall update accordingly.
Peter: Maybe we should do away with conferences altogether and make the entire season a Swiss-system Tournament? (You're INSANE.)
I do like your idea about staying true to regions, though. All those empty seats at some of the sites might not be as big of an issue if we didn't have games like Wisconsin playing Butler in New Orleans.
In the current format, it wouldn't work because we'd have one region with 11 Big East teams and everyone from the Northeast would be up in arms.
Under this new format, it might work. Look for my later post to take this into consideration.
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