There are 4 #1 seeds in the NCAA tournament, obviously. UCLA is the #1 in the West. Their reward? Trips to Anaheim and Phoenix (potentially) on their way to the final four. North Carolina has an even more favorable road. While UCLA has to cross the CA/AZ border, UNC gets to stay in state in trips to Raleigh and Charlotte as the #1 in the East. So, the committee rewarded UNC and UCLA for good seasons by letting them stay close to home.
What about the other #1 seeds, Kansas and Memphis? As the #1 in the Midwest, KU is slated for Omaha and Detroit. Memphis, the #1 in the South, starts in Little Rock and faces a potential Elite 8 match-up with Texas in Houston, TX.
Why do UNC and - to a lesser extent, maybe - UCLA get to stay home while KU and Memphis are given what's left? Well, I heard someone on ESPN say that the sites are determined years in advance, so that's just the way it worked out. Ehhhhh. While that might not be wrong, it's not a sufficiently formulated position.
I will grant you that it might not be reasonable to wait until the #1 seeds are chosen to determine the sites for the tournament. But, if Kansas doesn't get to play in Kansas City and St. Louis, why should UNC get to play in Raleigh and Charlotte? They shouldn't. If Memphis can't play in Memphis and Nashville, UCLA shouldn't be in Anaheim and Phoenix. UNC doesn't have to be the #1 in the East. They could easily be the #1 in the South. Memphis could play in Raleigh and Charlotte as the #1 in the East. KU could go to Anaheim and Phoenix as the #1 in the West and UCLA could head the Midwest region and play in Omaha and Detroit.
The tournament selection committee should be as equitable as possible for all teams. Obviously, that isn't the case right now. I'm pretty sure the committee could find reasonable match-ups adhering to the criterion that no team will have a "home" game. The rule could state that no team will have the possibility of playing in their home state or a neighboring state in the first week. The same rule could apply for the second week (Sweet 16 and Elite 8 rounds), or you could limit it to just not being able to play in the home state. If you make it to the Final Four in your home area, at least you've had to play four neutral site games to get there. It isn't feasible to only select sites in states that don't have any teams that could possibly make a Final Four run. I don't think there is a large clamoring for the Final Four to go to Alaska, Idaho or the Dakotas (I know, I'm leaving some states out)!
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
A few comments on the field of 64 (now 65)
ESPN analyst/consultant Bobby Knight recently put out the idea of expanding the field to 128 teams. Knight claims that such an expansion would allow all the deserving teams to get a bid to the tourney. Maybe.
Knight argues that some "bubble teams" are left out of the tourney because their spots are stolen by undeserving automatic bid teams (presumably, he's talking about teams like Coppin State, Mount St. Mary's, Georgia, etc.). By expanding the field, you can easily include Va Tech, Arizona State, Mississippi, Illinois State, UMass, etc. Or, in previous years, maybe Knight would have been in the tournament a few more times.
As you increase the number of teams you include in the tournament, you decrease the likelihood that you will leave a team out that is capable of making a long run in the tournament. This is one reason I'm still in favor of including all the teams in division 1. If you include everyone, you give everyone a fair shot (or as fair as you can get) in a single elimination tournament. It would add an extra week, but you could accommodate the extra week (3 extra rounds) by eliminating conference tournaments.
What happens if you expand the field to 128? The same thing that happens now. There will still be bubble teams. There will still be the last four in and the last four out. There will still be spots "stolen" by undeserving automatic bid teams. As long as you have at-large bids decided by a panel of people comparing resumes, people will feel slighted. If you can create criteria (such as winning your conference tournament) to define the field, then coaches and players would know what they were shooting for. But, that said, I'm not sure how you can do that. If you limit the field to teams with winning records, you'll have people scheduling easy non-conference games to bolster their win-loss record. That's not productive. You could use the RPI or some other such ranking and take the automatic bids and the next however many at-large teams are needed off the RPI list. But, I think you would need to make the RPI formula public so coaches knew what was being asked of them.
Eliminate the mess by including everyone. Then, the only question is how to do the seeding. Sometimes, coaches feel a little shafted by seeding. But, I think the pain of being left out of the tourney is much worse. Teams could be seeded using the RPI list (or some other index) with a little bit of tweaking to avoid certain matchups. The first round wouldn't be complete, as you just need to cut the field to 256 at that point. Then, you have 8 full rounds to determine a national champ. So, you have to win 8 games in a row to win it all, but the first two rounds should be no problem for the legitimate title contenders.
Knight argues that some "bubble teams" are left out of the tourney because their spots are stolen by undeserving automatic bid teams (presumably, he's talking about teams like Coppin State, Mount St. Mary's, Georgia, etc.). By expanding the field, you can easily include Va Tech, Arizona State, Mississippi, Illinois State, UMass, etc. Or, in previous years, maybe Knight would have been in the tournament a few more times.
As you increase the number of teams you include in the tournament, you decrease the likelihood that you will leave a team out that is capable of making a long run in the tournament. This is one reason I'm still in favor of including all the teams in division 1. If you include everyone, you give everyone a fair shot (or as fair as you can get) in a single elimination tournament. It would add an extra week, but you could accommodate the extra week (3 extra rounds) by eliminating conference tournaments.
What happens if you expand the field to 128? The same thing that happens now. There will still be bubble teams. There will still be the last four in and the last four out. There will still be spots "stolen" by undeserving automatic bid teams. As long as you have at-large bids decided by a panel of people comparing resumes, people will feel slighted. If you can create criteria (such as winning your conference tournament) to define the field, then coaches and players would know what they were shooting for. But, that said, I'm not sure how you can do that. If you limit the field to teams with winning records, you'll have people scheduling easy non-conference games to bolster their win-loss record. That's not productive. You could use the RPI or some other such ranking and take the automatic bids and the next however many at-large teams are needed off the RPI list. But, I think you would need to make the RPI formula public so coaches knew what was being asked of them.
Eliminate the mess by including everyone. Then, the only question is how to do the seeding. Sometimes, coaches feel a little shafted by seeding. But, I think the pain of being left out of the tourney is much worse. Teams could be seeded using the RPI list (or some other index) with a little bit of tweaking to avoid certain matchups. The first round wouldn't be complete, as you just need to cut the field to 256 at that point. Then, you have 8 full rounds to determine a national champ. So, you have to win 8 games in a row to win it all, but the first two rounds should be no problem for the legitimate title contenders.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Storming the Court
I remember the good old days when games ended and courts weren't stormed. I long for those days. It's disgusting that fans think they belong on the playing surface after the game. It's even more aggravating to me that the fans often don't wait for the game to end to act like hooligans.
The latest instance was in the Cal v. UCLA game today. When the Bruins knocked the ball out of bounds late with less than a second left, the fans stormed the court. I thought storming the court was supposed to be reserved for big upset. UCLA over Cal most definitely doesn't qualify. The bigger problem, as I see it, was that the fans stormed the court before the game was over. That should NEVER happen. And, I was very disappointed with the actions of the officials.
A couple weeks ago, in a game between teams that aren't in BCS conferences, the home team tied the game as time expired. The crowd rushed the court, maybe not realizing that their team hadn't won the game and that overtime was necessary. The result was a technical foul and the visiting team started OT with a lead ... bizarre, I know. I may not remember correctly, but I think both teams scored the same number of points in OT, so it would have been a double OT game (theoretically) if the fans hadn't screwed up.
What happened on Saturday? The fans stormed the court before the game ended but the home team UCLA Bruins were not penalized. What's the rule? Why is it a technical foul on the home team in one case and not in the other? Cal was down one. Given an opportunity at 2 FT's from a technical foul, they might have pulled the game out (they might have won if there had been a foul call on the late TO ... and it looked from the angle that I saw that the ball was touched last by a Bruin ... so I'm not sure why UCLA got the ball).
You might not believe me, but I really don't have anything against UCLA. I don't care for the contact they get away with on the defensive end ... it's not as fun to watch basketball when the defense is mugging the offense. The fact of that matter is that they were helped out by the officials in both games against the bay area teams, and if they had lost because their crowd stormed the court, then that would have been the best-case scenario for me.
Then, maybe the coaches would lean on their presidents to keep students and other fans off the floor after games. One or two publicized incidents of the students being rounded up after they storm the courts and given tickets or fines (I'd think they'd want to keep all those street shoes off the courts and it can't be safe for the players or fans) might serve as additional deterrent. If you just send them back to their seats to reload so they can do it again when the game is actually over, without any penalty to their team, what kind of message are you sending? It's not a good one.
The latest instance was in the Cal v. UCLA game today. When the Bruins knocked the ball out of bounds late with less than a second left, the fans stormed the court. I thought storming the court was supposed to be reserved for big upset. UCLA over Cal most definitely doesn't qualify. The bigger problem, as I see it, was that the fans stormed the court before the game was over. That should NEVER happen. And, I was very disappointed with the actions of the officials.
A couple weeks ago, in a game between teams that aren't in BCS conferences, the home team tied the game as time expired. The crowd rushed the court, maybe not realizing that their team hadn't won the game and that overtime was necessary. The result was a technical foul and the visiting team started OT with a lead ... bizarre, I know. I may not remember correctly, but I think both teams scored the same number of points in OT, so it would have been a double OT game (theoretically) if the fans hadn't screwed up.
What happened on Saturday? The fans stormed the court before the game ended but the home team UCLA Bruins were not penalized. What's the rule? Why is it a technical foul on the home team in one case and not in the other? Cal was down one. Given an opportunity at 2 FT's from a technical foul, they might have pulled the game out (they might have won if there had been a foul call on the late TO ... and it looked from the angle that I saw that the ball was touched last by a Bruin ... so I'm not sure why UCLA got the ball).
You might not believe me, but I really don't have anything against UCLA. I don't care for the contact they get away with on the defensive end ... it's not as fun to watch basketball when the defense is mugging the offense. The fact of that matter is that they were helped out by the officials in both games against the bay area teams, and if they had lost because their crowd stormed the court, then that would have been the best-case scenario for me.
Then, maybe the coaches would lean on their presidents to keep students and other fans off the floor after games. One or two publicized incidents of the students being rounded up after they storm the courts and given tickets or fines (I'd think they'd want to keep all those street shoes off the courts and it can't be safe for the players or fans) might serve as additional deterrent. If you just send them back to their seats to reload so they can do it again when the game is actually over, without any penalty to their team, what kind of message are you sending? It's not a good one.
Who is Blake Carroll?
On the ABC broadcast of the Missouri v. OU game this afternoon, the announcer called OU freshman Blake Griffin "Blake Carroll." Griffin is one of a pair of brothers (the other being Taylor) who play a lot for the Sooners. Carroll? To the best of my knowledge, no one by that name plays for OU. Where did Blake Carroll come from? Get it together, guys.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Home Cookin' for UCLA
I didn't watch the entire Stanford v. UCLA game, but the Bruins got at least a little help against the Cardinal. Stanford went up 2 with just over 7 seconds left in regulation. On the Bruins' ensuing possession, Darren Collison had his shot blocked cleanly. Fortunately for the Bruins, one official thought he was fouled. He motioned that he got him down low, with the body. Umm ... there may have been some contact, but no one in their right mind would have called a foul on it. I think the official probably anticipated and just screwed it up. Rather than UCLA ball out-of-bounds with 2 seconds left, they had one of the best FT shooters in the nation at the line.
I don't understand why the officials let Kevin Love hook on every post move (they call that on other players) and ride the opposing guards when he is hedging on ball screens (it's a pretty obvious foul). And, I'll only briefly mention the incredibly low toss of the jump ball in OT ... I don't think either guy would have needed to jump. It was a good thing for Love and the Bruins.
Oh, and that intentional foul in OT? That was a joke ... but it was just par for the course.
I don't understand why the officials let Kevin Love hook on every post move (they call that on other players) and ride the opposing guards when he is hedging on ball screens (it's a pretty obvious foul). And, I'll only briefly mention the incredibly low toss of the jump ball in OT ... I don't think either guy would have needed to jump. It was a good thing for Love and the Bruins.
Oh, and that intentional foul in OT? That was a joke ... but it was just par for the course.
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