Selection Sunday Discussion

[JPSchmack]

It’s nice to read the “Bona got hosed” comments in this thread, especially considering how I heard your overall assessment of our program compared to the Big East on the expansion forum.

My Bonnies got completely shafted, and your league got disrespected in seeding. Nova 7 and Xavier 8 on the overall seed list? Hall a 6? Nova in the South region and not going through Philly? The BCS Cartel is out to destroy us.

I’m brutally realistic and I understand the difference between “better team” and “better resume.” (Hence my Expansion talk: Your nine “better teams” gives 4-5 of you “worse resumes” than you deserve). And I don’t pretend our 29 RPI means our team is 27 spots better than Butler.

That being said, St. Bonaventure got HISTORICALLY SHAFTED:
> highest conference regular season champ left out
> highest Dance card left out
> First Palm lock ever left out

Of the eight Top 54 RPI teams left out, someone said they aren’t murderers row. Well, we stand out compared to those seven. They’re from one-bid leagues, where the second-best team in the league had zero chance of an at-large.

None of those teams had a Top 25 RPI win. We had THREE. Two on the road. You know who had multiple Top 25 RPI road wins this season? Kansas (2), Oklahoma (2), Iowa (2), St. Bonaventure (2). End of List. If you want to include No. 26 Arizona, then Oregon makes the list, too. When we’re on the list with four teams who were in serious No. 1 seed conversations at some point this season (Iowa fell off the map), that’s saying something.


If we’re going to get slammed four our 152 OOC SOS, there’s three things in response:

#1 - These people don’t even know what that means. The 152 OOC SOS was .508 opponents win percentage. Colorado got in at 133. The difference between theres and ours would be: If one of our opponents played each other, and our opponent beat theirs, we’d swap places.
(And if Syracuse gets a pass on 3 losses with Boeheim out for cheating, why don’t we get those three losses off our SOS? That would give us the No. 123 OOC SOS.

#2 - Cincinnati was 148, Indiana 190, Seton Hall 231, Arizona 235, Butler 245. I’m not criticizing BE teams on the list. I’m just saying, moving the Goalposts, don’t you think? Hall & Butler proved it by beating great teams in Big East play. I think our three wins over Dayton & St. Joe’s should have us seeded behind Hall & Butler, but easily within the field.

#3 - These cartel ADs on the committee saying “You didn’t play anyone OOC” are the same guys who won’t return our calls when we go to schedule. ONE BCS team has been willing to play us in the RC since 1999. Syracuse hasn’t played in the RC since Chernenko was running the USSR. Michigan State’s AD is on the committee, the Spartans have played one “mid-major” on the road since 2009. Oklahoma’s AD is the chair, the Sooners have played at ONE mid-major on the road since 2010, and it was at Tulsa, Joe Castilgione’s bed buddy.

The Entire BCS cartel played 67 games against non-cartel teams in the Top 70 of the RPI this season, and went 36-31. They’re ducking us. And almost all of them they didn’t schedule, but ran into at tournaments. They played 10 true road games against Non-Cartel teams. They went 3-7. Including GW over Virginia and Dayton over Alabama.

You CANNOT criticize us for not landing punches when you’re the one refusing to get in the ring and fight.


Anyhow, thanks for the kind words about us getting screwed to many of you. Hope the Big East rocks every BCS program by 40 in the Big Dance and only loses to the A-10.

[NovaBall]

I was not appalled by any selection besides tulsa.

But it turns out the tulsa ad and joe castiglione, chair of the selection committee, are best friends. Which explain a lot.

Syracuse has some good wins. To don't mind them making it.

[jaxalum]

It definitely looks like this Committee was biased against mid-major teams. Monmouth's exclusion in particular is upsetting, even when you account for losses to three sub-200 teams on the road. There probably isn't any one "objective" factor that worked against the mid-majors, though. What people often fail to realize is that the "eye test" and the subjective evaluation of teams play a big part in seeding and selection. People get caught up in the advanced metrics, the records against certain groups, the good wins and bad losses, and so on, but then they forget that there is a lot of subjectivity going on too. These Committee members watch a lot of games, for good or bad. If a certain collection of Committee members is biased toward teams with a certain type of player (e.g. top 100 kids that "look the part"), then this subconscious bias will affect how they view mid-majors with their good players who might be a little less athletic, a little shorter, and so on. A team might have all the numbers and frankly, they might have the talent, just in an non-traditional way, but it just takes enough Committee members saying that they don't "look" like a tournament team, whatever that is.

I do like what Jay Bilas said about non-conference scheduling. Essentially, the Committee has been sending a message to teams for years that they need to go out and schedule tough competition. Now, some of these teams did just that, and then they beat the good teams they scheduled, but apparently it was for nothing.

+1
Good post 09. In regards to your last paragraph, the coaches are completely frustrated and confused after this years bracket unveiling. In years past they(the committee) set out specific guidelines, actually it was more obvious suggestions more than ironclad policies that outlined what the committee valued most and what needed to be stressed to give your team the best possible chance at securing a bid. As you pointed out, they emphasized leaving your comfort zone and getting out and playing quality teams on the road. One year it was number of top 50 wins. Another, the RPI was stressed. This year I heard a committee member answer a related question specific to this topic. Essentially, he said there is no one piece of criterion that is necessarily more important than another. Each committee member has their own idea/agenda as to what constitutes a worthy resume. I don't really like Calipari, but he went off tonight on them in a very humorous way. Monmouth successfully followed their model to a T, and were given the shaft. Ive always had mixed emotions concerning Bilas, but lately he's been dropping the knowledge and earning checks, and went after the committee as well. Admittedly, my warming to him/possible brocrush, could be related to how ridiculously high he's been on Xavier ALL year, "Final Four/N.C contenders". The point is, nobody really knows what the committee is looking for.

OT but also regarding Bilas, on the 30 for 30 about the Duke Lacrosse Team/sex/rape scandal, Bilas, a former Duke basketball player, also holds a JD from there. Long story short, he's incredibly ingrained in the culture of that school, but when he started to learn that these kids were being made examples of, that Duke was throwing them to the wolves , he wrote an absolutely scathing report/column absolutely trashing Duke. He sided with these kids when they were the most hated people in the country. Ballsy and much respect.

[GumbyDamnit!]

RE: Cuse

At some point I wish advanced metrics and RPI would simply take a back seat to common sense. The Syracuse BOE-WHINERS were 2-9 vs the top 9 AAC teams. Yep, they finished 10th in their league. Not sure what UConn's record vs the top half of the league was when they came out of the BE as an 8th place team and won the NC, but I would bet it was better than 2-9. Point being that if you can't finish higher than 10th in any league, you've already proven if you are worthy to compete for a NC.

Also the Committee Chair mentioned on CBS that they DID consider Jimmys suspension and did not hold it against Cuse. What a joke. So the same organization that found a coach was culpable in violating their rules is given greater consideration because they had to answer for said violations. Are you kidding me?

[herodotus]

RE: Cuse


Also the Committee Chair mentioned on CBS that they DID consider Jimmys suspension and did not hold it against Cuse. What a joke. So the same organization that found a coach was culpable in violating their rules is given greater consideration because they had to answer for said violations. Are you kidding me?

The suspension was supposed to be a punishment, yet they don't want the side effects of the punishment to count. In other words, Jimmy just got a paid vacation during the season, and the games he missed were transformed into exhibition games.

[JohnW22]

How can the committee value top 50 rpi wins but not value RPI rankings for teams. Makes no sense

[DudeAnon]

https://thecauldron.si.com/nevermonmout ... .neba8zihj

With every inconsistent explanation and every mumbojumbo defense of why they took a team over someone like Monmouth, it became clear that the selection process is irretrievably broken for true mid-majors.

[Edrick]

It is significantly harder to make a tournament, much less win games as a mid or low major. The handful that accomplish it are simply some of the best programs in the country - on par with the absolute best like UK and Duke.

We can go 100 years and never have as impressive a feat as Butler making back-to-back NCAA finals out of the Horizon League. You have zero room for error to even make the Tournament, as Valpo now understands.

[XUFan09]

How can the committee value top 50 rpi wins but not value RPI rankings for teams. Makes no sense

RPI is not a precise measure and therefore shouldn't be used directly to rank a team. Hoeever, it's close enough that it can be used indirectly to say how a team fared against different tiers of opponents, as that allows for margin of error.

Ranking systems like Kenpom are more precise and really, I think one of them should be used. The advanced metrics do a better job of indicating how well a team is playing, so they better represent how tough it is to beat that team.

[DudeAnon]

How can the committee value top 50 rpi wins but not value RPI rankings for teams. Makes no sense

RPI is not a precise measure and therefore shouldn't be used directly to rank a team. Hoeever, it's close enough that it can be used indirectly to say how a team fared against different tiers of opponents, as that allows for margin of error.

Ranking systems like Kenpom are more precise and really, I think one of them should be used. The advanced metrics do a better job of indicating how well a team is playing, so they better represent how tough it is to beat that team.

Can someone explain to me what makes RPI an imprecise metric? And how Kenpom (which rewards blowouts) over close wins would be better?