Finding answers amid tournament mystery
Athletic director Chris Hill cannot talk about specific teams or situations in discussing his role with the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee - rules, you know - so it's impossible to get a specific answer about the most obvious question looming over the Mountain West Conference today:
What happened to UNLV?
The Rebels went 28-6, won the league tournament, were ranked 10th in the Ratings Percentage Index, won nine of their last 10 games, faced the nation's 37th most-difficult schedule, went 9-5 on the road ... and were rewarded with a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
"This is a seed against the Mountain West Conference," columnist Ed Graney wrote in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The 25-8 Brigham Young Cougars have a similar argument after drawing an eighth seed, but it's not nearly as strong. They lost the league tournament title game, played a weaker schedule, fared less impressively on the road and ranked 19th in the RPI.
Either way, though, Hill was unable to explain just how all of that happened, except to describe logistics that actually make it easy to understand.
Hill and the other nine members of the committee who set up the bracket and assign the seeds vote on the merits of each team by computer - which is to say, privately and anonymously.
And that's a good way to allow regional or institutional bias creep into the process.
Hill might not have tried to undercut the Rebels or the Cougars - contrary to the dark and illogical conspiracy theories of some fans - but there were nine others on that committee who could have done so for any number or reasons, from trying to boost their own teams and leagues to geographical familiarity or simple personal preference.
It's not as if Hill had much chance to talk them out of it, either.
In the meetings, he is not allowed to lobby on the behalf of his conference teams. In fact, he said he "cannot offer" any information about the Mountain West Conference teams to the rest of the committee unless somebody asks him a question. "And usually I can only respond with a factual thing," he said, "like did so-and-so beat so-and-so, or is somebody hurt."
Suddenly, it's not so hard to imagine how a team could wind up feeling slighted.
On the other hand, of course, is the argument that the Rebels did not get slighted.
After all, nobody seems to have a problem thinking the Rebels deserve their No. 19 ranking in the final AP Top 25, right? And if that is acceptably accurate - the Rebels were 25th, going into the league tournament - then having 24 teams seeded higher than them in the tournament does not seem like a horrible injustice.
Guess it all simply depends on what color jersey you wear.
What happened to UNLV?
The Rebels went 28-6, won the league tournament, were ranked 10th in the Ratings Percentage Index, won nine of their last 10 games, faced the nation's 37th most-difficult schedule, went 9-5 on the road ... and were rewarded with a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
"This is a seed against the Mountain West Conference," columnist Ed Graney wrote in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The 25-8 Brigham Young Cougars have a similar argument after drawing an eighth seed, but it's not nearly as strong. They lost the league tournament title game, played a weaker schedule, fared less impressively on the road and ranked 19th in the RPI.
Either way, though, Hill was unable to explain just how all of that happened, except to describe logistics that actually make it easy to understand.
Hill and the other nine members of the committee who set up the bracket and assign the seeds vote on the merits of each team by computer - which is to say, privately and anonymously.
And that's a good way to allow regional or institutional bias creep into the process.
Hill might not have tried to undercut the Rebels or the Cougars - contrary to the dark and illogical conspiracy theories of some fans - but there were nine others on that committee who could have done so for any number or reasons, from trying to boost their own teams and leagues to geographical familiarity or simple personal preference.
It's not as if Hill had much chance to talk them out of it, either.
In the meetings, he is not allowed to lobby on the behalf of his conference teams. In fact, he said he "cannot offer" any information about the Mountain West Conference teams to the rest of the committee unless somebody asks him a question. "And usually I can only respond with a factual thing," he said, "like did so-and-so beat so-and-so, or is somebody hurt."
Suddenly, it's not so hard to imagine how a team could wind up feeling slighted.
On the other hand, of course, is the argument that the Rebels did not get slighted.
After all, nobody seems to have a problem thinking the Rebels deserve their No. 19 ranking in the final AP Top 25, right? And if that is acceptably accurate - the Rebels were 25th, going into the league tournament - then having 24 teams seeded higher than them in the tournament does not seem like a horrible injustice.
Guess it all simply depends on what color jersey you wear.
posted by www.sltrib.com @ 2:27 PM |
1 Comments:
Ha! I posted my comment in the wrong thread earlier.
Let's tell the truth here. Just like the BCS, the NCAA tournament is about money. A majority of the committee members are from BCS conferences and they protect their own. The first round itself is worth well over $100,000 per year for 5 years. Each round beyond that escalates in value. But this is how the cartel that is the NCAA works and we all have to live with it. It amazes me that the government allows this mega-cartel to continue to exist.
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