A Panther Growl Starts the Engines

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Thoughts from the weekend...

1). Jay Bilas committed the cardinal sin of sportscasting Saturday night when he looked directly at one of the ESPN commentators before the Louisville-West Virginia showdown and stated that it probably will never happen that a 16 would beat a 1. Pay no attention to the fact that the commentator (I can't remember his name now) made the very salient point that he was tired of the fascination over #1 seeds because the difference between a #1 and #2 was minimal and the second round would be a tough game regardless. Bilas' point was that #1 was important because and implied with his comment that a #1 would never lose.

When are these talking heads (as opposed to a typing head like myself) going to realize that making the "brash statement" is not a quick road to recognition in the sports world? If anything, it can be a career killer if enough people notice and, um, I don't know, a 16 beats a 1 this year? If every 16/1 matchup was a 40 point blow out, I could understand. Unfortunately for Bilas' logic teacher, that hasn't been the case. There have been five 16 seeds who have come within five points of beating the #1 seed, two of them lost by 2 points and one, Princeton, lost to Georgetown by 1 in 1989. Three of the #1 seeds were Big 10 teams. 5 out of a 100 teams or 5%. Better odds than lightning or the lottery. (Or my brother Chris winning the pool).

The lesson here Jay is that as long as mediocre teams from the Big 10 are handed the #1 seed and the mid-majors are given no respect, it WILL happen. But instead of doing his homework and speaking from a position of strength, Mr. Bilas chose to throw out a statement that would make him look bad if the networks didn't protect their talking heads by refusing to revisit these comments in spirit of debate and discussion. Thus, the Jay Bilas and Seth Davises of the world are allowed to throw out a half dozen outrageous statements and when one sticks, they are brilliant. Speaking of which...

2). Seth Davis had a comment in SI a few weeks ago as follows

"The Big East is eating its own. Through Sunday, Georgetown, Notre Dame and Syracuse, which were all ranked in the Top 10 at some point this season, had lost a combined 17 of their last 19 games and are in danger of missing the NCAA tournament."

Once again a major conference is benefiting from circular reasoning to get an inordinate amount of press or consideration for a bid with a mediocre record. The above comment infers that if the Big East wasn't so good, former top 10 teams like Georgetown, ND, and Syracuse would not have lost so many games lately. While I do believe the Big East is a tough conference this year, the misfortunes of those three teams are tied more to their severe underachievement than anything their conference foes have wrought. Add Marquette to that list as well.

Now, because of thinking like that spewed by Seth above, Georgetown is actually still getting bubble consideration despite a horrible second half of the season. If you are worthy to be a team in a major conference and make NCAA tournament, you have to consistently beat the teams in your conference with occassional losses. You should not be able to get in the tournament by gaining a couple quality wins early and then coasting through the second half of the season by losing to everyone in your conference. Meanwhile, mid-majors who can not get the big schools on their schedules are limited to one team--the conference champ. Anyone who saw the Illinois State/UNI game today knows that Illinois State deserves to go as they might be the most athletic and dangerous mid-major out there.

My solution? Instead of making up the fictitious "BracketBusters" weekend every year with pre-scheduled games, force every school in Division I to have an open weekend where two games will be played during a Thursday to Sunday span. Keep the weekend in mid-February so enough games take place to determine appropriate match-ups (that is, equally matched mid-majors and majors). A week before the games, have a selection committee agree on two Bracket buster games for each team, every game pitting one major against one mid-major team. Even the bad teams can match up against each other. Every team gets one home game and one road game or, better yet, make them neutral regional sites where four or eight teams would play both games at the same seat against two of the other seven teams.

Sure logistically this would be more work but with all the money the NCAA makes on March Madness, I think they could come up with a viable solution and then market the hell out of it so it becomes yet another money maker.

And then maybe we'll have a little more concrete evidence to assist the tournament committee in March.

Peace,
Reg