Tourney Selection Committee celebrates a job...uh...done.As you heard here two days ago...Our Boilers are a 6. I can't stand Xavier, so I like the possibility of playing them second round. Baylor's tough, so it's no gimme, but I think Purdue got what it deserved (unlike many teams) the way they finished the season. Hopefully, they'll find new life in the dance.
Hey tourney committee- is it tough to make picks with the Pac-10's genitalia in your face? Unreal- both Oregon & 'Zona in despite 13 & 14 losses? Garbage. Also, I find Kentucky getting in based on their name complete bubkiss.
Butler got hosed like nobody who's in the dance...and IU's seed shows how closely the committee was watching IU's games after Sampson's departure.
All-in-all, the committee...chose poorly.
Flawed Thinking Atop Flawed Thinking
So, The WCC sends three teams (St. Mary's & Gonzaga at-large & San Diego was the con. champ). The Big Ten gets four teams. Can that committee honestly tell me that Minnesota & aOSU couldn't win that conference OR that the Zags or St. Mary's would finish fifth in the Big Ten?
Arizona gets in based on the fact that, when healthy, they're a much better team than they played for parts of it. That said, they have THIRTEEN losses. We're told each year that the body of work is important...This team's resume as a whole simply isn't worthy of a tournament bid.
The committee said both 'Zona and Oregon got in because of their out-of-conference strength. But, that wasn't important for Kentucky. Losses to Gardner-Webb, UAB & Houston are seemingly ignored simply because the 'Cats had to delay their SEC tourney game until Saturday morning last weekend. Plus, the Committee must have a soft spot in their hearts for the fact that UK has a 17-straight tourney streak going...Congrats Kentucky fans, you stole your way into the record books.
6 comments:
Give me Illinois State and Virginia Commonwealth, two teams that would fight tot he death in the tournament, than Villanova and Arizona barely getting in on name and/or conference affiliation and losing by 10 in a lackluster first round game.
Oh yeah, and Butler got royally hosed. They deserved at least a 4. They had a better record this year and got a worse seed, so WTF?
Travis, it seems their loss to Drake two weeks ago was a make-or-break game...like I said to my brother (Butler grad), Butler doesn't need those type of game every year...they should have respectfully declined.
Butler got F'ed so bad. They get dogged on by the committee almost every year. BTW I did my persuasive speech in HS on "Why Butler should have been selected for the NCAA Tournament." My pops went there so I'm partial to the Dawgs.
re: the WCC
san diego wouldn't have gotten in had they not won their conference tournament - it's really only a two-team conference. that'd be like complaining that the big ten got a fifth team in if illinois had won yesterday. gonzaga and st. mary's are worthy at-large teams; the wcc just got lucky in that they both got beat in the tournament, opening the door for san diego.
Ease up on Kentucky, dowd. They went 12-4 in the SEC and had a legitimate chance to win their division had they beat Tenn. a second time. They split with Vandy and Tenn. They've also been raped by injuries all year and are forced to play some of their players 39 and 40 minutes a game. They won the last 2/3 games in the season without their big man, Patrick Patterson, who is the best player on the team, and that loss was by 3 to Tenn.
Sure their overall record wasn't that great and they lost to Gardner Webb, UAB, and San Diego, but they played well when it counted. And before you start talking about the whole "body of work" that is supposed to be looked at, I'll remind you that everyone on this site was saying things like "Wofford is now a thing of the past" when talking about how the Boilers changed over a season of play.
The committee may take the whole season into account, but it's obvious that what you've done lately is a big part as well. See IU dropping to 8 and Purdue dropping to 6 as evidence for that.
Show me the last team that went 12-4 in a major conference and was left out of the dance. 3/4 of those conference losses were very close games (FL in overtime, 5 pts to the SEC West champion, Tenn by 3). Also note that their SOS is very high.
You may not agree, but I think they're much more deserving than teams with LOSING records in their conferences that made it in. They are a different team than they were early in the season. You may argue that it shouldn't mean anything and those bad losses should have kept them out. But if we're talking about getting the best 64 teams in the dance, they belong, period.
I agree re: UK. Their conf record is too good to be overlooked, I think.
Though losing by almost 50 at Vandy hurts their case A LOT, in my opinion.
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