I want to reply to
@bayareabadger point by point because my post was absolutely NOT a half truth:
First, he admitted that the tournament favors teams from crappy conferences because they simply do not have to be as good. That is the end of the discussion, full stop.
For some reason he felt it necessary to continue:
He asserted that they have no leeway. This is obviously incorrect and the example of Gonzaga proves it. They play in a crappy conference as I illustrated above. They failed to win their crappy conference and yet they will still be invited to the NCAA tournament due to their gaudy 30-3 record. The thing about that record is that 16 of those wins came against Gonzaga's crappy conference-mates.
Remember from above that this is a conference in which half of the members are substantially worse than any B1G team. Even on the rare occasions when Gonzaga does have to play a decent opponent in conference they NEVER face the grind that comes with playing decent opponents game-in and game-out in the B1G. They played #34 St. Mary's three times:
- They played them at home on February 9. In their game prior to that Gonzaga played #72 San Francisco.
- They played them on the road on March 2. In their game prior to that Gonzaga played #213 Pacific.
- They played them in the WCC Tournament on March 12. In their game prior to that Gonzaga played #167 Pepperdine.
Note that on two of the three occasions that Gonzaga played St. Mary's their preceding game was against a team at least 60 spots worse than ANY B1G team. The other time that Gonzaga played St. Mary's their preceding game was against a team that would have been the 10th best in the B1G.
The only time all year that Gonzaga played back-to-back games against quality opponents was in December. They lost to #6 Tennessee in Phoenix then traveled to #7 UNC and lost that game as well.
Next
@bayareabadger asserted that the only thing these crappy conference teams can do is to play long-odds games, that if they win they might get blackballed, and that they are not pulled into exempt tournaments where they can build resumes. The example of Gonzaga obviously illustrates that all three of these assertions are flatly false. Gonzaga has won high-end games in the past and yet they still get that opportunity. This year alone they hosted Washington, traveled to UNC, played a neutral-site game in Phoenix against Tennessee, and played resume-building exempt tournament games against Illinois, Arizona, and Dook in Maui.
In his penultimate paragraph
@bayareabadger uses PSU as an example and asserts that if it favored them individually, the Nittany Lions would try to find a way to play in a bad league rather than they (and others) trying to move to better ones. First, PSU's conference affiliation is in the B1G and we don't have football only or all-but-basketball members. Penn State can't just drop out of the league for easier BB schedules because they would also have to give up everything that the conference gets them in other areas.
Our league has plenty of advantages. Chief among those are money and exposure. That does nothing to change the fact that the NCAA tournament favors crappy-conference teams because they simply do not have to be as good.
Finally, I mostly agree with
@bayareabadger 's final paragraph. The tournament is about stories and moments. That is fine, but I still think that there are too many auto-bids. My measurement here is the vast number of auto-bids who will be worse than the worst at-large teams. In Lunardi's latest, the last four at-large teams are UF/NCST who are projected to have a play-in game for the last #11 seed and tOSU/TX who are projected to have a play-in game for the first #12 seed. Thus, Lunardi is projecting that 21 auto-bids will be worse than the worst at-large:
- The three other #12 seeds
- All four #13 seeds
- All four #14 seeds
- All four #15 seeds
- All six #16 seeds (including the two play-in games).
Note that it will likely actually be worse than that because most conference tournaments are not yet complete and for those incomplete tournaments Lunardi assumes that the best team will win. There will be upsets like St. Mary's over Gonzaga in the WCCCG and when those happen there will be even more bad auto-bids claimed.