From the Sporting News
March Madness 2019: Selection committee should be embarrassed for mishandling Michigan State
CHICAGO — If you have a computer and understand how to navigate to the MapQuest website — which requires simply for you to type "MapQuest" into a search engine and click on it — you have access to the same sort of tool the NCAA Tournament selection committee employed to screw Michigan State out of what it spent four months of basketball earning.
It was a process so grueling two of the Spartans' most important players wore walking boots as they joined the assembly Sunday afternoon to accept the Big Ten Tournament championship trophy, Kyle Ahrens, supporting himself on crutches, and Joshua Langford, rolling along on a knee scooter.
They were proud when they were done beating Michigan for the third time, delighted and smiling and dancing on the floor of the United Center. No MSU team had ever slapped a three-game sweep on its in-state rival.
Inside of a half-hour, the Spartans discovered it hadn't been worth the bother.
The selection committee for the NCAA Tournament determined the win over the Wolverines slid MSU past Kentucky and into the sixth position on the seed list, making the Spartans the second-strongest No. 2 seed behind Tennessee. That meant they would be placed in their "natural and closest region possible," according to committee chair Bernard Muir. Well, Michigan State has been in the Midwest for as long as it has been in Michigan, which is in the Midwest.
But the Spartans will be playing in the East Region.
How could this possibly be?
Head on over to MapQuest, where you will discover it is 591 miles from East Lansing to Washington D.C., as opposed to 711 miles from East Lansing to Kansas City.
That's right. The committee members decided the Spartans would rather travel 120 fewer miles and be bracketed to face the tournament's No. 1 overall seed, Duke, and Sporting News Player of the Year Zion Williamson.
"We don't look at the matchups, necessarily," Muir said after the bracket had been revealed. "It's more trying to assign teams to their natural and closest regions."
I'm sorry. I was under the impression this was an athletic competition. I'd been told the committee was spending six days in New York in order to select the most deserving teams to add to the automatic qualifiers and then to order them 1-68.
What is the purpose of placing them in order if it's not to contrive the fairest and most equitable competition possible?
How can the members of the men's basketball committee not be embarrassed at this preposterous lack of logic?
If the tournament is not constructed so as the best teams can be legitimately close to home — the sort of on-the-fly, play-on-your-homecourt operation the NIT runs until the semifinalists head to New York and Madison Square Garden — what possible benefit are they expected to derive from being slightly closer to home? How could anyone believe there is value inherent in traveling on a plane for 35 fewer minutes?
Duke is not an impenetrable team, but they are the committee’s No. 1 overall team for a reason. That reason is Williamson, who has been on the floor for only two Duke defeats. With him, they won the ACC Tournament by defeating fellow No. 1 seed North Carolina and No. 4 West seed Florida State.
You can be certain every coach entering the tournament, especially those believing they had a serious chance at the Final Four, began Sunday hoping to be placed in one of the three regions Williamson would not occupy. Michigan State earned the right to be elsewhere by ranking as not the least of the No. 2 seeds, or the second-least, but as the second-best. The logical place to put the Spartans at that point was — can you imagine? — the Midwest.
North Carolina is no bargain. The Tar Heels are tremendous. But they were the third of the No. 1 seeds for a reason, also. They lost games to half the teams on the top two lines. That certainly seems more inviting than an evening with Zion and his biceps.
The most amazing element of Sunday's bracket reveal as it related to the Spartans is the Michigan team they beat for the Big Ten title — the team they beat last weekend for a share of the regular-season title and two weeks before that to set up all of this — will head to the West Region for a possible matchup with the No. 1 seed the committee respected least, the Gonzaga Bulldogs.
Michigan won by losing. (And losing. And losing again.)
For all the griping about mid-major teams not getting a fair shot for at-large bids, VCU made it in easily, and Belmont will play in the First Four. Those advancing the misguided notion the "little guy" gets a raw deal are missing the greatest flaw in the selection process. It has been the same since I first visited Indianapolis for the mock selection process roughly a decade ago and saw how all this is done. The problem is the fixation with the minutiae of geography. This might be the most outrageous application of that absurdity.
Michigan State's chances of reaching the Final Four decreased immeasurably because of the distance of 120 miles. If only the MSU campus had been in Muskegon. The Spartans might have gotten the draw they earned.
