2020-2021 B1G Basketball Thread

[ELA]

An undefeated Houston may not be invited in football

An undefeated Houston football faced a tougher road than Houston basketball did in this tourney

[bayareabadger]

Don't you just love the upsets while crowning a champ?!? 

I HATES THEM! 

Eff Miami-Nebraska in ‘83. Eff OSU-UF in 2006. Eff ASU-OSU in ‘96. Bama deserved that title in 2014!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[OrangeAfroMan]

Nope. Looking at who has been invited to the playoffs, it is 100 percent accurate

You're omitting so much here.
Gonzaga was a mid-major about 15 years ago.  Let's correlate them with Boise State in football.  Great records, ranked, but not respected come the postseason.

You're completely ignoring that Gonzaga, through the freedom that is OOC basketball scheduling, annually played top teams and winning enough of the time that they earned respect come postseason.  It'd be as if Boise State actually kept having 12-1 seasons for a decade while scheduling USC, Michigan, and Texas A&M OOC.  
If you're not going to acknowledge that, I'll just stop.

[OrangeAfroMan]

If UCLA wins its semifinal, how legit a champion is Houston (if it wins out)?  Literally beat a 1-seed and all the rest double-digit seeds.  
.
Comparing to football, mulltiplying by 4, that'd be akin to say, Clemson, beating Alabama in the playoff, but not having beaten anyone else in the top 25 OR others receiving votes.  Wait, didn't Clemson do that one year?  

[medinabuckeye1]

An undefeated Houston football faced a tougher road than Houston basketball did in this tourney

If UCLA wins its semifinal, how legit a champion is Houston (if it wins out)?  Literally beat a 1-seed and all the rest double-digit seeds. 
.
Comparing to football, mulltiplying by 4, that'd be akin to say, Clemson, beating Alabama in the playoff, but not having beaten anyone else in the top 25 OR others receiving votes.  Wait, didn't Clemson do that one year? 

Houston's path in this tournament has been ridiculously easy this year, similar to Michigan's path to the CG a few years ago.

That said, it happens. This is the format, everyone knows that. Some #2 seeds face 15-7-3-1-1-1. Houston's path in @OrangeAfroMan hypothetical would be 15-10-11-12-1-11. We accept it because each of those lower seeds got there, they must have been pretty good. UCLA didn't just appear in the F4 by decree. They earned that spot. 

[OrangeAfroMan]

So UCLA earned the NC if they win it all?
Finished 4th in their conference.
Had a losing record on the road.
.
The same people who yell and scream that the playoff teams must win their conference and/or division also defend the above.  It's gross.

[FearlessF]

UCLA will have earned a tourney championship

nothing more

[MaximumSam]

You're omitting so much here.
Gonzaga was a mid-major about 15 years ago.  Let's correlate them with Boise State in football.  Great records, ranked, but not respected come the postseason.

You're completely ignoring that Gonzaga, through the freedom that is OOC basketball scheduling, annually played top teams and winning enough of the time that they earned respect come postseason.  It'd be as if Boise State actually kept having 12-1 seasons for a decade while scheduling USC, Michigan, and Texas A&M OOC. 
If you're not going to acknowledge that, I'll just stop.

Well I didn't write a treatise on the subject. But we all know the system - in basketball, every single team has a path to play for a national championship. This is clearly not the case in football, where you know before the season begins that roughly two thirds of the teams can't get into the playoffs even if they win all their games. I don't know why that needs context or is even controversial. 

[MarqHusker]

Thou shall win six (possibly seven) consecutive games.  That's the pact if you want to compete for the title.

1s needn't apologize for often 'ducking' other 1s.

Why not nitpick the titles from small field eras or one bid eras, when the brackets were more regional.  Or, when teams that felt snubbed out of a high seed and  went to the NIT instead. 

[bayareabadger]

So UCLA earned the NC if they win it all?
Finished 4th in their conference.
Had a losing record on the road.
.
The same people who yell and scream that the playoff teams must win their conference and/or division also defend the above.  It's gross.

Why is it gross? They got told if you went out and beat a bunch of good teams when it counted, they will win the thing that they give you when you get the good teams when it counts.

People bring up the winning the conference thing because there is a scarcity of spots. No one has some great moral quandary about teams who are in second, third or even fourth place getting into a large field. And honestly, the only thing that really tweaked people was when a third-place team got in, and zero other first place teams got in.

[MaximumSam]

Why is it gross? They got told if you went out and beat a bunch of good teams when it counted, they will win the thing that they give you when you get the good teams when it counts.

People bring up the winning the conference thing because there is a scarcity of spots. No one has some great moral quandary about teams who are in second, third or even fourth place getting into a large field. And honestly, the only thing that really tweaked people was when a third-place team got in, and zero other first place teams got in.

Don't forget the third place team got in ahead of the second place team that beat them. Where the basketball tourney has a set criteria that resolves all things by playing actual games, the football system...doesn't. There is no criteria beyond people declaring the four "best" teams.

[OrangeAfroMan]

Why is it gross? They got told if you went out and beat a bunch of good teams when it counted, they will win the thing that they give you when you get the good teams when it counts.

This is why it is gross.
The selectivity of when to really try to win.  When to really play hard or play at your peak.  This is how you get Super Bowl champs who go 9-7.  This is why the NBA has to threaten teams who sit their best players whenever.  It's specifically designed to extract meaning from regular season games.  What sense does that make??

meaningful season > meaningful playoff
(even if by sheer volume alone)

[847badgerfan]

I'm hoping for a UCLA championship.

[medinabuckeye1]

This is why it is gross.
The selectivity of when to really try to win.  When to really play hard or play at your peak.  This is how you get Super Bowl champs who go 9-7.  This is why the NBA has to threaten teams who sit their best players whenever.  It's specifically designed to extract meaning from regular season games.  What sense does that make??

meaningful season > meaningful playoff
(even if by sheer volume alone)

This is how I view it. Every playoff expansion necessarily dilutes the importance of regular season games.

In basketball we have a system in which the playoff is very large so individual regular season games are nearly meaningless. They matter in the aggregate, of course, but if you look at one game in isolation it is nearly meaningless.

In football pre-BCS we had no playoff so individual regular season games were hugely important. One bad day at the wrong time prevented numerous great teams from winning the big prize.

Then we went to the two-team playoff that was the BCS. Individual games still mattered a lot, but somewhat less because there was a much better chance of getting a second chance.

Now we have a four-team playoff so some games, for some teams are basically meaningless. Still, individual games are very important, note that Ohio State has missed the CFP because of a single loss in both 2015 (MSU) and 2018 (PU).

When we expand to an eight-team playoff it will further dilute the importance of individual regular season games. That is unavoidable.

All of that said, I do not think that there is necessarily anything wrong with favoring very different systems for very different sports. No matter how much you love the 64/68 team CBB playoff, it simply isn't possible in CFB where you can only play once a week and the game is hell on players physically. It would be crazy to ask CFB players to play up to six or seven more games in a massively expanded playoff.

Personally, I like having a meaningful regular season in CFB and a huge tournament in CBB.