Initial Thoughts on the NCAA Seedings

Every year, during a particularly dramatic conference tournament game, some analyst talks about how wonderful conference tournaments are. When you put a mediocre team playing for its season (or its life?) against a talent with superior talent but no incentive to win, of course you'll get an exciting finish. But it doesn't make for good basketball. More importantly, because some bad team from a power conference wins a few games in a row, a deserving team should be bounced out of the NCAA Tournament? It doesn't make sense and it's not logical. Get rid of conference tournaments.

I don't have any gripes as to teams that didn't get into the tournament, so let's talk about the old debate of power conferences against mid-majors.

The mid-majors got 8 at large teams in this season, twice as many as the paltry number the committee granted them last year. The fact is the top mid-majors tend to always be underrated. Winning should count for something. There seems to be an asterisk attached to the wins of mid-major teams and to the losses of teams out of the power conferences. We are told that a win or loss is valued based on who you play. That's fine in theory, but in determining the quality of opponent, the current system assumes teams from the power conferences are better than mid-majors. It should be based on wins and losses in a given year. If you are consistently beating winning teams, that should count more, regardless of the name on the front of your opponents' jerseys.

The thing that bothers me the most about the mid-major discussion is when analysts say that a top mid-major couldn't have a .500 record in a power conference. It depends on the school in a given year, but that's an ignorant comment from guys who spend their lives analyzing basketball, most focusing the bulk of their energy on the power 6. First of all, mid-majors always are put at a disadvantage. They only get to play power teams on the road. In the tournament, they’re traditionally given worse seeds, putting them in a tougher position than they should be in. When a 12 seed (who should be a 7 seed) losses to 5 seed, the analysts cackle the above comment. See, they couldn't hang with the big boys.

Old Dominion won the CAA this season. They played 3 power teams, going 1-2. Two of those games were on a neutral court and the third on the road. They played two NCAA Tournament teams going 1-1, and the third game was against a bubble team. The win was at Georgetown. Had ODU been able to play against bad power conference teams, especially at home, are you telling me they couldn't finish 8-8 in any conference in America? Listen analysts, turn off the Pac 10 game and turn on a CAA, MVC, WCC, or a MAC game once in a while. In any event, I'm glad Billy Packer retired.

Miami U lost in the conference semis and George Mason lost in the conference quarters, so I only have Georgetown. I'm pleased with their 3 seed, but I wish it wasn't in such a stacked region.