March Madness Analysis - Who Got Snubbed?
by Charles Jay
The general consensus going into the final weekend of play, which included semi-final and final games in almost all of the relevant conferences, was that these were the "bubble" teams whose fate was more or less out of their control when it came to getting an NCAA tournament bid:
Boston College
Maryland
Virginia Tech
Miami
Providence
Michigan
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Penn State
Baylor
Kansas State
UNLV
New Mexico
San Diego State
Arizona
Auburn
Florida
Saint Mary's
Creighton
Those last two teams - Saint Mary's and Creighton - came from what are termed the "non-power" conferences, and out of the three teams in the Mountain West who may have rated consideration - San Diego State, New Mexico and UNLV, only one at best was going to get in.
I'm not so sure the committee didn't do an exceptional job when it came to picking the right teams to include in the field, taking into account the fact that some teams, like Mississippi State, Temple and Cleveland State, got in unexpectedly through conference tournament titles, thereby locking up automatic bids that would have otherwise gone to schools on the list above.
BOSTON COLLEGE (+3000 to win the Midwest region at BetUS) got in, and deservedly so. The Eagles beat North Carolina and Duke, as well as a few of the bubble teams. The 66-65 loss to Duke in the conference quarterfinals could have gone the other way. MARYLAND (+2500 in the West region at BetUS) is in too, and that comes as good news to Gary Williams, who was being hung in effigy in many corners of the College Park campus earlier in the season. His Terrapins beat eight teams in the RPI's top 100, including three teams with seeds of four or higher: North Carolina, Wake Forest and Michigan State.
ARIZONA (+3000 in the Midwest region at BetUS) made the field, and the Wildcats, after getting in the hair of their chinny-chin-chin last year, obviously live a charmed life with the selection people. The 'Cats had their best moments at home this year, which included wins over Gonzaga, Kansas, Washington, USC and UCLA, not to mention San Diego State, which didn't get in, and all of this good work must have overshadowed the fact that they couldn't win on the road. Nonetheless, they wound up on my list of ("Teams to Watch") published a couple of weeks ago.
WISCONSIN (+3000 to win the East region at BetUS) is in the field, although outside of the conference they did not have significant victories outside of Virginia Tech. The Badgers had one of the top schedules in the country, but lost to ten teams in the RPI's top 50, among them U-Conn and Marquette. They turned out to be borderline at best. MICHIGAN (+5000 to win the South region at BetUS) must have appealed to the dramatic instinct in the selection committee, since the Wolverines have already demonstrated that they can beat anyone at anytime, posting wins over Duke, UCLA, Illinois and Purdue, not to mention another at-large team in Minnesota. They also had Connecticut on the ropes.
DAYTON (+5000 to win the Midwest region at BetUS) was, to me, an expendable member of the at-large roster. While it is true that the Flyers started like a house afire, scored a non-conference win over Marquette and beat Xavier in one of their two meetings, their body of work didn't consist of much else. They lost in the Atlantic 10 tournament, and their presence means that the A-10 has three entrants, as many as the SEC. That doesn't seem right.
So who didn't get in that should have?
SAN DIEGO STATE's argument centered around the fact that it had the highest RPI of any team that was left out (34). The Aztecs would have gotten the automatic bid with one more win in the Mountain West tournament. Nick Canepa, a columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune, thinks there is foul play that has nothing to do with performance on the court. "My conspiracy theory – and I'm not alone," he writes, "is that the BCS folks can't stand their Mountain West brethren because the pesky MWC wants a bigger slice of the enormous BCS football pie and is threatening to get everyone from the president to the Supreme Court involved to right a wrong. So now it affects basketball."
This is a team that would have presented a possible surprise or two if they had made the field. As it was, two wins over UNLV (a Sweet 16 team last year) at the Thomas & Mack Center were big in my opinion, but Utah and BYU were ahead of them in the pecking order, and Steve Fisher's team just didn't beat anyone of note outside of the conference. As for UNLV, yes I know they beat Louisville, as a visitor no less, but the Rebels were swept three games by San Diego State, which pretty much ends their argument.
BAYLOR may have been a genuine snub. The Bears, whose strength of schedule was among the 20 toughest in the country, beat four teams from the Big 12 who have made the field - Kansas, Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma State - not to mention Arizona State, who is a ranked team, and Providence, who should have been a borderline call for an at-large. Plus, they made it to the title game of a good conference (where they lost to Missouri). That resume is better than Dayton's.
CREIGHTON is another team that crafted an argument for itself after eleven wins in its last 12 games, but it was the 12th game, a decisive defeat to Illinois State in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament, that blew it for them, despite an RPI of 40. DAVIDSON, in the end, had not developed enough equity with the committee with an out-of-conference win over West Virginia, and a sweep of eventual conference champion Chattanooga. There were losses to Duke, Oklahoma, Purdue and Butler, and the defeat that cost them, which came at the hands of the College of Charleston in the Southern Conference tournament. So Stephen Curry will have to save his heroics for the NIT.
SAINT MARY'S, also featured in my ("Teams to Watch") story, did not get enough of a break from the committee for being without Patrick Mills in the lineup, although I thought it might be a factor. The Gaels played with some character without him, which should have counted for something. There were wins over Providence, San Diego State, Pacific (the Big West finalist), Morgan State (who won the MEAC), Utah State (the WAC champion), as well as everyone in the West Coast Conference except Gonzaga, which is no shame. With a 26-6 record, I would have put them in.
