It happens every year. Some undeserving team wins a conference tournament against a ranked team that could care less about winning it. So now a deserving team with a solid body of work for the season gets rewarded with the NIT. What if the team that got bounced was us?
1) Texas has a 0.00000% chance of missing the tournament. 2) Cleveland State is actually a pretty salty squad that could make life very miserable for a 4 seed in about a week.
I don't know if Cleveland State was that undeserving. They did take Butler to the wire in two 2-point losses earlier in the year. Butler made a three pointer with 1 second left in Cleveland, and Cleveland State missed a three pointer with 7 seconds left at Butler. Butler isn't a Final Four or maybe even a Sweet Sixteen team, but they are pretty good. Cleveland State is obviously on a par with them. I really don't have a problem with the Horizon Conference getting a second good team in the tournament at the expense of a .500 team in a major conference. All conferences have tournaments to let the also rans have a shot at the end of the year. Why should the smaller conferences be different?
I admit, I know nothing about Cleveland St other than before last night they had 0.00% chance of making the dance. The point I was trying to make was this: Is it really fair for the NCAA to allow these auto-bid tournys. I mean if a team is ranked and knows it is going regardless of the tourny outcome, the sense of urgency is not there to win. I'm sure Butler is not happy they lost some hardware last night, but I wonder if they were really going all out. I don't want to start a conspiracy theory, but conferences do benefit financially for getting more teams in the dance.
These conference tournaments are important for mid majors. They get punished a lot more for losses when it comes to seeding.
Butler completely clamped down defensively on Cleveland State last night, limiting CSU to one point over the last 4:55. Butler was down three with 14 seconds to go, took a missed free throw, went down the court, shot a three, got the rebound, worked it for another three, got another offensive rebound, but couldn't get another three off in time, so it wasn't like they weren't trying. I think it's just a situation of two very evenly matched teams. I mean, c'mon, three straight games coming down to the last shot?
I'm afraid if enough big conferences keep losing spots to the horizons of the world, they might try to make a BCS for basketball. It's always about the $.
Sure it's fair to allow automatic bids for conference tournament winners. It is each conference, not the NCAA, that chooses the method of awarding the conference's automatic berth. The "deserving" teams that miss out may be marginally better than a small conference automatic winner, but the field is already so diluted that the arguments about who gets in and who gets left out are usually about teams with one game better than .500 in their conference and a mediocre OOC record. We are talking about potential 12 seeds here. No team seeded 12th or worse has made the Final Four. In fact, the only time since 2000 when a seed worse than 5 made the Final Four was 2006, when George Mason did it, as an 11 seed, and the second team from the CAA. The only time a double digit seed power conference team made the Final Four was 1986 when LSU made it as an 11 seed.
There's no such thing as bid-jacking. This is why March Madness rules and the BCS does not. The team that Cleveland State "bid-jacked" was probably Miami or someone that wouldn't have made the 2nd round anyhow. It's dumb to say that the smaller conferences shouldn't have the value that the big ones do.
It would make a lot more sense if the actual conference title was what determined the auto-bids instead. Still, the teams that get "bid-jacked" are teams that didn't have a good case to get it and should consider themselves fortunate if they made it anyway.
Somebody tell me the last time a team outside of the top 4 seeds won the tourney. It doesn't matter at all if someone in a 12 seed gets jacked.
Lowest Seed to Win Championship 8 - Villanova, 1985 6 - North Carolina State, 1983 6 - Kansas, 1988 4 - Arizona, 1997 3 - Indiana, 1981 3 - Michigan, 1989 3 - Syracuse, 2003 3 - Florida, 2006 No one outside the top eight has ever won the tourney and only three teams EVER outside the top 4 has won the tourney.
I really wasn't talking about someone winning the thing. As I said before, it's all about the $ a conference gets for the bid.
Cleveland State won AT Syracuse. Anyone think this years Texas team could win at Syracuse? If they are getting anything more than 6 points, I'm betting Cleveland State pretty hard next week in Vegas! Those guys are physical.
Personally, I don't like the conference tournaments. I think they lower the importance of the conference regular season. However, I can see why the major conferences have them as they generate money and exposure with little risk of costing a team a bid to the big dance (it actually may help them get more teams in). And from purely an entertainment point of view, I can see why many fans in those conferences like them as it is a chance to watch a lot of quality basketball over a short time period. But for me, I can do without them and let the regular season standings determine who is in and who is out. But what I really don't understand is why the smaller conferences have them, especially the ones that will only send one team to the big dance. Their tournaments don't offer them the same exposure and money as the big boys (it may cost them money). And you would think these conferences would absolutely want to send their best team in order to best represent the conference. It does them no favor to have some 15-15 team get hot during the conference tourney and snag the automatic bid.
Not all of them. The Southern Conference, instead of getting Davidson, an exciting team with a great player, capable of winning a game or three in the tourney, gets a Chattanooga team that is 16-15 and possibly headed to the play-in game. The smaller conferences should either use the regular season title for the bid, or set up the conf tourney (as some do) to really reward the reg season performance, with double-byes, home court, etc.
I'd rather see Davidson in the tourney than most BCS bubble teams. They proven against Duke, Oklahoma, and Purdue that they're good enough to play with anybody.
Let's let Baylor win the Big 12 tournament so the conference gets a 7th (or is it 8?) team in the NCAAs.
