Tuesday, March 16th 2010, 4:00 AM
the Fab Four
Which no. 1 seed has the best chance to win the 2010 NCAA Tournament?
This year’s NCAA Tournament is representative of the current state of college basketball.
Standard A-listers UConn, Indiana, UCLA, Arizona and defending national champion North Carolina didn’t get, nor did they deserve, invitations to the party. the Pac-10 hit a historic low, with just two teams – Washington and California – earning bids and neither seeded higher than eighth.
ESPN’s Jay Bilas pointed out the obvious that many would like to ignore when he proclaimed, “If you can’t make the tournament this year, you’re not championship caliber. this is a championship event.”
This is the weakest at-large field in the history of the tournament, but still the NCAA is considering expanding the field to 96 teams. Talk about March Madness, or in this case, March Badness.
The rationale is clear enough. the NCAA is a business and wants to try to generate as much money for its member schools as possible through TV revenue. the NCAA is in the final three years of a long-term, back-loaded CBS deal.
The benefit of expansion would be potentially leveling the playing field between the power conferences and the mid-majors by offering automatic bids to all 32 regular-season champions. this would allow more mid-majors entry to the party if a second team wins the conference tournament.
But the flip side is that expansion will not only water down a tournament that is already watered down this year, it will further decrease the significance of an already overcrowded regular season. all this for money.
It’s clear that the NCAA, which bought the rights to the NIT, would like to combine that tournament into the NCAA brackets in an effort to produce some revenue streams from a product that has become a financial drain.
But consider this: if the committee included this current 32-team NIT field in the brackets, it would simply be rewarding mediocrity.
The NIT gets props for including regular-season champions who do not win their conference tournaments and are left out of the NCAA field of 65. this year there were eight – Troy, Jacksonville, Jacksonville State, Kent State, Stony Brook, Quinnipac, Coastal Carolina and Weber State. the top seeds are intriguing: Illinois, Mississippi State, Virginia Tech and Arizona State.
But there is a huge drop-off after that and the tail end of the NIT field is a joke.
In the new format, the 16-team big East would have 13 of its teams playing in the new tournament, the 12-team ACC would have nine, the big 12 would have eight, the 11-team big Ten would have seven and the 12-team SEC would have seven. every team from those power conferences with a winning record except Arizona (16-15) and Alabama (17-15) would be invited.
As things stand now, North Carolina, which struggled through a 16-16 season and was 5-11 in ACC regular-season play and lost to Georgia Tech in the first round of the conference tournament, is a no. 4 seed in the NIT.
Connecticut, which finished 17-15, was 7-11 in the big East and sleepwalked through a 73-51 loss to St. John’s in the first round of the big East Tournament, is also a no. 4.
The Johnnies were 17-15, but just 6-12 in big East regular-season play and 1-1 in conference tournament play, a conference winning percentage of 33.
The examples go on. at this point, we might as well let all 344 Division I teams into the cherished NCAA Tournament? now that would be Madness.
dweiss@nydailynews.com
Expansion of NCAA Tournament from 65 to 96 is the real March Madness
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Tags: fab four, member schools, rationale
Tags:
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current state
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