Exempt from action’s crucial test,
Human ourselves, at least are wise
In honoring one who did his best.”
- James Russell Lowell
While Lowell certainly could not have imagined the annually incongruous judgments of coaches, analysts, sports talk show hosts and NCAA college basketball tournament selection committees, his words seemed appropriate for introducing the subject matter which follows. Not one committee has gotten everything right since I started following which teams were invited to the big dance, and which were forsaken, back in the mid 1980s, when I had far less hair growing from my ears. The last line in the quote above should be applied toward the committee’s decisions in this respect- they tend to include some undeserving teams (often from major conferences- that perhaps have not performed their best) and by that, they are not honoring those that have performed more capably, all things considered, (as is the case with some teams from mid-major conferences). Of the at-large teams invited to the tournament, 30 are from the former group and only 4 from the latter. While this is a problem some might have with this year’s selected teams, it does not concern me as much as some other noteworthy items which cause me to think that the committee and the experts rather enjoy being controversial, if only to provide the sports fan with things to talk about which rival their BCS-loving football counterparts, who refuse to institute a college football playoff system.
To be sure- the list of things the expert-cooperative (coaches, analysts, talk show hosts and selection committee) get wrong does anything but honor those who did their best. The committee, that hardly ever throws anything away, decided to keep Arizona in the field. I visited my mom the other day. She owns a pink throw pillow that is so old it has varicose veins. Arizona was handed its 25th consecutive invitation to the big dance, despite going 9-9 (tied for 5th in a PAC-10 conference so watered down, the pop dispenser at Taco Bell would be proud). That pillow, which is supposed to be an article of leisure, is so hideous it looks like a ravioli cooked so long the beef has escaped. Note to the selection committee- maybe it is time to put together a field of participants in order to honor them for having done their best (to paraphrase Lowell) and with that, you will have done your best as well. Imagine a person exhausted by the day's events, who lays down on the couch to find that the only "comfortable" place to lay their head is the pink pillow that meets the description above. Across the room is a far more suitable pillow-candidate, but this person has no energy left to get up to get the pillow. Do you know what the pink pillow is . . . yep, Arizona.*
TALK THE TALK
The only thing worse than nearly two months of speculation about which bubble teams most deserve to be selected to participate in the NCAA tournament, is the 24 hours after the tournament field has been finalized.
The potential criteria decided upon by a selection committee, and speculated upon by everyone from president Obama, who filled out a dry erase board bracket, to a cave full of bears that just woke up from hibernation, is exhaustive in its scope and frustrating in its fiatness- about as frustrating as when all of the hot women are voted off of American Idol. The committee, we have been told by our 1000 pundits of the roundtable, lock themselves in a conference room for the weekend to deliberate upon the worthiness of the 34 at-large selections, that for the most part, are battling for the right to be the last teams to be sacrificed to the 1 seed in each regional. Consider the criteria, enumerated below, which I may or may not have taken the liberty to embellish. Each piece of fact has an element of cognitive dissonance associated with it, and is beloved by certain members of the college hoops elite, with more attention to detail and identifiable reverence than Indiana Jones had for the stone fertility idol at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The chairmen of each committee has normally been uncomfortably interviewed by Jim Nance and Billy Packer (of CBS), just minutes after all of the tournament seedings are revealed and always seem to have made drastic mistakes that could cost some teams their tournament lives by giving them one seed lower than the respective coaches might have desired. That was sarcasm. Thankfully, I missed the waterboard-like selection committee chairman interview this year.
The potential seedings are deliberated upon for hours upon hours and days upon days on ESPN’s or CBS’ pundit-based halftime shows. Each expert/pundit and each year’s version of the selection committee has their own set of standards (and sometimes an agenda) that equates to one team being considered more worthy than another with about the same resume. The qualifications for promotion in some businesses are almost this difficult to follow. The rationale each committee, from year to year, and each pundit, from day to day, uses to determine which teams are more worthy wears me out; not even MapQuest can give such pathetic directions. At base level- the discrepancies are not unlike any of those that men have had disagreements about since the invention of the rock, or at least since blue-tooth technology. My children, who have not yet reached the age of reason, have more meaningful discussions about whose highly valued miniature stuffed Goofy doll, that came from the Apple Jacks box, is theirs to keep forever. (Note: when I say discussions, I mean that my son takes the highly valued prize and runs away from his sister before I realize what he's done.)
WE ARE WORTHY
Without further ado- for those teams vying for the 34 at-large bids, the criteria some people might use to defend/justify one team’s inclusion, and another team’s exclusion from the tournament (in no particular order):
1) RPI- Ratings Percentage Index - 1/4 (Winning Percentage) + 1/2 (Opponents' Average Winning Percentage) + 1/4 (Opponents' Opponents' Winning Percentage);
2) SOS- Strength of Schedule- the ranking of the strength of a particular team’s schedule is determined by how many of their opponents have been worthy and how many have been unworthy opponents. Defeating a respected 24-7 team, from a power conference, says more about a particular team’s NCAA tourney preparedness than defeating a 19-14 team from a conference that is deemed not as strong;
3) Strength of a team’s non-Conference schedule;
4) The physical appeal of one team’s cheerleaders (particularly UCLA's), compared to another's that just has a male jumping around in a razorback (i.e. pig) costume;
5) Road victories;
6) Record the last 12 games; (in vogue for the 08-09 season);
7) Whether one coach was slighted for the Academy Award for best director a decade ago and the committee may choose this season to make amends. Wait, that is an existing problem with the American Academy of Motion Pictures Art and Sciences, (i.e. the Oscars);
8) A coach’s total number of ego-stretch marks which are not a by-product of Dick Vitale’s brown-nosing (see below);
9) Record the last 10 games; (in vogue for seasons prior to the current season);
10) Whether the team's total number of wins is 20 or more and if that number is divisible by muskrat;
11) Record vs. common opponents;
12) Conference record;
13) How badly one team beat up on Little Sisters of the Poor;
14) 6 degrees of separation logic; let’s say Louisville, a #1 seed, played Virgina Tech, a non-conference opponent, on a neutral sight, and lost by 5; that same Virginia Tech team lost to Michigan on the road, Michigan lost to Utah at home, Utah lost to McNeese State Technical College who beat Ray Charles School for the Sight Impaired by 2. Now RCSFTSI can insinuate that they are tournament worthy as they can trace that season’s result-lineage all the way up to some kind of putridly derivative Louisville underachievement which is uncharacteristic of their overall body of work. The Imperial Stormtroopers dispatched to Tatooine didn’t do as serviceable a job tracking two droids to Uncle Owen’s dwelling in Star Wars;
15) The coach of the 19-13 Arizona Wildcats justified their inclusion in the tournament because they beat 3 conference champions- Washington (4 seed), Gonzaga (4 seed) and Kansas (3 seed). All of these games were at Arizona. If you make a statement like that it is best to include that you defeated Louisville, North Carolina or Michigan State in your supporting argument. That piece of information should not be the sole criteria used to justify your selection. Arizona had a 9-9 conference record, lost in the first round of their conference tournament; went 1-5 to finish the season; they had non-conference wins against Florida Atlantic, Mississippi Valley State, Santa Clara, Northern Arizona, Loyola Marymount and San Diego State- teams that may, MAY, appear in the NCAA tournament a combined 7 times in 14 years;
16) The team has a coach with great tournament success; I heard a talk show host mention this was the only reason that Tubby Smith's Minnesota Gophers got in; (16A- beat Louisville on a neutral court and hope that they win the Big East conference and Big East tournament). For those who don't know- Minnesota did that this year. I'll cross reference this one to #s 1 and 14. Rooting for teams that you had previously beaten is commonly done if you want to ensure your place in the field;
17) A team has a major player with an injury that would impact his team’s performance, or the player just came back from injury and shot 6 of 20 in two games prior to selection Sunday (ala Patty Mills and St. Mary’s- who were not invited to dance);
18) A certain team had close losses to teams from major conferences, in road games that began after 5 p.m. where the PAID attendance was more than 11,500, and the court had fewer than 2 swastikas accidentally emblazoned on the parquet floor;
19) Two coaches from the Big Ten conference, a conference with 11 teams, justifying that 8 teams from the Big Ten should be selected. Shockingly, they responded in the affirmative when asked if 8 teams should be invited, because it always makes sense to reward 3-5 teams with nearly identical conference records, none of whom really distinguished themselves more than a mid-major team with some key road performances and a dominating record in their conference, despite the fact that its conference was more deficient than the Big Ten- if that is even possible. I could see a scenario where two hours later, one of the two coaches referenced above, finding no invitation to the tournament, attempts to justify why his team should be in and the team he just made a case for should be out. Only in politics and in the mating habits of jellyfish does hypocrisy run as rampant. Jellyfish have no brains. That species being able to show devotion is just not in the cards.
HOME COURT ADVANTAGE
North Carolina, a number 1 seed, and Duke a #2, will both play first and second round games in Greensboro, N.C. I do not agree with the way the selection committee places teams that are already head and shoulders above their opponents within the friendly confines of their own state.** All teams should be made to leave their own state, so as to eliminate the advantage of proximity to their campus. Villanova will be playing its first and second round games in Philadelphia and Ohio State in Dayton, Ohio. People will say that it is better to keep teams close to home for a fan following, because more tickets will be sold and that tells me that the NCAA cares about money; money and integrity are mutually exclusive. Perhaps, in this economy, a fan-base that might ordinarily drive 49 miles to Greensboro (in the case of UNC fans), or take a long weekend to drive from North Dakota to Minneapolis (which is where NDSU will be playing in the first round) wouldn’t do so for financial reasons if their team was shipped out west. If this was the first season the committee mandated a home court advantage, (considering the economy) that might make some sense. Getting shipped out West is exactly what happened to Connecticut, the most eastern of any of the teams that might remotely have been considered for a no. 1 seed. In defense of the selection committee, there was not a team worthy of consideration as a #1 seed west of the Mississippi, so someone (Louisville, Pittsburgh, North Carolina, or Connecticut) was going to need to travel. And it is not the committee's fault that only 6 of the top 20 teams (as judged by the committee) are west of the Mississippi. It just simply is not fair to make inferior teams from eight states away travel to the lion’s den of a team that apparently does everything better than they do except travel well. This makes less sense than providing a traffic report at 4 a.m. . . . to a balloon-loving earthworm in touch with its feminine side. This is easier than one might think- keep in mind that earthworms have both male and female reproductive parts.
HOME COURT ADVANTAGE II
Two years ago, the coach of the Syracuse Orangemen (Jim Boeheim) complained about being left out of the tournament. I am surprised I cannot remember exactly his rationale because I heard him whining on just about every sports talk radio show on the air. I believe he cited reasons like the toughness of conference opponents, the Orange’s record in conference (10-6), that no Big East conference team had ever been left out of the tournament when they had achieved 10 conference victories, their record against non-conference opponents, etc. The team may have left the state of New York twice during the non-conference schedule- I tried to find that on the net- to no avail. In hindsight Mr. Boeheim, maybe you would have wanted to step up the competition and not be such a travelophobe. I include this paragraph because at least one coach per year uses this complaint. This excuse is more unchanged than a cartoon character's shirt.
BELONGING
Every coach that is interviewed by CBS sports or ESPN thinks his team is worthy of being included in the tournament and feels they should be given a higher seed than they have received considering their “body of work” a common refrain among coaches with some of the most delusional qualities you will ever come to find. When asked if his team deserved a #1 seed, Memphis coach John Calipari said (to paraphrase) yes, but the committee has been good to us. If there were upsets the committee would have made some mistakes. John, your basketball coaching abilities are impressive, but have you not paid attention to this tournament in the last 30 years? Next you will tell me that Leprachaun venison is not worth the time it takes to prepare. There are upsets, the tournament is famous for them- N.C. State in '83, Villanova in '85, Kansas in '88, Arizona in '96 and those are just the teams that one the tournament. There may be a few factors involved in a college basketball game that more noticeably determine the outcome than a group of men deciding which seeds certain teams should be. After all, the games are not played on paper. These factors that happen to determine the outcomes of games- field goal percentage, rebounding, defense, turnovers, players fouling out or getting injured, foul shooting, luck, skill, referees***and a coach deciding not to call a timeout in the last moments of a game to prevent your opponent from hitting a game-tying 3-pointer (ala the Memphis v. Kansas title game that you, John, coached in last season).
DICKY V
SURVIVE AND ADVANCE
The prediction component of each ESPN or CBS panelist is always very interesting. They know their sport, and while each panelist may come to a different conclusion about who is in and who is out of the tournament, they also have different ideas on who can survive and advance to the final four and which teams have a chance to win the whole thing. They know far more about the participants than I do, but it is their job and they get to spend their days researching which Big Sky conference tournament runner-up beat the SEC champion on a neutral floor and therefore justify the slight of a mid-major conference candidate that is left out of the field in favor of an also-ran from a major conference. According to Jay Bilas- Connecticut has a chance to go all the way because of a dominant inside force- Hasheem Thabeet. Bilas, to paraphrase, said that he’s a player that no other team in the tournament has. This is really very good information. I am pretty sure that a player cannot play for two teams at the same time- that might be an NCAA rules violation or something. Pundit, committee, fan, coach or talk show host- there are plenty of NCAA tournament violations. Having written all this, I am guilty as well.
* Arizona's (of the varicose vein Arizona’s) selection to the tournament is not justified simply because they defeated an overrated Illinois team that was never worthy of a 5 seed and a #13 seed that upset their first round opponent. Likewise, an NIT final four team has not proven that they should have been invited to the NCAA tournament.
** Usually, home court advantage comes into play in the NIT tournament, where a team is awarded a home game simply because one team's fan base is more likely to turn out for a game. Usually, I like my sports champions determined by heart, effort and talent, and not by expected net generated income. I didn't include this as an element of the 19 enumerated factors which qualify a team for selection, but I probably could have.
*** This is probably off topic, but aside from the lack of a college football playoff system, the subjectively enforced dichotomy between a charging and blocking foul is among the most annoying features of any sport- excepting the allowed use of undersized crickets in arthropod Tiddlywinks by cobras that are over four feet long. Whenever I see a ridiculous charging call made against a rightfully aggressive offensive player that jumps into a defensive player who just barely got his feet set directly under the basket- I call it a Battier. Or whenever I see a goofy defensive player trying to do nothing more than get in the way of an offensive player dribbling the ball 30 feet from the basket- the defensive player always seeming to look like one of the prostrate guys on the rod of a foosball table- I call it a Battier. Those familiar with the former Duke flopper will understand.
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