"We count the early games (November/December) just the same as we count the late games (February/March)"
That statement was just made right now unambiguously by the Committee Chair in an ESPN Interview.
That's insane.
What you do by the time it's February/March should count much more than what you did in November/December.
There is no recognition of improvement? There is no acknowledgement of failure to improve?
What's the point then?
I don't agree with that at all, especially for trying predict performance to seed a tournament.
March Michigan would wipe the floor with December Michigan. They are not the same team at all.
That's an arbitrary self-inflicted rule that they can and should change.
March 11th, 2018 at 11:45 PM ^
+1 Insightful.
March 12th, 2018 at 11:00 AM ^
I don't know, at UNC was a much harder game than anything Michigan played at the end of the year. Certainly more difficult than at penn state or at northwestern or at md.
March 12th, 2018 at 11:51 AM ^
Do you mean the NW game Michigan lost by 9 after beating them the week before by 11 ???
Was at UNC easier or harder than playing MSU & Purdue in back-to-back days?
How exactly do you measure what is a hard game or not?
At Nebraska on 1/18 certainly proved to be a hard game. Was it equally as easy on 3/2?
March 12th, 2018 at 12:30 AM ^
Some don't. (Don't make me remember those years)
March 11th, 2018 at 11:03 PM ^
March 11th, 2018 at 11:11 PM ^
March 11th, 2018 at 11:21 PM ^
Ding Ding Ding! You got it right.
Thinking that being hot at the end of the season should change your seed line is stupid. Being hot at the end of the season is its own reward. There should be no weight given to your recent record approaching the tourney. If you're playing good basketball, great. Take your middling seed and pull a couple upsets. If you slide in with a couple early wins, good for you. Better step your game up.
What am I missing that we think that a March win is more impressive than a December win? Is it just because we have won two conference tourneys lately?
March 11th, 2018 at 11:37 PM ^
Rewind to 2009. Michigan hasn't been in the tournament in way too long. They get a neutral-court win over #4 UCLA in New York in November, then get blown out the next day by Duke. They avenge the Duke loss at home in December -- they were also top 5, IIRC. Then, well, not much of anything. They go 9-9 in the Big Ten, with home wins over Illinois and Purdue (both 5 seeds) and a sweep of Minnesota (a 10). They lose in the secound round of the Big Ten tounament to Illinois, and they finish the season having lost 10 of their last 17 games. (Started 13-3, finished 20-13).
National pundits howled when Michigan got a bid, essentially due to games they won in November / December. I'm guessing most people here were pretty glad they looked at the entire season. I'm guessing Clemson was less glad.
March 11th, 2018 at 11:53 PM ^
March 12th, 2018 at 10:39 AM ^
March 11th, 2018 at 11:58 PM ^
Then drop the committee and go strictly by standings. The team with the most wins against top N opponents gets the one seed. The team with the second most wins gets the next seed . . .
Why have a committee at all if you are just going by rote "standings"/
Is that the goal, to turn the NCAA tournament into a Pro playoff with pre-determined playoff spots and tie breaker rules?
Since most of the teams in college don't play each other, you have to use some judgement.
March 12th, 2018 at 12:58 AM ^
I'll see your sarcasm and give you a hearty "you accidentally got it right."
The NCAA hockey tournament is a much better model. The pairwise sucks, but it sucks in a way that people can understand. You can logically say "if we do X, Y, and Z, we can get into the tournament." Try doing that with the selection committee, whose criteria seem to change every year.
The basketball tournament -- and, especially, the football tournament, thanks to its ridiculously small size -- would really benefit from having published standards for qualification and seeding. Let me go to a website where I can see what Michigan needs to do to qualify, and where we can project out what their seed can be with a win, loss, Texas Tech loss, whatever.
Remove the subjectivity.
March 12th, 2018 at 12:51 AM ^
tied for 8th in a weak PAC12. USC 2nd then losing in the conf finals. guess who got in and who was left out.
March 12th, 2018 at 12:56 AM ^
involved in an FBI investigation and who isn't? If the FBI investigation affected a bubble team's chances of getting in, then I'm fine with that.
March 12th, 2018 at 10:11 AM ^
The committee didn't even have them on the first 4 out. They set a new record for the highest RPI ranking of any power conference team left out.
Kudos to the committee.
March 12th, 2018 at 12:18 PM ^
the committee chair had?
They also typically start with a month of friendlies or exhibition games, so the contests played while you're still shaking out your roster or working off the off-season rust don't count at all.
March 12th, 2018 at 11:30 AM ^
Those sports don't use selection committees, though. They don't have to sift through 351 team résumés to come up with a field. Apples and oranges.
about how the field is chosen, but it's one that's never been true. In fact it's demonstably false. There's always been consideration given to both who had the best season and who the best teams are at tournament time.
Part of the team sheets the committee used were three predictive rankings including Kenpom. Here's a quote from Pomeroy about his rankings.
The purpose of this system is to show how strong a team would be if it played tonight, independent of injuries or emotional factors. Since nobody can see every team play all (or even most) of their games, this system is designed to give you a snapshot of a team’s current level of play.
Notre Dame was the team knocked off the bubble Sunday when Davidson won. They were there because the committee gave them credit for being a better team than their record due to the games missed by Bonzie Colson. They wouldn't have done that if Colson hadn't returned. This isn't speculation. The committee chairman talked about their considering it.
The committee has always acknowledged they make exceptions for things like injuries. Which I think is dumb but it is something they say they consider. But some exceptions does not entirely invalidate the first half of a season being played.
March 11th, 2018 at 11:09 PM ^
March 11th, 2018 at 10:29 PM ^
Hopefully Michigan drops the boat anchor games like Alabama A&M for games against teams like Temple.
March 11th, 2018 at 10:31 PM ^
March 11th, 2018 at 10:36 PM ^
March 11th, 2018 at 10:37 PM ^
They are BCS-lite.
March 11th, 2018 at 10:41 PM ^
The committee is there to give us epic "storyline" games like SDSU (coached by Brian Dutcher) against Michigan.
You mean like the hockey tourney
March 11th, 2018 at 10:36 PM ^
How about Mizzou getting in because Michael Porter?
March 11th, 2018 at 10:43 PM ^
March 12th, 2018 at 12:17 AM ^
that three of the teams people think might have gotten the shaft are all involved in the FBI operation: Louisville, Oklahoma St and USC. If the NCAA was looking at a group of teams fighting for the last spots and said we aren't going to give those spots to the teams involved in the FBI investigation, then good for the NCAA. I'm fine with Alabama and OU making the tourney then.
March 12th, 2018 at 12:46 AM ^
What did St. Mary's do wrong then?
Their overall SOS is 210 and NCSOS is 187. They went 3-3 in Q1 and Q2 games against: Gonazaga, BYU, New Mexico St and Georgia.
For comparison's sake, Gonzaga's SOS is 151 and NCSOS is 111. They went 8-4 in Q1 and Q2 games against Villanova, Ohio St, Creighton, Texas, Washington, SDSU, St. Mary's and BYU. Gonzaga got the auto bid so it didn't matter but they know they are in a weak conference so they beef up their non-conference schedule to make up for that.
It's the knock on St Mary's every year - they don't schedule tough in the non-conference.
March 12th, 2018 at 10:37 AM ^
March 12th, 2018 at 10:56 AM ^
MSU went 8-4 against Q1 and Q2 teams and their overall SOS is 64th.
March 12th, 2018 at 12:28 PM ^
March 11th, 2018 at 10:48 PM ^
They are ranked 40th in RPI and 38th in Kenpom with good SOS's: 39th overall and 83 NCSOS and they have 5 quandrant 1 wins.
March 11th, 2018 at 10:37 PM ^
March 11th, 2018 at 10:57 PM ^
March 11th, 2018 at 11:00 PM ^
To me, it seems fair to use timing as a predictor of success.
March 11th, 2018 at 11:25 PM ^
Probably. But... is that even the point? If the Browns went 0-10 to start the year, then had a 6 game winning streak, should they be in the NFL playoffs?
Every playoff out there is based on the whole of the schedule. I fail to see the argument behind providing a higher seed because you have won of late.
March 11th, 2018 at 11:32 PM ^
Maybe that’s why there is a committee- to adjust for these things, a manual override if you will . . .
March 12th, 2018 at 12:04 AM ^
And acknowledge that a dogshit team like Oklahoma should not be in.
Get to 18 wins and take the rest of the year off.
Yeah, no.
March 11th, 2018 at 11:40 PM ^
But the committee isnt trying to predict who wins. They are trying to select and seed the best teams based on their complete body of work.
March 11th, 2018 at 10:41 PM ^
committee protocol in tournament team assigning is simply this: If that is the case, why do conferences have tournaments at season's end? Why do bottom dwellers of any conference with no resume for tournament qualification get a chance to oust teams that do in their conference regardless of seeding barriers that limit their chance of entry? And why do those schools in mid-major conferences with better records then no longer qualify for the tournament because they didn't win their tournament?
If every game counts from November through March, then why do some schools with less wins than others regardless of conference get in over others? Is their a rule that implies that since SOS is only a qualitative measurement based on other factors?
If every game counts, and you are using weighted measurement and subjective analysis to determine which teams and conferences are superior to others in terms of performance, why do head to head matchups and margin of victory count for less as weighted factors in decisions about a school's overall resume from November through tournament selection?
The reason is because it's just not true. It's a justification for a quantitative question about quality, not about equality. Because it's all subjective. Michigan didn't have to qualify for tournament selection; they got in the old-fashioned way, by earning it.
March 11th, 2018 at 10:50 PM ^
at the end of the year because the conferences want to make more money.
March 11th, 2018 at 10:56 PM ^
March 11th, 2018 at 11:01 PM ^
UM's BTT run was a big catalyst getting them up to a 3 seed.