Pumpy, I don't know, I think I'm detecting sarcasm here, seeing as how there are only three UNO fans in existence. Since you know it wasn't your game tape, the odds were 50/50 that it was mine.

Anyway, seeing as how UNO is losing its top three scorers off an 11-19 team that couldn't score any points, next year is looking a bit grim. I think there are some Big 10 teams that might be able to shut us out if given the chance.

Yeah I really have no idea about conference designations, and generally don't care, but I think its disingenuous to point to Memphis as an example of a thriving mid-major in the context of this discussion. I think its a lot more fair to point to Memphis as "that team that was really unlucky to be a little too far south and/or west to get sucked into the Big East".

Yeah, that argument doesn't exactly work. Why do we even bother playing- let's just give the trophy to the team with the best recruiting ranking?

SI

I don't disagree. Arizona probably shouldn't have made it. The problem is that none of the other potential big names (Auburn, Penn State, UNLV, SDSU) were more deserving as they each had their fair share of worts.

I also have a problem with allowing a team in the tournament who didn't beat a top 25 team all season (unless they lose an insane low number of games - ie, 0-4). So, I can't see how Creighton or St. Mary's can claim a spot without showing the ability to beat a top 8-seed quality of opponent all season.

I think we refer to mid-majors as conferences that aren't in the BCS, but not in the levels of the SWAC. I think the Mountain West, WAC, and C-USA probably are considered mid-majors, although at the higher end.

In any event, UNLV came out of a horrible conference when they were making Final Fours. All I'm saying is that the NCAA has a history of smaller conference schools being very succesful in the tournament.

Damn I wanted to watch Stephen Curry. :(

He couldn't handle C of C's awesomeness.

But it's tough to blame them for not having top 25 teams on their schedule when it's not easy to schedule them. St. Mary's can't call up UCLA and ask for a home and home series. It took Gonzaga almost a decade of making the tournament before they were able to schedule as difficult as they currently do. I just think it's an impossible catch-22 for teams like St. Marys who need to beat tough teams to get in, but aren't able to schedule them.

Like I said, I'd rather see a Creighton or St. Mary's in the tournament than a 13-loss team in a bad power conference. Creighton doesn't have any top 25 wins, but they don't really have the opportunity to play any. They did go 9-5 against top 100, so they were succesful against better competition. I just figure with the disadvantage these schools are at scheduling wise, they should be rewarded for exceptional seasons.

Honestly, I thought maybe I had discovered a new UNO fan out there in the world someplace. Or maybe the tape came from Ledell Eackles because, hell, he had nothing better to do but tape everything his alma mater ever did. Speaking of Ledell Eackles, LeDell Eackles and the Destruction of*Innocence - Bullets Forever cracks me up.

I can't help you there, but if you want to see his mom, you can come over to my house tonight.

The argument was about teams in mid-major conferences having no shot at a national championship. I'm just pointing out that it's completely wrong as teams like Memphis, Utah, and UNLV have all come out of those conferences to be succesful.

Oh ok. As long as that's part of an argument that mid major bubble teams need some sort of affirmative action program to get in over major conference teams of similar caliber then I'm cool with that!

Guess what? Those teams were highly seeded and were respected throughout the year. UNLV was a 1, Memphis was a 1 last year, Utah was a 3 in 1998. George Mason is the better argument with an at-large bid with the #11 seed.

I don't know how you can consider C-USA above a mid-major. It's the 3rd straight year that they've only sent 1 team to the tournament. The Sun Belt, Colonial, West Coast, and Horizon have had multiple bid years in the last 3.

I'll give you the A-10, but the Mountain West isn't putting teams in the tournament at a high clip than other mid-majors like the Valley and West Coast.

I don't remember how Utah did in their conference that year, but Memphis and UNLV were dominant in their conferences. I mean absolutely dominant. They're not the same as St. Mary's or Creighton having a real shot at winning the championship this year. Memphis is basically a Big East team in Conference USA uniforms. St. Mary's and Creighton are no comparison to that. Memphis' current success or UNLV's success of the early '90s are not very indicative of St. Mary's or Creighton's chances this year. They're two different things.

Low seeds don't do well out of any conference.

There are some rumors today that Nolan Richardson has been hired as a consultant for the Arkansas basketball team. Only rumors at this point, but it's a strong one. There are a couple of signs that this could have legs.

My response had nothing to do with Creighton or St. Mary's. Someone said that mid-majors don't succeed in the tournament and I said that was wrong. You are reading too much into it.

You guys realize that you can argue about this for weeks at a time and no one will be right or wrong because nothing can actually be proved.

I heard a suggestion from Jay Bilas on the Jim Rome show earlier today. His idea is to eliminate all automatic bids. Rome replied well you'd be taking the cinderella out of the tournament in which Bilas replied no we wouldn't because teams like Davidson, Creighton and St Marys would still make the tournament and they would be cinderella stories. At first I disliked the idea but the more I thought about it the more I did like it. I mean how many games have these auto bids from small conferences won anyway.(10???) If Davidson played NC in the first round instead of Radford it would be tough to not be interested in that game. Where as now the only thing people care about is if North Carolina will cover the 30 point spread against radford or vice versa.

Lotto?

Did you watch the games? George Mason was every bit as good as the teams they were on the court with and beat some of the best teams in the country in 2006.

Bilas is a BCS homer.

If the auto-bids were eliminated there would be way more high-majors in the tourney than there currently are.

That's more like the BCS then. Teams from small conferences have no shot at making the tournament. You also end up with major conferences gettin 10+ teams in. I think it kills some of the value of the regular season and ruins Championship Week which is a great thing.

I don't like removing the auto bids. I like telling every kid in the 350 schools that they will be in the tourney if they win their conference. I do, however, support giving the auto bid to the regular season champion. In the main conferences, most of the top teams mail it in for the tourney so there's always 2-3 USC, Miss St, Baylor types who find a way to steal a bid because the top guys want the rest. In the lower conferences, you have these 24-26 win teams who have a bad day and their entire season is deemed meaningless.

DISCLAIMER: I'm a HUGE CAA fan and a mid-major fan in general.

I think eliminating the conference tourney tie-in for the mid-majors is a bad idea. The reason being that I think the tourney is a big part of the culture within a mid-major. The CAA tourney, for it's fans, is a HUGE event that provides revenue and interest in the conference. If you take that away I think they lose something.

Would it put the better team into the dance? Maybe. But I think you lose more than you gain. You give up what is a huge event for the conference to win a ncaa tourney game every 5 years or so?

The tournament is perfectly fine the way it is IMO. The first weekend is unbelievably exciting as mid-level quality teams(note that I am not saying mid-major, I mean teams that are not considered championship contenders no matter where they come from) threaten the top seeds. Maybe a few times a decade there's a truly serious upset, a 15 over a 2 and the occasional 14 over 3 to go along with the standard 12/5 upsets that we all enjoy every year.

Then we get to the second weekend of the tournament, where the focus begins to turn to the top seeds though there is still some remaining drama (how far can davidson go?) and again maybe once a decade an 11 seed makes a final four. For some it may be more exciting when that 11 seed is George Mason instead of Villanova or NC State, but either way a low seed like that continuing to advance is great for the tournament, but its very rare.

Then we get to the final four which is almost always about the best teams in the country, where 1 seeds have made up about 45% of all final four births over the last 30 years, and 1 seeds have won half the tournaments. Again maybe once a decade something truly amazing happens that keeps us on our toes but by now its almost always about 4 of the best 10 teams in the nation. And again one of those 10 teams might be Memphis, they're just teams at this point, not cinderellas or any other shit because they don't play in the big east.


There are WAY too many insane irrational suggestions that would all completely ruin the perfect dynamic of the tournament that are based on the fact that Saint fucking Mary's didn't get an at large bid.

Seriously, "this team should have been in, this team got snubbed, omg there is a grand conspiracy in selection" is all fine. Take that over into fucking with the structure of the tournament and you're going over into crazyland. White jacket lock me in a padded room and throw away the key crazyland. Do not fuck with the tournament structure.

I'm with you fwiw Radii. I think the tournament has leaned too heavily in favor of the major conferences since Mason went on their run, but I mean like... there should have been 3-5 more mid-majors each of the last couple of years than there were, not that the tourney needs to be turned on its head.

The mid-major supporters (like myself) are not helped by the fact that there really wasn't a good crop of mid-majors this year. It was a great year for some mid-majors to really make a case for at-larges because I feel like the BCS teams that did get in were extra-weak this year, but no one stepped up to the plate. They made the argument too muddied. There are mid-majors that were "snubbed" in the past couple of years that I think could have easily made it into this field.

Id agree Radi.

Nothing really does need to be changed however this same argument happens every year. It probably wouldnt matter the setup in any case someone will be unhappy. I think the bottom 9 teams 15/16 seeds are overmatched in this tourny but you are right it would take away the whole point of conference tournys to get rid of the auto bid.

You have to do what successful teams like Temple a few years back, Gonzaga, Dayton and others have done:

1. Find your way into the Maui, preseason NIT, Coaches vs cancer, or many of the 10-15 preseason tournaments. LMU was in one, certainly St. Mary's can manage an invite if you really want one.

2. Play 2-3 BCS conference teams on the road. Oregon was good. But they should have a Pac 10 team (USC/Cal/Arizona/Wash), a Big 12 like Kansas/Oklahoma/Texas and a Big 10 team.

3. Try to get home-and-homes with a Utah, Washington St or Texas A&M. I think one of these style teams would bite.

Right now, St. Mary's will put all their eggs in one BCS opponent (in this case Oregon) and some 50-50 mid majors like Kent State, San Diego St or Southern IL. If you know your conference is going to have just 1 (maybe 2) top 100 opponent (as the WCC has the past couple seasons), you need 2-3 guaranteed top 50 opponents. If you add a preseason tournament plus swap the road game at Pacific or Southern IL for road games at Cal and Texas - St. Mary's probably gets a bid.

Creighton's a little tougher as they traditionally have a stronger conference and they tried to play better teams (entered a tournament and faced Depaul and Fresno State), played Dayton, Nebraska, New Mexico and a few others. But, they rolled snake eyes on their opponents as nearly all were in down years. Like with St. Mary's, if you're not going to go on the road against a Kansas, Cal, Arizona, Texas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri or other traditional power, you really need an inside straight with your mid major opponents or lose less than 5 games.

Good point. Plus, I'm guessing the week of conference tourney coverage on ESPN is more exposure than a lot of these conferences get all year. So, removing the drama probably ends that as well. I think I've reversed my course on this one - it's a better deal for these schools to have that tourney be relevant than have a slightly better regular season team be represented in the NCAAs.

Off topic

I wish Arles would make another college hoops game using the Kenpom stats as a basis for a game engine:)

Easier said than done. Gonzaga gets into those tournaments and games because they had some long runs in the tourney and became a household name. I doubt there are any mid-majors that can get those kind of games.

I still think you underestimate how tough it can be to schedule as a small school. First off, they'll never get a quality school to play in their arena. Many of these power conference schools will also avoid potential slip-ups against top flight mid-majors. St. Mary's is in the middle ground where they are just good enough that teams want to avoid them, but not good enough where they aren't such a risk to a big school.

If St. Mary's could pick up the phone and schedule Kansas, UCLA, and Duke next year, I'd agree with you. I think they did what they could and even went an entire month of their season playing on the road. They played in a tournament although didn't get matched up against any major schools. It's a lot different than a Pac-10 school which rarely steps out of their arena the first 2 months of the season.

OK, well, then my point is that Memphis and early '90s UNLV may have come out of mid-major conferences, but they are/were not mid-major teams.

Agreed, that's why the first two options I offered involved neutral/road games. But, I think they could get home-and-homes worked out with schools like Texas A&M, Washington State or even a BYU/Utah type.

I would think any of those teams would play St. Mary's in their place. You just need one scheduled to significantly improve your SOS - even if you lose.

And that's the difficulty with the mid-majors. They have very little margin for error because of their extremely weak conferences. So, the options are to go 95% cupcake for the season and finish 27-3 or to hedge your bets and work in 2-3 tough road games + a solid preseason tourney and maybe finish 26-7. The problem with both Creighton and St. Mary's is they went with a 90+% cupcake schedule and still lost 6-7 games. You have to set yourself up to have the potential for one good win if you are an atlarge and the schedules both teams had didn't allow that (or the teams didn't take advantage - ie, Gonzaga).

Yup. Again, I follow the CAA very closely. The top CAA Teams (VCU, Mason, ODU, Drexel) try their damndest to schedule BCS schools and people just don't answer the phone. A home and home with any BCS school is almost a joke. A few examples:

ODU had I think a 4 season home and home with VT. ODU won 2 or 3 of those games, Seth Greenberg won't answer the phone anymore.

VCU got a home and home with Oklahoma (in Oklahoma this year - Richmond next). How did they do that you ask? Oklahoma hired away their coach (Jeff Capel) and VCU made it a stipulation of letting him go.

ODU has tried for YEARS to schedule Virginia - they won't do it.

ODU Beat Georgetown in.. 2007? In Washington. No more Georgetown games.

It's just an endless list. The best teams in the nation will schedule a top CAA school on very rare occassions. The mid-level BCS schools generally won't do it, let alone a home and home, because they know there's a good chance they lose.

The reason BCS schools do not play top mid-majors is not because of a lack of desire on the mid-major's part - it's because the BCS schools won't schedule them. This isn't like football where the mid-majors will shy away from the bcs schools - the top mid-major basketball programs are desparate to play bcs schools.

That's not the difficulty.

The difficulty is that when a mid-major does "everything they were asked to do" they still don't get in.

I'll take one specific case -

the 2006-2007 Drexel Dragons:

23-9. They beat Vermont, St. Joes, Villanova, Syracuse, Temple, and Creighton out of conference. Lost to Rider and Penn out of conference. 7 losses in-conference, only 1 of which I'd call a "bad loss".

Their RPI was somewhere around 30.

No dice.

This team scheduled a VERY strong OOC schedule for a mid-major and delivered. Yet there they were - NIT bound.

Siena played at Tennessee, faced Oklahoma State in the Old Spice Classic, played at Pittsburgh & at Kansas.

Davidson played at Oklahoma,Purdue, and Duke and hosted West Virginia.

VCU played New Mexico & Vanderbilt in Cancun, and Oklahoma (although that was a Capel vs his former school thing I imagine)

Belmont played at Pittsburgh.

Southern Illinois played Duke & UCLA in the 2k Classic in New York (although that didn't work out very well for them).

Morehead State played at Louisville and Vandy

St Mary's could have added Wake Forest & probably Arizona State (assuming they lost to Wake) to their schedule except for laying an egg against UTEP in the 76 Classic in Anaheim, leaving them with UCSB & Providence instead.

Point being, there are games out there to be had.

They definitely should be rewarded for exceptional seasons. Neither Creighton nor St. Mary's had an exceptional 2008-2009 season. They both lost to terrible teams. Such terrible losses would doom a bubble power conference team.

If you are willing to play on the road, the big boys will play you. Kansas played Kent State, Temple, Sienna, New Mexico State and Coppin State at home. Duke played Southern IL, Davidson, Xavier and others at home. Louisville played Western Kentucky, Ohio, UAB, UNLV and Indiana State. UNC played college of Charleston, Nevada, Valpo, Penn and others.

The big boys will play you if you go to their place. It's amazing to me that the western mid-major teams like St. Mary's, Creighton and Utah State rarely have that 1 major road game on their schedule like Niagara (@Nova), Sienna (@Pitt), Temple (@Kansas) and the other east coast teams have. If you know you are getting 10-12 cupcake games in conference, surely you can throw away one nonconference on a SOS-building road game against a traditional power.

UNC played Nevada and UC-Santa Barbara at their places even. Also add Evansville of the MVC to the list.

That team definitely had a way better case than Creighton or St. Mary's. 6 non-conference road games against the top 101 (fudged to include St. Joseph's at #101) and they won 5 of them.

7 in-conference losses for a mid-major FEELS like a lot, until you realize that they played 21 conference games....maybe the CAA should cut that down a little.

I agree that Drexel team missing it was a mistake. IMO, if that Drexel team was in the field this year, they make it over a Wisconsin or Arizona. None of the "hopeful" mid majors had a top 25 (or even top 30) win and that made them tough teams to pick for the NCAAs. St. Mary's had wins over just one team in the field of 65 - 11 seed Utah State. Creighton beat 11 seed Dayton and split with 12-seed Northern Iowa. It's tough to argue a team like St Mary's or Creighton in when they didn't beat anybody (or even play anyone in the top 25 in Creighton's case). Plus, you have the injury situation with Mills where he certainly didn't show himself healthy and capable in the WCC tourney.

George Mason got hot at the right time and as a result were able to a beat two decent teams in the tourney.

That's what I was trying to say above. This year specifically is a bad case for us mid-major supporters. This is why you don't see me defending St. Mary's and whatever dreg is trying to make an argument this year.

I'm more talking big picture. That even when a team does what is "asked of them" as a mid-major, that they still often can't get in. Yes, Drexel lost 7 conference games - but there were teams in other conferences that faired much poorer in-conference, yet got bids. They were the say 8th best team with an under .500 record in-conference. It seems like there is a floating target for the mid-majors which seems to have turned to a lot of teams just doing everything they can to get close to 30 wins.

I agree that pre-season tourneys are a method to get some better games. If you win the games you "shouldn't" then you get a shot at another team.

Throwing that out the window you don't have a lot of argument here. You have a couple of mid-majors that were able to snag a few games against high-majors. Most of the examples you gave (like Sienna) are teams that are clearly not great mid-major teams. Tennessee et al knew they weren't a risk.

The VCU, Mason, St. Mary's, Butlers, etc of the world have a VERY tough time even if they are willing to not have a return game. You can spout of some individual examples, but it is very difficult for a mid-major to get one school - and one school appears to not be enough - you need several high-major wins often to even be considered.

Exactly how many games did you watch George Mason play before the tournament? My guess is zero.

I watched them play at least 6 games before the tourney that year.

Mason was 15-3 in the CAA and 22-6 overall. OOC they took Wake Forest to the wire and lost, lost to Creighton, and lost to Mississippi St. They beat UC-Irvine, Manhattan, and Wichita St. (this BB win many think got them their at-large bid). Their 15 wins in conference included two wins over the VCU team that won the conference tourney and beat Duke in the first round.

This team wasn't "lucky". They were good. You don't beat Michigan St. (6 seed), UNC (3 seed) , Wichita St. (7 seed - a very good team that year), and UConn(1 seed) in the tourney as luck.

Neither is St. Mary's, but which one is dancing?

And as a #9. And as a team that had a legitimate shot at an at-large IMO even if they don't win their conference tournament.

Which makes sense to me. But anybody trying to fall on their sword over St. Mary's makes the entire argument look even more foolish than it usually does.


How many of those with records worse than 10-8 in conference (and 15-14 overall) were from conferences with lower overall RPI than the CAA's 14th?

I watched them play in the tourney and they got hot at the right time. I give them credit for beating UNC and UConn but those where situations where if it was a series I doubt they would win, not the less they did beat them. You sound a bit bias toward George Mason and I never called them lucky I said they got hot.

Sorry - thought you made the comment about hitting the lotto, but it was Chubby.

Agreed. This year there is not a single Mid-Major that I think has a strong enough case to make an issue of this. Is Arizona a bad tourney team? Yeah, probably - but so are Davidson and St. Mary's.




First of all, need to correct myself. Not sure where I botched it, but they were 13-5 in conference (not counting the tourney). Is that 14th in that year? I was thinking it was 12 or 13 - but that's from memory.

I think you make a decent point there. But, that argument is separate from what I'm arguing. I'm going against those that say, "well, if you schedule the OOC games". Drexel did this in 06-07, and won. Yet, they still didn't get in.

If the argument is simply "the conference isn't good enough, no matter what you do you don't deserve an at-large" then I have less clear arguments against that. I disagree with how important that is in some ways, but it's not like I can argue out of the fact that the CAA, top to bottom, is clearly inferior to BCS conferences (with my W&M team being a big fat anchor.. :sigh:).

The only major rule change I'd like to see is that a team has to go .500 (or maybe above .500) in their conference. I just think if you can't win more games than you lose in conference that you shouldn't have a shot at the tourney.

Outside of that I'd like a more clear definition of what mid-majors have to do to get at-large bids. It just seems like every year the target moves - and it moved further away when Mason made the final 4. If RPI is a key measure, then go with that. If big wins against BCS opponents is the measure, go with that. If dominating your conference is the measure, go with that. But it seems like it is a constantly moving target.

As I said earlier, I think St. Mary's tried to schedule tough games. Oregon was an elite 8 squad a couple years ago, Southern Illinois and Kent State have been powerhouse mid-majors. They also played in a tournament that had some good teams in it. You also keep ignoring the fact St. Mary's had a higher RPI which is essentially rating how you did based on the strength of your schedule.

And it's easy to tell these schools to fly halfway across the country and play the toughest teams in the toughest venues. But you have to factor in that most of these major conference schools don't leave their campus for the first 2 months. Doesn't that need to be weighted?