Well, college basketball fans, ODU a 14th seed. CUSA sucks!
No CUSA in NIT.
14 seed is where ODU belonged based on the metrics. 13 seed was the highest anyone ever had the Monarchs and even they said that was going to be a stretch.
And ODU was the only NIT team that C-USA could have gotten.
The selection committee looked to be more even-handed regarding non-power conference NCAA bids this year than the last several years.
Last edited by FriscoDawg; 03-17-2019 at 09:33 PM.
Belch champ is a 14th, SLC champ is a 15th, SWAC champ thrown a bone, only cuz they have to, and is in a play-in game just to reach a 16th seed. Woe!
Meanwhile, some of our former mates faired a little better: New Mexico State, the WAC Champ is a 12th, and Nevada and Utah State are 7th and 8th seeds. We used to "run with the big dogs," now "we just hide under the porch."
Oh well! I'll be rooting for the Loyola-Chicago team of 2019! Whoever that might be. In years past, Butler, VCU, George Mason, and L-C last year "shocked" the world and made great runs. And last year, for the first time ever, a 16th beat a #1 seed, Maryland-Baltimore County over UVA, yeah baby, loved it! That's the reason I watch the tourney, just to root for the underdogs.
Go Yale!
''Don't be a bad dagh..."
Just to show you how little respect the non-power schools have in this whole process, UNC-Greensboro was a No. 1 seed in the NIT field and their 1st round game didn't make television. They were relegated to ESPN3.
As Dawg06 pointed out in another thread last year the NIT selection committee does everything in its power with its seeds to get the non-power schools out of the way before Madison Square Garden. If the NCAA Selection Committee didn't mandate it with its "First Four Out" rule, UNCG would be no higher than a 3 seed in the NIT.
It's obvious that no matter what changes are made to the formula the same old biases on the Committee aren't going away. St. John's makes the field with a NET ranking of 73 and an RPI of 66, while UNC-Greensboro is left out with a NET ranking of 60 and an RPI 31.
St. John's only left the New York area once before the new year, ended up with a losing conference record, and the final few weeks of the season lost to DePaul before losing to Marquette in the Big East tournament by 32 points. Yet they got into the field before being manhandled by Arizona State.
UNCG coach Wes Miller goes on SiriusXM this week and - being young and new to all of this - didn't understand the politics of it all. He said he was surprised that the head of the selection committee Stanford AD Bernard Muir was critical of his team's resume. Muir pointed out in interviews that UNCG hadn't beaten any top tier teams, particularly in non-conference play.
Miller said that he tried to schedule as tough as he could, calling schools in every power league. Only a handful called him back and only 2 agreed to schedule him - Kentucky and LSU. So the committee chair expected him to upset either LSU, which had its best team in 13 years, or Kentucky in Rupp Arena. Good luck with that.
Can someone explain to me why two #11 seeds play in a "play-in" game? Never mind if St. John's should have been one of them, but why, in general does this happen? Seems to me if the committee thinks they are #11 seeds then they should be inserted into the bracket, the field of 64, as a #11. If they insist on having a field of 68, then those 4 games, 8 teams, should be the 4 #15s and 4 #16s.
https://www.latimes.com/sports/sport...318-story.html
The 4 lowest auto-bids & 4 lowest at-large bids according to the article.
If you compare how good many of the small conferences were in the mid-80s to how few of them are any good today, you can see that the way the NCAA has used the RPI has had exactly the effect they hoped it would have. It made the money schools more attractive and the small conference schools less so. Why should I go play for La. Tech if I can go 26-2 but miss the tourney because some team got hot in our conference championship? Might as well take a shot with TCU or Ole Miss or some other team that will get in if they just win half their conference games.